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MIT engineering again #1 among grad schools

For the 13th straight year, MIT's School of Engineering is ranked tops in the nation by US News and World Report.

The 2002 edition of the magazine's "Best Graduate Schools" hit the newsstands and the web on Monday. Many of the rankings will appear in the April 9 issue of US News and World Report, which also went on sale April 2.

In the School of Humanities and Social Science (SHASS), the Department of Economics was placed first, after years of tying for #1 with Harvard and Stanford. This year, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and University of Chicago's economics departments are tied for second place.

"MIT economics has been the #1 PhD program for many years now," said Philip S. Khoury, SHASS dean and professor of history. "One need only examine the success of our economics graduates in academic research and teaching, government and business to understand why the profession continues to vote the way it does. My colleagues and I in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences are enormously proud of our economics department."

"Our strength is that we are a department rather than a collection of researchers. Interactions are key, and this is reflected in the quality of the research, the quality of the students we attract, and the jobs our students get when they graduate," said Professor Olivier Blanchard, head of economics.

12 PROGRAMS ARE #1

In all, 12 MIT graduate programs or schools were ranked number one in the Schools of Engineering, Humanities and Management.

This year, PhD specialty programs were ranked, but not individual departments such as those in the School of Science that received rankings last year.

The Sloan School of Management was ranked fifth nationally in business school rankings, following Stanford, Harvard, Northwestern University's Kellogg School and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Sloan's programs in management information systems, production/operat- ions management and quantitative analysis were ranked #1 in the country. Its finance program came in fifth and its entrepreneurship program was #8.

The #1 engineering graduate programs in MIT's School of Engineering, as ranked by engineering school deans, are aerospace/aeronautical engineering, chemical engineering, electrical/electronic/communications engineering, materials engineering and mechanical engineering. MIT was #2 this year in computer engineering, down from #1 last year; #4 in bio-engineering/biomedical and civil engineering; and #7 in environmental/environmental health.

In social sciences and humanities PhD specialty programs, MIT was #1 in microeconomics and in industrial organization. The Institute was #2 in public finance and #3 in macroeconomics and international economics.

MIT ranked ninth in the cognitive psychology PhD specialty, and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science tied with Columbia, Princeton and the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities for 11th place in psychology graduate programs.

In graduate programs within the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, MIT was 11th in political science, tied with Columbia, the University of Rochester and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 4, 2001.

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