MIT ranks fourth among national universities, first in undergraduate engineering and second in undergraduate business programs, according to the 2007 US News & World Report guidebook, "America's Best Colleges." The rankings appear today online and the guidebook will be available on newsstands Aug. 21.
MIT shares the number four slot with Caltech and Stanford. Princeton, Harvard and Yale, respectively, are ranked the top three schools.
Among the key criteria for judging schools is selectivity as gauged by the lowest acceptance rate (MIT's is 14 percent), and class size as gauged by the highest proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (MIT's is 68 percent).
MIT's School of Engineering is the top-rated undergraduate program in engineering nationally, and the Sloan School of Management ranks second in undergraduate business programs. In engineering specialties, MIT was ranked first in more disciplines than any other school -- five out of 12.
In undergraduate engineering specialties, MIT ranked first in aerospace/aeronautical/astronomical; chemical; computer engineering; electrical/electronic/communications; and mechanical engineering. In environmental/environmental health engineering, MIT ranked second, and the Institute ranked fourth in civil engineering, tied with Stanford and University of Texas at Austin. MIT tied for fourth with Georgia Institute of Technology in biomedical engineering and tied for second with the University of California at Berkeley in materials engineering.
In undergraduate business specialties, MIT was ranked first in management information systems, productions/operations management and quantitative analysis/methods; second in supply chain management; and fifth in entrepreneurship and finance.
MIT is one of 15 schools noted in the "Programs to Look For" category for having a senior capstone project in which students integrate and synthesize material they've learned as undergraduates.
In campus diversity, where a rating of 1.0 is the highest, MIT's diversity index is 0.64. Its largest minority is Asian Americans, who make up 29 percent of the student body.
MIT also ranked high in economic diversity, measured by the percentage of undergraduates receiving federal Pell grants, typically awarded to undergraduates with family incomes under $40,000. Fifteen percent of MIT undergrads receive Pell grants.
MIT ranked fifth among national universities in the "Best Value" category because 60 percent of its students received need-based financial aid in 2005. This ranking relates a school's academic quality to the net cost of attendance for a student who receives the average level of financial aid.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 13, 2006 (download PDF).
