U.S. News and World Report has again placed MIT’s graduate program in engineering at the top of its annual rankings, continuing a trend that began in 1990, when the magazine first ranked such programs.
The MIT Sloan School of Management also placed highly; it shares with Stanford University the No. 4 spot for the best graduate business program.
This year, U.S. News also ranked graduate programs in the social sciences and humanities. The magazine awarded MIT’s graduate program in economics a No. 1 ranking, along with Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, and Yale University.
Among individual engineering disciplines, MIT placed first in six areas: biomedical/bioengineering (tied with Johns Hopkins University — MIT’s first-ever No. 1 U.S. News ranking in this discipline); chemical engineering; computer engineering; electrical/electronic/communications engineering; materials engineering; and mechanical engineering (tied with Stanford). The Institute placed second in aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering (tied with Georgia Tech) and nuclear engineering.
In the rankings of graduate programs in business, MIT Sloan moved up one step from its No. 5 spot last year. U.S. News awarded a No. 1 ranking to the school’s specialties in information systems and production/operations, and a No. 2 ranking for supply chain/logistics.
U.S. News does not issue annual rankings for all doctoral programs but revisits many every few years. In its new evaluation of programs in the social science and humanities, the magazine gave MIT’s economics program a No. 1 ranking overall and either first- or second-place rankings for all eight economics specialties listed. MIT’s political science and psychology programs also placed among the top 10 in the nation.
In the magazine’s 2014 evaluation of PhD programs in the sciences, five MIT programs earned a No. 1 ranking: biological sciences (tied with Harvard and Stanford); chemistry (tied with Caltech and Berkeley, and with a No. 1 ranking in the specialty of inorganic chemistry); computer science (tied with Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford, and Berkeley); mathematics (tied with Princeton University, and with a No. 1 ranking in the specialty of discrete mathematics and combinations); and physics.
U.S. News bases its rankings of graduate schools of engineering and business on two types of data: reputational surveys of deans and other academic officials, and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research, and students. The magazine’s less-frequent rankings of programs in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are based solely on reputational surveys.
