US News Engineering Rankings

Alexandre
Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:19:33 +0000

bruno, there are citations, and there are CITATIONS. It does not take much to write a paper worthy of citation. But the papers writen by faculty at schools like GT and Michigan are, on average, far lengthier and more impactful than papers written by faculty at say Duke or Rice. The average project run by faculty at GT and Michigan run in the millions of dollars and often take years to complete. That is not the case with research projects at Duke or Rice. As a result, faculty at major research programs will probably not publish as many papers as frequently.

Every single professor on Earth will laugh at you if you suggest that somehow, MIT were ranked other than #1 in EE and Cal out of the top 3. And where is Stanford? Not even ranked among the top 10 in EE? And GT and Michigan are unquestioned top 10 programs as well. So, let us sum this up. MIT and Cal ranked #5 and #6 respectively… Stanford, GT and Michigan not even ranked in the top 10? I am sorry, but that ranking makes no sense. Those 5 programs, along with Caltech and UIUC are considered the top EE programs in the World.

"Peer assessment on the other hand may be a good indicator if it is properly done. USN&WR’s peer survey in particular is rather poor, as it is limited to deans of colleges of engineering or deans of graduate studies. "

That is not entirely correct. Only Deans of Engineering programs and senior faculty are asked to contribute to the peer assessment score for undergraduate Engineering and Business programs. Those men and women know exactly what their peer institutions are up to.