12 graduate programs ranked among top 25 by US News & World Report

Rice has 12 graduate programs that are ranked among the country’s top 25 in the 2019 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools.

The rankings are based on expert opinions about program excellence and on statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students. The data came from statistical surveys of more than 2,000 programs and from reputation surveys sent to more than 20,500 academics and professionals. The surveys were conducted in fall 2017 and early 2018. Disciplines that were not surveyed for the new book appear with their 2018 rankings.

The George R. Brown School of Engineering, which is tied for No. 30 nationally, has seven programs or specialties in the top 25: bioengineering (three-way tie for No. 9), environmental engineering (four-way tie for No. 13, up from No. 15), the specialty of programming language (No. 15), computer science (five-way tie for No. 20), computer engineering (three-way tie for No. 23), civil engineering (seven-way tie for No. 23, up from No. 25) and electrical engineering (five-way tie for No. 25).

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, which is tied for No. 23 based on its full-time MBA program ranking, has two other rankings in the top 25: the entrepreneurship specialty (No. 13) and the professional MBA program (three-way tie for No. 17, up from No. 24). The latter is ranked in the category for part-time MBA programs but is not a part-time program.

The Wiess School of Natural Science has a program and a specialty in the top 25: the atomic/molecular/optical specialty (No. 8, up from No. 10) and the Earth sciences program (three-way tie for No. 24, up from 25).

In addition to the programs above that rank in the top 25, the following Rice programs are included in the 2019 Best Graduate Schools rankings.

Engineering:

• Aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering (six-way tie for No. 30).
• Chemical engineering (four-way tie for No. 26, up from No. 27).
• Mechanical engineering (tied for No. 28, up from No. 31).
• Materials science (five-way tie for No. 37).
• Statistics (No. 43).

Humanities:

• History (four-way tie for No. 34, based on the 2018 ranking).
• English (seven-way tie for No. 35, based on 2018 ranking).

Social sciences:

• Political science (four-way tie for No. 33, based on 2018 ranking).
• Economics (five-way tie for No. 42, based on 2018 ranking).
• Psychology (three-way tie for No. 50, based on 2018 ranking).

Natural sciences:

• Math (six-way tie for No. 26, up from No. 28).
• Physics (seven-way tie for No. 28).
• Chemistry (seven-way tie for No. 32, up from No. 33).
• Biology (seven-way tie for No. 39, up from No. 42).

For more information on the rankings, click here.