Very few people are really interested in NLC, unless their alma mater has high NLC.

There are many rankings, as described in global university rankings and AAU. However, one of the most visible/recognizable rankings is the NLC [count of Nobel laureates associated with] each university.

It is visible largely because of simplicity. Unlike the global ranking systems, there is a single, transparent (relatively fair) criteria in this scoring “system”. However, the single criteria hides lots of complicating factors:

• a given Nobel laureate can be associated with multiple colleges
• what if a Nobel laureate is actively courted to work in various universities to boost their ranking? Should the methodology exclude any tenure of a laureate after the award?
• consistency [1].. Between any two colleges, there’s no consistent inclusion criteria. Some colleges say a temp staff is counted.  Other colleges say an exchange student is not counted…
• Peace .. many observers would exclude the Nobel peace prize as it is unrelated to academia. Peace prize is not as relevant as, say, a Chemistry prize, but it’s unfair to leave it out completely.
• a “heavyweight” laureate can win 2, even 3 times; a light-weight laureate wins 25% share. I think most “systems” regard each individual as a laureate, regardless of “weight”.
• many academic domains have no Nobel prize, while physics/chemistry/bioscience enjoy the limelight.

Over the years, the relative importance (name recognition of laureates) has changed across the 6 prizes, so Econs/Peace and Med laureates get more media coverage than Phy/Chm, which remain largely unpopular on mass media and social media.

— [1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/facts/lists/affiliations.php has an unbiased and consistent listing, showing the universities Nobel Laureates were affiliated with at the time of the Prize announcement.

Many universities would claim their own count is more relevant and reasonable since the award-winning research was usually performed in their university but the announcement happened after recipient left.

Peace and Literature should be excluded, but sometimes included. Note if a laureate won twice, the same university scores twice, as in Bardeen!

• 38 Harvard
• 24 Stanford
• 23 MIT
• 21 Berkeley
• 20 UChicago <– the only powerhouse outside California/NorthEast, much bigger than Purdue(2), Duke(2), CMU(2), GeorgiaTech(0),UIUC(4),
• 20 CalTech
• 18 Cambridge
• 18 Columbia
• 17 Princeton
• 13 Rockefeller University !!
• 11 Oxford
• 9 Yale
• 8 Cornell
• ^^ These are the highest counts globally. All of these university reside in US/UK