Rice has 8 graduate programs in U.S. News’ top 20

Rice University has eight graduate programs that are ranked among the country’s top 20 in “U.S. News 2016 Best Graduate Schools.”

Five of those programs reflect rankings conducted in 2015, and the other three are repeated from a previous edition based on rankings from 2014.

At the George R. Brown School of Engineering, which moved up to No. 31 from No. 33 nationally, the bioengineering program is in a three-way tie for No. 9; computer engineering is No. 20; and environmental engineering is in a seven-way tie for No. 20.
Based on rankings from 2014, the computer science program remains in a five-way tie for No. 20, and the specialty of programming languages is tied for No. 11. Computer science and programming languages are part of the School of Engineering but listed in the sciences section of U.S. News’ graduate school guide.

At the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, which is in a four-way tie for No. 33 nationally based on its full-time MBA program ranking, the entrepreneurship program is in a three-way tie for No. 13 and the part-time MBA program is in a four-way tie for No. 16.

The atomic/molecular/optical specialty in physics at the Wiess School of Natural Sciences remains tied for No. 10, based on the 2014 ranking.

The new rankings, published March 10, are based on expert opinions about program excellence and statistical measures of the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students. U.S. News surveyed administrators at nearly 1,900 graduate programs and more than 13,700 academics and professionals to collect data for the rankings. The surveys were conducted during the fall of 2014 and early 2015. Rankings for programs in the natural sciences were carried over from 2014, and rankings for humanities and social sciences were carried over from 2013.

In addition to the programs above that rank in the top 20, the following Rice programs are ranked in “2016 Best Graduate Schools.” (The year in parentheses indicates when the rankings were done.)

Engineering:

• Electrical engineering — three-way tie for No. 21 (2015).
• Mechanical engineering — tied for No. 25 (2015).
• Chemical engineering — tied for No. 26 (2015).
• Civil engineering — five-way tie for No. 26 (2015).
• Materials — six-way tie for No. 33 (2015).
• Statistics — three-way tie for No. 39. (2014; U.S. News lists this as a science program, but it’s part of Rice’s School of Engineering.)

Natural sciences:

• Earth sciences — five-way tie for No. 25 (2014).
• Physics — three-way tie for No. 26 (2014).
• Math — six-way tie for No. 28 (2014).
• Chemistry – tied for No. 33 (2014).
• Biological sciences – eight-way tie for No. 42 (2014).

Humanities:

• History — six-way tie for No. 30 (2013).
• English — three-way tie for No. 36 (2013).

Social sciences:

• Political science — four-way tie for No. 32 (2013).
• Economics — five-way tie for No. 48 (2013).
• Psychology — 11-way tie for No. 67 (2013).

For more information on how the rankings were conducted, click here.