UMass Amherst is ranked #3 in Linguistics after MIT and Harvard University in the most recent (2017) QS World University Rankings (subject areas). The other Linguistics departments in the top ten are (in that order) University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Peking University & University of Hong Kong (tied for 10th place). We came out #7 in 2016, and #10 in 2015. Our current 3rd place in Linguistics is all the more remarkable, given that UMass Amherst overall is ranked #251, while both MIT and Harvard are ranked #1 and #3 respectively. The overall prestige of a university enters prominently into those rankings, so UMass Linguistics has to be VERY good all by itself to make it to place 3. I participated in the QS rankings for this year, and the questions I had to answer were all about the best Linguistics departments (other than my own) that spontaneously came to mind for particular geographical areas. Here is a description of the methodology used by QS World University Rankings.