Best Math Grad Schools

[Luke90275]

Hello,

I've been looking for a ranking of the best applied math graduate schools. I've seen US New's ranking applied math rankings although that list seems to be quite short with only 16 schools (and is oddly missing some of the top ranked overall math schools such as Harvard as shown here). I've also seen the NRC's applied math rankings as well as their overall math rankings (both of which are a little outdated but I doubt that matters to a large degree).  The thing is, the applied math rankings seem inconsistent when compared to other applied math rankings (US news has NYU as its #1 while NRC doesn't even have NYU that close to the top) and when compared to the overall math rankings (which yes, I understand they should differ to a larger degree, but why wouldn't a school like Harvard, who is very good at math overall, be ranked on a list where even the University of Colorado Boulder is ranked?). Is there any ranking of applied math school that is the most accurate (of course rankings can be subjective due to the weight of certain categories but at least one that's accurate to plus or minus a couple of spots for each school listed)? Or even a tier list that shows the different rankings of universities? Or even an overall math resource that may be even more accurate than any applied math resource? 

Thank you so much in advance!

[DanielWarlock]

Harvard applied math is affiliated to the engineering school (SEAS) instead of art and sciences; like other engineering disciplines at harvard it is very small (only 8 profs).  I believe it has nothing to do with the "real" math department. 

[Stat Assistant Professor]

The top schools on the USNWR list look about right to me (NYU Courant, UCLA, and MIT). I would suggest you look at more than only rankings. Make sure there are actually enough faculty who are: a) doing research in your area of interest, and b) who have solid placements for their advisees. Are they placing their former students into top postdocs? If the school is a top-tier one like NYU, UCLA, MIT, Princeton, etc., the answer to part (b) is assuredly "yes." But beyond that, I would make sure there's a big enough group of researchers there. Some programs might be stronger in some area of applied math like PDEs/fluid dynamics or numerical analysis/optimization than others.

[StatsG0d]

Although it's titled "Mathematics and Statistics," this forum tends to focus more on statistics than math. For the latter, I suggest you check out https://mathematicsgre.com/