The article considers the results of the third wave of identification of world-class universities in 2021, obtained on the basis of the authors’ methodology. The comparison of the new results with the data for the 2017 and 2019 allowed us to examine in more detail some well-established mental stereotypes of a geopolitical and national character. In particular, the role of the North American university center is declining, but the universities of the United States and Canada are still models for the rest of the world, both in terms of the breadth of scientific diversification and in terms of the research results obtained. The seemingly self-evident “decline of Europe” concerning the market of advanced universities is not confirmed. Moreover, there is reason to talk about the growing activity of the European geopolitical center, whose universities not only hold their positions but also rapidly increase the number of highly specialized institutions and are at the forefront of training personnel for postindustrial society. Contrary to many expectations, the Asian university market is still far from becoming a distinctive authentic phenomenon and is still only an example of a relatively successful “copying model” of Western models. Quite unexpected was the alarming conclusion about the superiority of advanced universities in Latin America over universities in the post-soviet space in general and in Russia in particular. It is shown that the recognition of “new” world-class universities by international rating agencies, such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is very late. The internal Russian mental archetype concerning the model of development of the Lomonosov Moscow State University is recognized as untenable, whose tenure as a member of world-class universities is extremely unstable. Additional proof of this is the fact that this university has already lost the competition in the direction of “political science” to two other Russian universities – the HSE University and the MGIMO University.