UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ (EMS) graduate program in petroleum engineering tied for No. 5 nationally, improving from No. 7 in the last ranking, and the graduate program in materials engineering was rated No. 13 in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report in its Best Graduate Schools 2017 edition.
California has the largest concentration of top-ranked graduate school programs, followed by New York and Pennsylvania, respectively. For the U.S. News rankings of graduate engineering programs, 215 engineering schools that grant doctoral degrees were surveyed, with 194 responding. Overall, Penn State’s engineering graduate program tied for No. 27 in the ranking.
The Best Graduate Schools rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research and students.
U.S. News ranks business, education, engineering, law, nursing and medicine graduate programs annually, while other disciplines and specialties in the sciences, social sciences, humanities and other areas are only ranked periodically.
In recent years, EMS has received high rankings in a number of these periodically ranked areas. In the last available rankings, the college’s graduate program in earth sciences ranked No. 6 overall, with the subfields of environmental sciences ranked No. 2, geochemistry No. 2 and geology No. 1.
For more information about the U.S. New Graduate School rankings, visit http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools.