MIT graduate engineering, business programs ranked highly by U.S. News for 2021

MIT’s graduate program in engineering has again earned a No. 1 spot in U.S. News and Word Report’s annual rankings, a place it has held since 1990, when the magazine first ranked such programs.

The MIT Sloan School of Management also placed highly, occupying the No. 5 spot for the best graduate business programs.

Among individual engineering disciplines, MIT placed first in six areas: aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering (tied with Caltech), chemical engineering, computer engineering, electrical/electronic/communications engineering (tied with Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley), materials engineering, and mechanical engineering. It placed second in nuclear engineering.

In the rankings of individual MBA specialties, MIT placed first in four areas: business analytics, information systems, production/operations, and project management. It placed second in supply chain/logistics.

U.S. News does not issue annual rankings for all doctoral programs but revisits many every few years. In 2018, MIT ranked in the top five for 24 of the 37 science disciplines evaluated.

The magazine bases its rankings of graduate schools of engineering and business on two types of data: reputational surveys of deans and other academic officials, and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research, and students. The magazine’s less-frequent rankings of programs in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are based solely on reputational surveys.