Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering graduate program improved three positions to No. 39 in annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. The 2010 annual graduate program rankings were released today.
The School ranks ahead of Yale and Washington University in St. Louis and just behind Duke and Virginia. MIT was ranked No. 1.
The professional school rankings – engineering, education, business, medicine, and law – are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research, and students. Data comes from surveys of more than 1,200 total programs and some 11,000 academics and professionals that were conducted in the fall of 2008.
“Vanderbilt engineering continues to rise steadily in these rankings,” said Dean Kenneth F. Galloway. “I am very proud of the work of our faculty and our outstanding graduate students. We believe their leading-edge research will have lasting impact.”
Peer opinion data is gathered from deans, program directors, and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of the programs. Professionals who hire new graduates are also surveyed. For the first time, the two most recent years’ surveys were averaged to compute the assessment scores among professionals.
Other “quality indicators” include acceptance rates, average quantitative GRE score, faculty membership in the National Academy of Engineering, engineering school research expenditures, Ph.D.’s granted, and total graduate engineering enrollment.
Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies George E. Cook said, “We believe the graduate experience our students enjoy is among the best anywhere. We anticipate that Vanderbilt engineering will continue to be the first choice of many outstanding students across the country and internationally.”
Extended rankings and details relating to the methodology can be found at www.usnews.com/grad .
Highlights of the graduate rankings will be published in the May issue of U.S. News & World Report, which will be available April 28 on newsstands. The America’s Best Graduate Schools guidebook will also be available for purchase as of April 28.