The University of Wisconsin–Madison was ranked 16th for agricultural sciences among world universities in ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. The same survey placed UW–Madison 32nd overall.

Conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, rankings are based on alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, research performance, highly cited researchers and papers published in Nature and Science, articles indexed in the Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance related to the size of an institution.

Since 2003, ARWU has presented the top universities annually based on transparent methodology and third-party data.