No. 1: MIT Ranks at the Top
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It's March and that means basketball's March Madness as well as a new flurry of university rankings. Perhaps the best known is the US News & World Report ranking of graduate schools. MIT has held the top spot in engineering since 1990—and we did it again in the new 2013 listings.
In addition, four MIT engineering departments were ranked No. 1: chemical engineering, materials engineering, computer engineering, and electrical engineering. Other graduate engineering programs came in at No. 2 including mechanical engineering, aeronautics and astronautics, and nuclear engineering—and, at No. 5, biomedical engineering.
News update 03-10-12: MIT named #2 most social media-savvy university in the US-UK.
Other No. 1 departments: economics, mathematics, earth sciences, chemistry, physics, and computer science. Biological Sciences came in at No. 2 and Sloan earned No. 5 for finance MBAs. FYI: US News, which does not review all doctoral programs every year, bases its rankings on expert opinions and statistical data.
Opinions matter when it comes to the Times Higher Education ranking of the World's Top 100 Universities. MIT was named the No. 2 university in the world, just behind Harvard.
Although the University of Cambridge took the third spot, there was much gnashing of teeth in the British press about the slump in rankings for UK universities. In contrast, Asian universities were trending higher in the rankings. American universities account for 60 percent of the total. The ranking is based on university reputations as judged by 17,554 leading academics from 149 countries.
Interested in other rankings? Last fall, MIT place 5th overall in US News rankings of undergraduate universities and third in the world in the QS World University Rankings. More recently, Princeton Review named MIT a top school for video game design.
Comments
Mille
Wed, 03/28/2012 4:48pm
MIT may have been "named" the number 2 university in the world, but that must mean that people at MIT don't proof-read anymore.
Jennifer La'O
Wed, 03/28/2012 3:17pm
You forgot to mention that MIT was also ranked first in Economics.
Jennifer La'O, S.B. '05, Ph.D. '10
KEVIN BOYD
Thu, 03/29/2012 12:09pm
To: Mille
Given your comment about proof reading, you may appreciate this. Jerry Weisner's favorite story was that a student appeared in a Cambridge supermarket checkout with a huge basket filled to the brim - problem was that he was in the line for ten items or less. When he got to the register, the clerk pointed to the sign and said "Well, you either go to Harvard and you cannot count or you go to M I T and you cannot read." Since I have graduate degrees from each of them, you can imagine what a mess I'm in. KEV
Christopher La…
Thu, 03/29/2012 11:21am
Things may have changed since my day (S.B. Physics 1961), but back then, MIT and Cal Tech were the ONLY US institutions of higher ed whose SB (or BS) degree was considered equivalent to those of Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin. This meant that we could matriculate immediately as advanced (graduate) students and begin our D.Phil. (Ph.D.) research without any prelims or other exams. As the British put it "The best and the brightest of the colonial universities (This meant all of the "Ivys") could complete for Rhodes scholarships to complete the Oxford (or Cambridge, etc.) BA in 2 years rather than the usual 3 years." I took advantage of this to do my D.Phil. (Fac Med) thesis under the supervision of L.G. Lajtha, a founder of the field of stem cell kinetics. Harvard was definitely not in our league then.
Jennifer La'O
Wed, 03/28/2012 11:29pm
Great! Thanks for correcting it.
Charles
Thu, 03/29/2012 4:43am
In 2001, 8 MIT alumni and associates received Nobel Prizes in economics, physics, chemistry, bio-med, peace, the only miss was literature.
MIT did not spent time celebrating the big wins. (due to 911?)
Ron Yang
Wed, 03/28/2012 11:09pm
As an Mechanical Engineering alumni, I am very sad to see that the Mechanical Engineering sliding down to the 2nd spot. MIT ME is twice the size of Stanford ME. But too bad, it is now in the second place after being No. 1 for 20 years. MIT leadership needs to have a strategic look at this.
Pete G. '88
Wed, 03/28/2012 6:18pm
Funny... MIT hit #1 after recovering from my 4 years there.
Larry Markel '71
Wed, 03/28/2012 3:41pm
But how did we rank in hacking?
Chris Knudsen
Wed, 03/28/2012 1:45pm
It's good to see M.I.T. continuing at the top of the rankings, particularly ahead of Cambridge University. It was so during my years as a chemical engineering graduate student during the last half of the 1960's. Keep up the outstanding work! Chris W Knudsen, Sc.D. Ch.E. '69