Updated Engineering Rankings

[thedav]

Hi All,

could someone please tell me how the Electrical Engineering program at the University of Washington is ranked? Thanks in advance!!!!

[bluebunny]

Hi All,

could someone please tell me how the Electrical Engineering program at the University of Washington is ranked? Thanks in advance!!!!

They're #21 in EE.

[zerothorder]

@zerothorder, I am pretty sure BU's rankings in ECE (photonics) isn't particularly high ranked. However, I am getting my Masters in EE at BU (not in photonics), but I know there's lots of good work happening in that area. I also think BU gets pretty underrated for engineering. The profs are good, the research is good, and facilities are great, and the campus is nice. I am not sure if you are considering other places, but if you are worried about BU because of ranking, I think you will be ok.

No specific photonics ranking, but BU is #48 in Electrical Engineering and #58 in Materials Science and Engineering.

Thank you very much to both of you

[draco023]

What are the rankings for Chemical Engineering schools?

[elgin]

Hi, does anyone know what the Civil Engineering program at the University of Washington is ranked?

Thanks.

[devil7]

Hi,

 

How much indicative of the quality of the program are these ranking? For example for communications, UIUC/UCB are ranked 3 and MIT/Stanford are ranked 1. How much better does this mean MIT's program is when compared to UIUC?

 

Thanks.

Edited February 7, 2013 by devil7

[airdonut41]

Hi,

 

How much indicative of the quality of the program are these ranking? For example for communications, UIUC/UCB are ranked 3 and MIT/Stanford are ranked 1. How much better does this mean MIT's program is when compared to UIUC?

 

Thanks.

I don't think they're very helpful/accurate at all.  What really matters is your specific interest, and how good the professors are in that area.

 

On a side note, I find phds.org to be significantly more helpful and more reflective of what I've heard from my advisors than USNews.  It's also free.

[Radian]

Hi,

 

How much indicative of the quality of the program are these ranking? For example for communications, UIUC/UCB are ranked 3 and MIT/Stanford are ranked 1. How much better does this mean MIT's program is when compared to UIUC?

 

Thanks.

 

It depends why you use it. As I mentioned in the other thread, USNEWS is the most referenced source and society usually looks upon it rather that other unknown sources which are barely even websites !

 

It is not a true indicative of academic standing of a institute, though that's how other people like employers see your institute compared to other schools. 

 

Regarding your question, it's my personal belief that top-5 schools doesn't really differ that much. 

Edited February 7, 2013 by Radian

[ghanada]

Yeah rankings is always tricky. But really all the schools in the top 25 or so on USNEWS are solid and will be reflected in pretty much all other rankings as well. The top 5-10 is much more subjective and it is pretty hard to quantify exactly which ones are truly the best. Rankings mean much much more in professional degrees like MBA, JD, etc. and arguably more so in doing a Masters. I can tell you from personal experience that your advisor and research fit is by far the most important consideration for a PhD. Going to a #1 school without a good research/advisor fit and you will hate it and not do an outstanding PhD. 

 

Now with that said, another reason why rankings do have some merit is that top schools tend to have top researchers in terms of notoriety and proliferation of publications and funding. It makes sense that these schools attract the top researchers whom in turn attract top funded projects. That is something to consider about the benefits of highly ranked schools. 

 

But in terms of student outcomes, you should look to see what jobs and positions past students have landed after graduating and especially in the lab you are interested in seeing where the graduates have ended up. That should give you a good indication of how well connected/respected your advisor is and how strong your lab is. 

[efh0888]

I don't like US News. It seems like they are in it just for money and to create drama and hype over minute ranking changes.

 

If anyone is curious, I am a fan of the NRC rankings, primarily if you are looking at PhD programs. The link below is for my field, but you can choose just about any engineering field, except for very specialized areas like petroleum engineering. 

 

http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124751/

 

Due to the added rigor of the rankings they are not updated every year. They give 90% confidence intervals for what they call s-rank and r-rank (note that research, student outcomes, and diversity are all factors included in the s-rank), and they state that both are equally valid. Click the link to the FAQ for more info on how they develop the rankings.

 

Cheers.

[TeaGirl]

The NRC rankings were revised in 2012 and there were some pretty significant changes. You can find them for all programs here.

 

Once you go outside the top 5 schools rankings from different sources can become really random. As an example, I just compared some of the programs in my field. The ranks of the programs in the past couple of years according to U.S. news are Purdue(9) UT-Austin (13) VTech (14-18) and CU-Boulder(32-35). 

The same programs according the NRC s-rankings get Purdue (17-45), UT-Austin (38-82), VTech(33-72) and CU-Boulder (13-40).

Sometimes even the s-rank and r-rank of the same school will vary widely, like ASU. In the s-rank it's 17-49 while in the r-rank it's 34-74. I would say that's kind of a big difference even though NRC says both rankings are valid.

 

At least CU-B falls within the range. For all the others, the usn rankings aren't even in the NRC range. I mean one puts UT-Austin at 13 and the other in the absolutely best case scenario at 38. So how useful does that make rankings? Not much honestly.

 

I'd say rankings can give you a list of universities to choose from and some general guidelines about a program (strong, good, average, weak etc.) As far comparing specific programs that are within 10-20 places of each other, you really don't know which is better. It's best to choose universities not based on ranking but based on what you want to study, how many professors they have doing that research and how good it was, and finally take a very good look at their websites to see how long their students took to graduate and what kind of jobs they got. I only used ranking info as a rough starting point to see how tough a program might be to get into and the general outlook of the program by others in the field.

[efh0888]

The NRC rankings were revised in 2012 and there were some pretty significant changes. You can find them for all programs here.

 

Once you go outside the top 5 schools rankings from different sources can become really random. As an example, I just compared some of the programs in my field. The ranks of the programs in the past couple of years according to U.S. news are Purdue(9) UT-Austin (13) VTech (14-18) and CU-Boulder(32-35). 

The same programs according the NRC s-rankings get Purdue (17-45), UT-Austin (38-82), VTech(33-72) and CU-Boulder (13-40).

Sometimes even the s-rank and r-rank of the same school will vary widely, like ASU. In the s-rank it's 17-49 while in the r-rank it's 34-74. I would say that's kind of a big difference even though NRC says both rankings are valid.

 

At least CU-B falls within the range. For all the others, the usn rankings aren't even in the NRC range. I mean one puts UT-Austin at 13 and the other in the absolutely best case scenario at 38. So how useful does that make rankings? Not much honestly.

 

I'd say rankings can give you a list of universities to choose from and some general guidelines about a program (strong, good, average, weak etc.) As far comparing specific programs that are within 10-20 places of each other, you really don't know which is better. It's best to choose universities not based on ranking but based on what you want to study, how many professors they have doing that research and how good it was, and finally take a very good look at their websites to see how long their students took to graduate and what kind of jobs they got. I only used ranking info as a rough starting point to see how tough a program might be to get into and the general outlook of the program by others in the field.

 

Regarding the differences in the two types of rankings, they address this in the FAQ:

 

"[About the R-ranking] The basic idea was to discover discrepancies between the characteristics that faculty members said were important and the characteristics that they (perhaps unconsciously) seemed to value when they rated actual programs. (You might tell a surveyor that nutrition is the most important quality of a restaurant, but when you're asked to rate specific restaurant chains, it might become apparent that you actually value low prices.)"

 

Personally, I think the r-ranking is more insightful. I want to know what academics in the field think about specific programs. That matters. But it's also important to look at, for instance, placements in recent years. So many factors are not captured in the rankings. Nonetheless, that does not mean rankings are altogether useless. One must wisely put all the pieces together to form a clear picture, and of course that is not easy.

 

BTW thanks for the updated rankings!

[evolution786]

Hate to ask...but can someone post rankings for Structural (or Civil) Engineering  if possible?

 

Thanks!

[TeaGirl]

You can find the NRC rankings in the posts above. The US News rankings for Civil are here.

 

1  University of California--Berkeley
1  University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign
3  Georgia Institute of Technology
3  Stanford University
5  University of Texas--Austin
6  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6  Purdue University
8  Cornell University
8  University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
8  Virginia Tech
11  Carnegie Mellon University
11  Texas A&M University--College Station
13  California Institute of Technology
13  Northwestern University
13  University of California--Davis
16  University of California--San Diego
16  University of Minnesota--Twin Cities
16  University of Wisconsin--Madison
19  University of Washington
20  North Carolina State University
20  University of California--Santa Barbara
20  University of California--Los Angeles
20  University of Colorado--Boulder
24  Lehigh University
24  Princeton University
24  University at Buffalo--SUNY
24  University of Maryland--College Park
24  University of Southern California

[fangli27]

Is there anyone who can help with rankings for Chemical Engineering? I would like to know where University of California, Riverside and Auburn University are currently ranked.