SINGAPORE - Fifteen Asian universities made their way into the world's 100 best universities in a reputation ranking released on Thursday, including two Singapore universities.

Japan's University of Tokyo is the only Asian university among the top ten, coming in the eighth place on the list released for the first time by the Times Higher Education magazine. It is based on the views of 13,388 experienced academics in some 130 countries. Kyoto University is the second best in Asia and the 18th best in the world, according to the ranking.

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The National University of Singapore is seen as the third best in Asia and the 27th worldwide. It is a globally oriented university with "distinctive expertise and insights relating to Asia," the report said in an information page on the university.

Singapore's Nanyang Technological University is also on the list at the 95th place.

The ranking is different from most others as it measures how the universities are regarded by professional academics in terms of both their teaching and research rather than how they actually performed, the Times Higher Education magazine said.

Tsinghua University and Peking University are respectively No 35 and No 43 on the list. The University of Hong Kong is the 42nd and Japan's Osaka is No 50 worldwide and the seventh best in Asia.

Other Asian universities on the list include the Seoul National University, several other universities from Japan, India as well as China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Taiwan.

Havard University got the top spot, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the second and third places, respectively.

In total, 45 US universities were rated into the global top 100, and the United Kingdom has more than ten.

The rankings also suggest that the top six -- Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Oxford -- form a group of globally recognized "super brands." They are getting much more attention than the others down on the list.