UC Berkeley News
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Berkeleyan

U.S. News again declares Berkeley the nation’s top public university
Undergrad engineering, business programs do well in latest rankings

| 27 August 2008

UC Berkeley retained its rating as the No. 1 public university in the country in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges and universities released last Friday. In the magazine’s ranking of research universities overall, Berkeley again ranked 21st, behind 20 private universities.

In the overall rankings Harvard, Princeton, and Yale were first, second, and third, respectively, with MIT and Stanford tied for fourth. Among public universities the University of Virginia is ranked second (23rd overall), UCLA third (25th), and Michigan fourth (26th).

Berkeley’s place in both of the standings has remained much the same for the past several years.

The magazine’s ranking criteria and weightings include academic reputation (weighted at 25 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), graduation and retention (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent), graduation-rate performance (5 percent), and alumni-giving rate (5 percent).

While Berkeley always ranks high in academic reputation and student selectivity, the campus fares worse in comparison with its private peers in financial resources and the percentage of Berkeley’s large alumni base who are donors.

Also ranked this year were undergraduate engineering and business programs, based on a survey of academics in each field. Berkeley ranked second in the nation overall in engineering (tied with Stanford and behind No. 1 MIT) and third in business (tied with the University of Michigan and behind the University of Pennsylvania at No. 1 and MIT at No. 2).

Among the engineering disciplines, Berkeley ranked second in chemical, civil, and engineering science; third in computer, environmental, materials, and mechanical engineering; fourth in electrical engineering; and fifth in industrial/manufacturing engineering. In the business disciplines Berkeley earned fourth-place rankings in management and real estate, and fifth in finance, marketing, and quantitative analysis/methods.

As in past years, the magazine noted Berkeley in several areas, including the racial diversity of its students, opportunities for undergraduates to pursue research and other creative projects, and for being a good financial value for top students.

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