NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — There seems to be something to the slogan “Jersey Roots. Global Reach.”

For the second consecutive year, Rutgers University has cracked the top 100 list of the world’s premier research universities, according to CWTS Leiden Rankings. Rutgers placed 34th in the United States and 77th internationally, in a group of more than 900 schools from 54 countries.

The rankings are based on “only the scientific performance of universities,” according to CWTS Leiden. So researchers didn’t take into consideration teaching performance, but they did look at each university’s journal publications, scientific collaborations and impact.

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In the 2017 rundown, Rutgers was sandwiched between 76th-place Texas A&M and 78th-place Vanderbilt. It trailed 12 spots behind the Ivy League Cornell but beat Purdue, the University of Southern California and the University of Chicago, according to the rankings.

Rutgers dropped a few spots from its 2016 perch. That year, the university clocked in 65th, beating Texas A&M and NYU.

But, in general, Rutgers is on the uptick, at least as far as the CWTS Leiden Rankings are concerned. The university was ranked 171st in 2015—and, in the two preceding years, just broke into the top 100.