The Higher Ed AI Search Benchmark
See where your institution stands in AI search.
Free · Instant Results
Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot — coming soonAI Search Visibility Leaderboard
AI Search Visibility Leaderboard
| Rank | Institution | AI Index Score (AIS) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://www.mit.edu | 100 |
| 2 |  Stanford University https://www.stanford.edu | 98 |
| 3 |  University of Michigan https://umich.edu | 97 |
| 4 |  Harvard University https://www.harvard.edu | 96 |
| 5 |  Carnegie Mellon University https://www.cmu.edu | 96 |
| 6 |  University of California, Berkeley https://www.berkeley.edu | 96 |
| 7 |  Johns Hopkins University https://www.jhu.edu | 94 |
| 8 |  University of Pennsylvania https://www.upenn.edu | 94 |
| 9 |  University of Southern California https://www.usc.edu | 93 |
| 10 |  University of Texas at Austin https://www.utexas.edu | 92 |
Updated June 2026 — showing National Rank
See Full IndexAI Visibility By State
Most Recommended Schools in AI Search By State
Rhode Island
Top 5 schools by AI Index Score (AIS)
- #1
Rhode Island School of Design78.1 - #2
Brown University73.7 - #3
University of Rhode Island70.7 - #4
Johnson & Wales University65.9 - #5
Bryant University64.2
Source: Manaferra AI Index. June 2026 Edition
Top Schools By Program Area
Which schools come out on top when students ask AI about a specific field of study.
Leaders in
Health Science
| # | School | National | AIS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | #3 | 96.5 | |
| 2 | #7 | 94.1 | |
| 3 | #8 | 93.8 | |
| 4 | #9 | 92.8 | |
| 5 | #12 | 91.3 |
How do they compete for the same prompts?
Leads · #3 nationally#7 nationally#8 nationally#9 nationally
#12 nationallyBubble size is each school’s AI Index Score within this field. Which prompts any two of them share is published on a claimed profile.
Compare University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins UniversityTop Advertisers
Schools buy placements that surface right next to the AI results for the prompts you care about. Here's who's showing up.
The index publishes advertiser placements for claimed profiles. None are in the current edition, so there is nothing to show here yet — this section fills in as schools claim their profiles.
Compare Your School
See how your school compares against any other school in AI search.
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Prompt overlap
These two schools have not yet appeared together in enough prompts to measure an overlap. Open the detailed comparison to see how they differ across rank, programs and citations.
Methodology Overview
We built a corpus of 200,000 student prompts across 100+ programs (undergraduate and graduate) and run them against live AI in all 50 states.
- 1
The Prompts Dataset
Our prompt database has been curated from three sources: survey data from our own State of College Search studies, Ahrefs keyword database and Reddit.
- 2
How we collect the data
We extract what major AI Search platforms show to students when they search for college-related prompts across three decision-making tiers.
- 3
What we measure?
What schools does AI recommend, what does it talk about those schools, what programs, how often, what influences AI answers and what is the sentiment.
- 4
How we Rank Results
We measure results in specific metrics such as mentions, citations, topics, programs and our proprietary AI Index Score (AIS).
