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School of Engineering ranked No. 87 in nation in ‘U.S. News & World Report’ survey

March 17, 2020 - by Kim Delker

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The University of New Mexico School of Engineering ranked No 87 in the nation in the U.S. News & World Report 2021 Best Graduate Schools rankings for engineering, released today.

UNM is the only engineering program in New Mexico to rank in the top 100. Among public institutions in the U.S., UNM’s engineering program ranks No. 51.

“These rankings are very competitive,” said Christos Christodoulou, Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing. “It is very difficult to move the rankings, since they are based on a variety of factors, some of which we have limited control over. Even though our overall ranking held somewhat steady, I am encouraged by some of the individual metrics, including how our alumni rank the quality of our graduates.”

Last year, the School was ranked No. 85 overall.

The 2021 U.S. News survey also ranked specialty programs. UNM ranked No. 66 in chemical engineering, No. 109 in biomedical engineering, No. 93 in civil engineering, No. 61 in computer engineering, No. 54 in electrical engineering, No. 94 in mechanical engineering, No. 72 in environmental engineering, and No. 16 in nuclear engineering.

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.

For the rankings of graduate engineering programs, more than 200 engineering schools that grant doctoral degrees were surveyed. Data were collected in fall 2019 and early 2020. Factors that went into the rankings include:

  • Peer assessment: U.S. News asked deans, program directors, and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). In business, education, engineering, law and medicine, U.S. News also surveyed professionals who hire new graduates. The schools supplied the names of the surveyed professionals.
  • Recruiter assessment: Corporate recruiters and company contacts are asked to rate programs on a scale from marginal to outstanding. All the names of those surveyed for the recruiter assessment score were provided by the engineering schools themselves.
  • Student selectivity: Mean GRE scores and acceptance rate.
  • Faculty resources, including student-faculty ratio, percentage of faculty in the National Academy of Engineering and doctoral degrees awarded.
  • Research activity, including total research expenditures and average research expenditures per faculty member.

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