News Release
UC San Diego Ranked 7th Best Public University by U.S. News & World Report
San Diego, CA. August 20, 2009 -- The University of California, San Diego ranked as the seventh best public university in the nation in the 2010 America’s Best Colleges guidebook issued today by U.S. News & World Report, and 35th among the 262 ranked national universities, both public and private.
The list of the “Top 50 Public National Universities” was led by UC Berkeley, first; UCLA and University of Virginia, tied at second; University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, fourth; University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, fifth; College of William and Mary, sixth, and UC San Diego and Georgia Institute of Technology, tied at seventh, ahead of the University of Illinois-Urbana and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Topping the ranks of both public and private national universities were Harvard and Princeton, tied at first, and Yale, third. UC San Diego was tied at 35th with Georgia Institute of Technology, Lehigh University and the University of Rochester.
Rankings of engineering schools that award doctorates included the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering in 19th place, tied with UCLA and the University of Minnesota. The Jacobs School garnered a fourth place spot in the Biomedical/Bioengineering category., following Johns Hopkins University, Duke University and Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively, and ahead of Massachusetts Institute of Technology at fifth.
In the“Top Up-and-Coming School” category, UC San Diego was listed in 15th place among 77 colleges and universities.The listing “singles out schools that have recently made the most promising and innovative changes in academics, faculty, students, campus or facilities,” according to the guidebook.
UC San Diego also is listed in a “Learning Communities” category defined as an area where “students typically take two or more linked courses as a group and get to know one another and their professors well. Some learning communities are also residential.”
To rank colleges and universities, U.S. News first assigns schools to a group of their peers, based on the basic categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Those in the “National Universities” group are the 262 American universities that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees; some emphasize research. In each category, data up to 15 indicators of academic quality are gathered from each school and tabulated. Schools are ranked within categories by their total weighted score. Schools that receive the same number rank are tied and listed in alphabetical order.
Media Contacts
Andrea Siedsma
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-822-0899
asiedsma@soe.ucsd.edu
Cheryl Harris
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-822-7656
cdharris@ucsd.edu