<p>The overall engineering rankings are much like the college rankings in that they’re based on a weighted average of many factors. USC is helped by a large research expenditure, but you can see their reputation score is very low. Similarly, Caltech is hurt by their small size, for example, in the areas of number of PhDs granted and total research expenditures, so they’re underranked. It’s better to look at the reputation rankings for the subfield of engineering you’re considering.</p>
<p>I believe the consensus is that the top 3 engineering programs are MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley. Caltech is a close 4th but is not as visible due to its tiny size.</p>