April 22, 2002

U.S. News Releases New Graduate School Rankings

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The 2003 U.S. News & World Report rankings released earlier this month show little change from last year for Cornell’s graduate schools.

Two Cornell graduate schools are in the top ten for their categories, the College of Veterinary Medicine is first — ahead of Colorado State University and the College of Engineering is ranked eighth, ahead of the University of Southern California and behind the California Institute of Technology.

In addition, the Johnson Graduate School of Management is ranked 16th, the Law School is ranked 13th, the Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences is ranked 11th for research and the Graduate Field of Education is ranked 29th for research.

“Where there was a change in any one department, it was no more than one position in the rankings, which is really no change,” said Henrik N. Dullea ’61, vice president for University relations.

“I don’t think that there are any real surprises in the rankings, since they are very similar to last year’s rankings,” said Alison G. Power, dean of the Graduate School. “In general, there is a certain amount of skepticism about such rankings, since they can’t really capture the important differences between programs.”

Power and Dullea both emphasized that the rankings of Ph.D. programs done by the National Research Council (NRC) are more useful. The NRC will release new rankings next year.

The NRC rankings are “based on a more comprehensive analysis,” Power added.

The U.S. News report on Ph.D. programs shows that Cornell’s computer science department is ranked third for specialties in theory, ahead of Princeton University and behind the University of California at Berkeley.

“Clearly, prospective students should approach these rankings with caution and use a variety of criteria to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of potential graduate programs,” Power said.

Archived article by Andy Guess