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School of Engineering graduate program ranks No. 84 by ‘U.S. News & World Report’

March 30, 2021 - by Kim Delker

The University of New Mexico School of Engineering ranked No. 84 in the nation in the U.S. News & World Report 2022 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.

Last year, the School was ranked No. 87 overall. In 2018, it ranked No. 99.

“The rankings are notoriously competitive, and it’s hard to move up, so I’m very pleased that we were able to advance this year,” said Christos Christodoulou, Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing. “The past few years, we have been working hard to move the individual metrics we can impact, such as improving our visibility with peers and our reputation with alumni and those who hire our graduates, so it’s heartening to see some of that hard work pay off.”

The 2022 U.S. News survey also ranked specialty programs. UNM ranked No. 73 in chemical engineering, No. 114 in biomedical engineering, No. 84 in civil engineering, No. 66 in computer engineering, No. 58 in electrical engineering, No. 91 in mechanical engineering, No. 59 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 2020 and early 2021. 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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