Wabisabi!

Wait, what? My understanding was the the NRC data is way better for ranking grad schools, and the PhDs.org site uses some stuff from the big NRC report. I personally didn't find US News useful at all: 1) No way to choose "atmospheric science" as a specialty 2) You can't figure out what schools have the best Civil Eng. PhD programs: choose "Civil Engineering" and the site tells you "These are the top schools for a master's in civil engineering." Uh, thanks. Don't care. 3) For chemical and mechanical engineering, US News lumps together Master's and PhD data. These tend to be different student populations, and somewhat different programs. If you look at the US News ranking methodology, you can see they put a lot of weight on peer assessment and recruiter assessment scores. Peer assessment maybe, but 15% of the US News ranking comes from "corporate recruiters and company contacts who hire from previously ranked programs." They also factor in number of doctorates granted, and total research expenditures, which would seem to heavily favor large schools. I guess both sites have their niches. I would rely more on US News if you're looking to get a graduate degree and then get a job . . . I would use PhDs.org if you're interested in doing research.