U.S. News and World Report has ranked MIT seventh in its list of the United States’ top universities, which was announced today. This is the fourth year in a row that the Institute has occupied this spot in the magazine’s annual rankings of the nation’s best colleges and universities.
MIT’s School of Engineering has long topped the list of undergraduate engineering programs at a doctoral institution; this year it again occupies the No. 1 spot, followed by Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. MIT also placed first in six out of 12 engineering disciplines. No other institution is No. 1 in more than two disciplines.
The Institute tied again this year with Berkeley as the nation’s No. 2 undergraduate business program. Among business subfields, MIT is ranked No. 1 in three specialties.
In the overall institutional rankings, U.S. News placed Princeton University in the No. 1 spot, followed by Harvard University. The University of Chicago and Yale University are tied for No. 3.
One of the factors in the overall rankings is the “peer assessment score,” which reflects assessments by presidents, provosts, and top admissions officials at peer institutions. MIT, Stanford, and Harvard tied for the highest peer assessment score in this year’s rankings. These universities and Yale also tied for the top assessment score from high school counselors.
MIT placed first in six engineering specialties: aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering; chemical engineering; computer engineering; electrical/electronic/communications engineering; materials engineering; and mechanical engineering. In the area of biomedical engineering, MIT’s undergraduate program ranks fourth, and in civil engineering it ranks fifth.
Other schools in the top five overall for undergraduate engineering programs are Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, and Georgia Tech
Among undergraduate business specialties, the MIT Sloan School of Management leads in three areas: management information systems; production/operations management; and quantitative analysis/methods. MIT Sloan also ranks second in entrepreneurship and in supply chain management/logistics, and it ranks third in finance.
The No. 1-ranked undergraduate business program overall is at the University of Pennsylvania; the top five also include the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and New York University.
MIT ranks as the third most innovative university in the nation, according to the U.S. News peer assessment survey of top academics. The Institute also appears on the magazine’s list of universities that most value economic diversity, as reflected by the proportion of undergraduates receiving Pell grants.
