Both Trinity College Dublin and UCD have secured top 100 rankings in a league table of the world's best academic faculties.

Trinity College has been ranked 74th in Arts and Humanities, while UCD has been ranked 99th in Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health sciences, two faculty-specific listings compiled by Times Higher Education (THE).

It is the first time an Irish university has broken into either top 100 ranking.

Universities are rated according to the 13 performance indicators used by THE for its annual institutional rankings, which last month put TCD at 160th in the world, and UCD 176th.

Changed weightings

However, the weightings are changed for the latest tables “to fit more closely the research culture” in each subject.

In Arts and Humanities, Trinity ranks just ahead of University of California and Indiana University, and just behind Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University of Virginia.

Number one in the table is Stanford University, followed by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health, UCD is ranked just ahead of Aarhus University and University of Bonn, and just behind University of Birmingham in the top 100.

Number one in the table is University of Oxford, followed by Harvard and Cambridge.

UCD welcomed its breakthrough into the top 100, pointing out that it was competing against 2,409 medical schools across the globe, including those in the US which had an annual health research budget of $30.3 billion (€26.7 billion).

Research income, the staff-student ratio, graduation rates, academic publications and citations are among the factors used to calculate performance.