The University of Toronto moved up four spots to 24th in the world and remains the best university in Canada, that’s according to an annual report published Friday by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

It is the university’s best overall ranking since 2007 when it came in at 23rd overall. Last year was the university’s worst ranking since 2003, when the annual report was first published.

“To be recognized once again as one of the world’s leading universities is a testimony to the scholarship, creativity and innovation of our faculty, staff and students,” said Cheryl Regehr, vice-president and provost at U of T in a statement Friday.

“This reflects not only their academic excellence, but the impact of their research in Canada and throughout the world.”

According to the report, U of T’s best program remains computer science, which landed in 10th spot among some of the best universities in the world.

Surprisingly, the university’s much-acclaimed engineering program slipped 12 spots to 24th best university to earn an engineering degree.

The best year-over-year improvement were the university’s economic and business programs, which moved up the ladder to 24th spot from 48th spot a year earlier.

U of T remains well ahead of its national counterparts. The University of British Columbia was ranked 37th overall, while McGill University took the 67th spot. Hamilton’s McMaster University ranked 90th best university in the world.

Only four Canadian universities cracked the top 100 universities this year.

American universities once again dominated the top 10, with Harvard University taking the top spot for 12 years in a row. It was followed by Stanford University in California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities is conducted by researchers who use indicators to rank universities: the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and medals in their field, the number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Reuters, the number of articles published in the journals Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in the Science Citation Index and per-capita performance of the university.

Each indicator is weighted differently as a percentage out of 100.