If you want to become a Nobel laureate, Stanford has a pretty good record.

Times Higher Education reports.

Stanford top university for producing Nobel laureates

Stanford University has topped a list of institutions with the most Nobel prizewinners this century, while the US dominates a top 10 based on the nationality of winners.

US universities and institutes take eight spots in the institutional top 10 table, drawn up by Times Higher Education ahead of the World Academic Summit next month.

Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Germany’s Max Planck Society take the two remaining positions in joint eighth and 10th place respectively.

Harvard University does not feature in the elite top 10, lying just outside in 11th place, while the University of Cambridge’s tally of one Nobel prize this century is not enough to make the top 10. The University of Oxford fails to feature in the list, having produced no Nobel prizewinners this century.

The institutional list, covering Nobel prizes awarded from 2000 to 2014, was produced by giving each university a score based on the number of winners affiliated with the institution at the time the award was granted. The score was then weighted based on the number of prizewinners for the category and the number of institutions affiliated with each award winner. Literature and peace prize winners were excluded from the analysis.

Henry Yang, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, the seventh institution on the institutional list, said that its success is down to its focus on “developing an intellectual environment that nurtures collegial partnerships”.

Christina Beck, head of communication at the Max Planck Society, said it “attempts to identify those scientific high potentials who dare to take on completely new approaches and unusual ideas regarding scientific problems. High risk and high trust are our core principles.”