Engineering School 2015 Rankings - U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report has released its engineering school rankings for 2015. The usual suspects are still at the very top of the list, with a couple swapping positions each year. However, what might be surprising is the number of state universities that occupy most of slots 8 through 24. Some that you would expect to see heading the list - like Cornell, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins - are beaten by State U. My guess is that holding a degree from MIT (#1 spot) is still a sure ticket to your job of choice, but news reports for the last few years show that institutional names do not hold the weight they used to as compared to a graduate's proven capability. A very strong mood of entrepreneurship is gaining popularity with college students who start businesses prior to graduation and then join with a few classmates to launch ventures of their own rather than join an established company.

This table shows the top 25 schools. Weirdly, many of the rankings are duplicates, like having four schools in the #6 slot rather than splitting hairs and assigning 6, 7, 8, and 9. It is hard to believe that four scores can be exactly the same when ranking criteria (weighting value) to a precision of up to three significant digits is assigned: Quality Assessment (0.40), Peer Assessment (0.25), Recruiter Assessment (0.15), Student Selectivity (0.10), Mean GRE Quantitative Scores (0.0675), Acceptance Rate (0.0325), Faculty Resources (0.25), Student-Faculty Ratio (0.1125), % Faculty in the National Academy of Engineering (0.075), Doctoral Degrees Awarded (0.0625), Research Activity (0.25), Total Research Expenditures (0.15), Average Research Expenditures Per Faculty Member (0.10). The total of all weighting factors is 2.00. Tuition costs are reported per year.

   * Out of state tuition

 ** Cost reported as $$227($581)/credit hour, so I multiplied by 14 to get estimate

Posted on  May 4, 2015