MIT's School of Engineering was again ranked No. 1 nationwide in U.S. News & World Report's annual evaluation of American graduate school programs, released online Friday and available at newsstands Monday, March 31.
The School of Engineering's graduate program has achieved the top score in the U.S. News rankings each year since 1994, the earliest date for which the Office of the Provost's Institutional Research team has records.
In addition to having the top U.S. graduate engineering school, MIT placed first in six of 10 engineering specialties--aeronautics and astronautics, chemical, computer, electrical, materials and mechanical engineering. The Institute's nuclear engineering program was ranked second, civil engineering fourth, biomedical engineering sixth and environmental engineering 10th.
The magazine's criteria for determining overall engineering rankings include peer assessment, recruiter assessment, research activity, faculty resources and student selectivity.
In business, MIT's Sloan School of Management was rated the nation's fourth MBA program--a position it has held for the past seven years. This year, Sloan shared the fourth-place spot with Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
Sloan's specialty programs in information systems, production/operations and supply chain/logistics were each ranked first.
The magazine this year updated its rankings of several doctoral programs, and MIT earned top honors for its computer science and physics specialties. The Institute's graduate program in mathematics tied for second place with Harvard and Stanford universities.
It is important to note that U.S. News does not issue annual rankings for doctoral programs but, instead, revisits them every few years. For example, in the most recent rankings for biology doctoral programs (2007), MIT tied for second with Berkeley. In the most recent rankings of doctoral programs in chemistry (2007), MIT was locked in a four-way tie for first with Cal Tech, Stanford and Berkeley. And in the most recent rankings for doctoral programs in economics (2005), MIT was tied for first with the University of Chicago.
The magazine's annual rankings of U.S. undergraduate schools is due to be published in August.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 2, 2008 (download PDF).
