The Tickle College of Engineering (TCE) got mostly positive news in the latest U.S. News and World Report Graduate School Rankings, which were released just after midnight this morning.

It is now tied for 31st among public schools and tied for 55th overall, numbers up from 35th and 62nd in the 2023 edition. U.S. News provides the rankings to help incoming students make choices about where they might attend college the following year, so each edition of the rankings is numbered to be one year ahead of the current year.

College-wide rankings are based on a number of factors, including research expenditures, peer and recruiter assessment scores, student-faculty ratios, and percent of faculty in the National Academy of Engineering, among others.

“I am proud to see the enormous progress we have made translate into a big leap in our USNWR rankings. In the past two years, we have set records in research expenditures, undergraduate and graduate enrollment, diversity, translation of our ideas into patents, and added over 275,000 square feet of state-of-the-art engineering space. Along the way, faculty have been awarded many international honors including a Turing Award and another membership in the National Academy of Engineering,” said Tickle College of Engineering Dean Matthew Mench, the Wayne T. Davis Dean’s Chair in the college. “Departmentally, three-fourths of our departments also saw improvements in their rank, which shows the depth of our excellence and forward progress in meeting our education and research missions. The Tickle College of Engineering is a world-class engineering program, with tremendous forward momentum, and I am glad to see this is reflected in the new rankings.”  

Unlike college scores, departments are ranked solely on their average peer review score, on a scale of 1-5, with one being the lowest and five being the best.

Nuclear engineering continued to be TCE’s highest-ranked department, coming in tied for 7th overall nationally, 6th amongst public programs.

Counting nuclear engineering, ten of the college’s twelve disciplines that U.S. News ranks improved in either ranking or peer assessment, with seven of those residing in the top third of public institutions in their given field:

• Aerospace engineering ranks 27th;
• Biomedical engineering ranks 58th;
• Biosystems engineering ranks 17th;
• Chemical engineering ranks 41st;
• Civil engineering ranks 36th, and is in the 32nd percentile;
• Computer engineering ranks 34th, and is in the 33rd percentile;
• Computer science ranks 42nd, and is in the 28th percentile;
• Electrical engineering ranks 29th, and is in the 22nd percentile;
• Industrial and manufacturing systems ranks 31st;
• Materials science ranks 26th, and is in the 32nd percentile;
• Mechanical engineering ranks 36th, and is the 29th percentile.

In addition to the graduate rankings, U.S. News does an undergraduate version each fall and one ranking online programs each January.