Rankings Craze: MIT Scores High

Love them or hate them, college rankings draw frenzied attention each fall. In fact Boston magazine felt compelled to add their judgment when MIT and Harvard recently beat each other in different rankings. Who’s the best, they queried?

But first, let’s set the stage.

In the US News & World Report rankings, MIT claimed the top spot for an undergraduate engineering program at a doctoral institution and the #2 among undergraduate business programs. MIT ranked #1 in selectivity and shared the top spot for reputation among college presidents and among high school guidance counselors. MIT did, however, rank seventh overall against Harvard’s second place.

More US News firsts:

• MIT engineering programs that earned top spots included aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering; chemical engineering; computer engineering; electrical/electronic/communications engineering; materials engineering; and mechanical engineering.
• At Sloan, two departments earned top billing: productions/operations management and quantitative analysis/methods.

Boston magazine jumped into the fray, pointing out that MIT was named the best university in the world, for the second year, in the QS World University Rankings list, an annual global report. MIT earned a perfect score on assessments including academic reputation, employer reputation, student-to-faculty ratio, and citations per faculty. So with that, Boston seems to tilt toward MIT.

• In the same gush of ratings, Forbes published their America’s Top Colleges assessment with MIT at #6 among research universities and #10 overall.
• More good news: the 2013 World University Web Ranking of the Top 200 Colleges and Universities in the world puts MIT at #1.
• Washington Monthly, which counts criteria such as percentage of need-based Pell grants, ROTC, and community service hours, puts MIT at #11.

If you are interested in how the US Department of Education views the Institute, then check the federal MIT scorecard, which lists net cost, median borrowing, and our (very high) graduation rates (92.9 percent within six years).

Coming up in October: The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, which named MIT as the world's #2 university in 2013, publishes their new list October 2.

Curious about graduate rankings? The most recent US News graduate school ratings were covered in spring Slice post titled “The Streak Continues.”