Why is it such a great school?

JWT86
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:10:37 +0000

Georgia Tech is indeed a great engineering school, but two things puzzle me. It seems to have the greatest mismatch between the last NRC rankings and current USNWR engineering dept. rankings of all the strong engineering schools. From what I recall, although GTech was strong in engineering, it wasn’t nearly as highly ranked in engineering as it is in the current USNWR rankings. We’re talking outside of the top 10 with NRC, to top 5 with USNWR. In fact, quite a few universities had stronger programs per the NRC. Both surveys heavily relied on peer reputation and generally agree in this regard. So… was improvement really this dramatic, or was it underranked in the original NRC rankings?

The second point I don’t understand is why, as a tech school, are the natural/physical sciences not really that strong relative to other universities? They’re not bad by any means, but not really stellar either (i.e., top 20-30 vs top 5-10). Both the NRC rankings and the USNWR rankings show this, so there isn’t the same disconnect as with engineering.

There’s no doubt GTech is academically strong and has a strong student body. I just haven’t understood the reasons for this.