Drexel MatSci reputation? US News vs. NRC

[CarlJose]

I am wondering if anyone can give me a good idea of Drexel's reputation in MatSci at the graduate level?

I am confused because their ranking varies pretty dramatically between US News and NRC (top 40 vs. top 10).

On a related note, there is a similar discrepancy for Cornell's program, in the opposite direction (i.e. top 10 on US News, top 40 on NRC). Does anyone know what is up with these variations?

[banana_panda]

I'm not a MatSci person but if I were doing a PhD, I would consider the NRC ratings to be far more important than the US News. The latter seems like it is a self reported popularity contest while the NRC ratings actually take into account the papers published at a school, the impact factors, the number of citations they receive, etc. So all in all, I trust the NRC ratings a lot more. Hope that helps!

[CarlJose]

Thanks for the response.

I understand the difference in methodology between the two, but they still seem to correlate pretty well (in most cases).

I am specifically confused why some schools (like Drexel) have such high rankings with the NRC, compared to their "reputation" on US News.

Does anyone care to comment on this?