UZH has achieved an outstanding result and positioned itself as one of the top 100 universities in the world by coming 77th in the U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities Ranking 2016. From the perspective of Swiss colleges, the UZH thereby ranks in third position behind ETH (27th) and EPFL (58th). This means that UZH is the best-positioned university in Switzerland, followed by the University of Geneva, which ranks 104th. 

The Best Global Universities Ranking also compares the various fields of science. In the subject of biology and biochemistry, UZH comes in at an excellent 26th position globally (ETH 21th), in clinical medicine it comes 67^th and in economics it takes 82th position. 

The U.S. News & World Report Ranking has been published annually since 1985 and is the most frequently quoted ranking in the U.S. Since 2014, the U.S. News & World Report has published the Best Global Universities Ranking, which compares colleges around the world. From a pool of 1,000 international colleges based in 57 different countries, the 750 best performers were listed this year. Twelve indicators are surveyed for each college. The most strongly weighted include global and regional research reputation as well as the number of publications featuring among the ten percent most cited publications.