Berkeleyan
A glowing summer report card
03 August 2005
The new 2006 edition of U.S. News & World Report's listing of top graduate schools shows that experts rank Berkeley's Ph.D. programs in the top five in all 15 categories considered by the newsmagazine — an accomplishment equaled in that survey by no other university.
As part of the magazine's analysis, academics were asked to assess the quality of the doctoral programs at peer institutions. That assessment placed Berkeley in the top five in the following categories: biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, applied math, physics, geology, economics, English, history, political science, psychology, sociology, education, and engineering.
"There is no question that UC Berkeley offers outstanding doctoral programs across a broad variety of disciplines, from engineering to English," said Mary Ann Mason, dean of the graduate division, in response to the rankings. "There is no comparison for depth and breath of graduate education."
Berkeley's programs have been honored for decades. The campus ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top 10 of the National Research Council rankings, for example. And the Times Higher Education Supplement, a weekly British newspaper focusing on higher-education issues, last year named Berkeley second only to Harvard University in providing the best education in the world (see "We're #2! (Now what?)," newscenter.berkeley.edu/goto/rankings).
The U.S. News & World Report's 2006 edition Ph.D program rankings* are shown in the chart below:
| Ph.D Institution: | UC Berkeley | StanfordÝ | MIT | HarvardÝ | Princeton |
| Biological Sciences | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 9 |
| Chemistry | 1 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 14 |
| Computer Science | 1 | 1 | 1 | 20 | 9 |
| Economics | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Education | 4 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Engineering | 3 | 2 | 1 | 20 | 11 |
| English | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 | |
| History | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 | |
| Geology | 3 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 11 |
| Mathematics | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Applied Math | 5 | 4 | 1 | 21 | 5 |
| Physics | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Political Science | 5 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 4 |
| Psychology | 2 | 1 | 11 | 5 | 5 |
| Sociology | 2 | 6 | 8 | 6 | |
| Percent of programs in top 5 | 100% | 93% | 82% | 67% | 57% |
Source: U.S. News & World Report website. Note: Science rankings are from 2002 (Geology 1999); Education, Engineering, Social Science and Humanities are from 2005. (Minimum 10 programs)
*Rank is based on mean peer assessment judging academic quality. Schools that achieve the same score in the ranking model are given the same rank.
The chart above was compiled by the Graduate Division, UC Berkeley.