Share this with your social networks Share Print this page Print Contact us Contact

Ranking of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Schools

Find An Online Program Now

The rankings below have been generated using the priorities you set. You can change your priorities or get rankings for a different field.

About the rankings »

The box plots in the "Rank" column show the uncertainty in each program's ranking. Learn more.
Hover over table headers to see more details.
Data sources and weights for each item are listed at the bottom of the page.
Better values are shown in green. Worse values are shown in red.
Learn more about the ranking algorithm.

« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next »

Your Ranking of Mechanical Engineering PhD Programs

Programs 1–30

Rank	Program	Regres Quality	Survey Quality	Research Product	Faculty Grants	Faculty Awards	Student Outcomes	Grad 6 years	Profes Devel	Stats Instruct	Orient	Intl Orient
1-5	Brown University Engineering: Solid Mechanics	5-24	1-4	1-2	87%	3.2	27-88	57%	17	Yes	Yes	Yes
1-6	California Institute of Technology Applied Mechanics	19-93	1-3	1-5	100%	4.0	1-18	73%	12	No	Yes	Yes
1-7	Northwestern University Mechanical Engineering	3-6	2-5	2-7	83%	3.5	7-40	49%	15	No	Yes	Yes
1-8	Princeton University Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering	5-10	3-10	3-12	92%	3.5	5-34	53%	16	No	Yes	Yes
3-13	University of California-Berkeley Mechanical Engineering	1-3	5-14	5-22	92%	1.6	39-77	46%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
3-13	Stanford University Mechanical Engineering	2-6	2-5	2-9	94%	1.5	20-56	60%	13	No	Yes	Yes
3-12	University of California-Santa Barbara Mechanical Engineering	6-15	6-15	4-18	74%	2.7	9-49	50%	17	Yes	Yes	Yes
4-17	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Mechanical Engineering	1-6	4-11	4-20	92%	0.6	41-75	54%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
5-17	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mechanical Engineering	1-3	7-19	11-37	76%	1.1	40-85	62%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
6-20	California Institute of Technology Mechanical Engineering	7-18	7-18	7-24	62%	3.1	5-42	53%	12	No	Yes	Yes
6-26	Cornell University Mechanical Engineering	14-29	9-28	5-25	96%	1.3	51-91	65%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
8-30	Johns Hopkins University Mechanical Engineering	10-24	7-20	4-20	93%	0.6	40-82	51%	17	Yes	Yes	Yes
7-27	Rice University Mechanical Engineering	20-52	19-44	24-62	60%	2.9	35-78	71%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
8-28	University of California-San Diego Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering	7-17	8-23	5-19	85%	0.9	56-94	49%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
7-29	University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Mechanical Engineering	9-19	10-34	13-52	93%	0.7	3-29	60%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rank	Program	Regres Quality	Survey Quality	Research Product	Faculty Grants	Faculty Awards	Student Outcomes	Grad 6 years	Profes Devel	Stats Instruct	Orient	Intl Orient
8-30	Duke University Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science	12-25	13-37	14-46	85%	1.0	8-36	70%	17	Yes	Yes	Yes
8-36	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Theoretical and Applied Mechanics	25-55	7-27	5-25	100%	0.9	18-58	50%	14	Yes	Yes	Yes
9-34	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Mechanical Engineering	15-32	6-21	5-23	94%	0.7	17-56	47%	13	Yes	Yes	Yes
11-41	University of Colorado at Boulder Mechanical Engineering	9-19	13-40	11-43	88%	0.7	22-65	68%	17	No	Yes	Yes
10-38	Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Mechanical Engineering	5-18	11-33	17-63	86%	0.7	44-80	45%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
12-39	San Diego State University Applied Mechanics	28-78	26-68	21-65	84%	1.5	31-65	100%	11	Yes	Yes	Yes
12-39	University of California-San Diego Applied Mechanics	28-78	26-68	21-65	84%	1.5	31-65	100%	11	Yes	Yes	Yes
11-43	University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Mechanical Engineering	18-44	21-64	17-69	94%	1.0	19-63	56%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
13-46	Purdue University-Main Campus Mechanical Engineering	6-19	17-45	20-71	87%	0.3	57-88	53%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
15-53	Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus Mechanical Engineering	12-28	18-51	26-80	84%	0.3	9-44	53%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
14-57	Carnegie Mellon University Mechanical Engineering	29-89	10-37	20-66	94%	0.2	7-37	67%	15	Yes	Yes	Yes
18-55	University of California-Los Angeles Mechanical Engineering	9-23	20-51	15-57	84%	0.8	108-119	52%	15	Yes	Yes	Yes
15-58	Yale University Mechanical Engineering	38-87	16-47	7-31	83%	0.6	15-70	45%	18	Yes	Yes	Yes
17-60	Texas A & M University Mechanical Engineering	11-31	16-47	15-52	89%	0.7	101-118	69%	15	NA	Yes	Yes
18-57	University of Pennsylvania Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics	25-54	15-40	14-50	80%	0.7	10-48	53%	17	No	Yes	Yes

« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next »

Item Descriptions

Rank: A range indicating how this program ranked in 500 simulated rankings based on your priorities. Programs are sorted by their median rank. Learn more.
NRC regression-based quality measure (Regres Quality): The NRC's measurements of overall program quality are based on 20 key variables (19 in the humanities) such as GRE scores, student support and faculty publications. To calculate the regression-based quality measure, the relative importance, or weight, of a variable was set by the extent that it correlated with programs viewed most favorably by evaluators in each field. Learn more. Your weight = 5. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
NRC survey-based quality measure (Survey Quality): The NRC's measurements of overall program quality are based on 20 key variables (19 in the humanities) such as GRE scores, student support and faculty publications. To calculate the survey-based quality measure, evaluators in each field identified the variables that they considered to be the most important indicators of program quality. Learn more. Your weight = 4. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
Overall research productivity (Research Product): This variable shows a composite measure of research productivity, based on publications per faculty member, citations per publication, percent of faculty holding grants, and awards per faculty member. The relative importance of these variables was determined by the direct assessments of some 50 faculty in each field. Your weight = 4. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
% faculty with grants (Faculty Grants): This variable shows the percentage of faculty members in the program whose work was supported by external grants or contracts in 2006, based on data from a faculty questionnaire. Your weight = 5. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
Faculty awards (Faculty Awards): This variable shows the average number of awards per faculty member in the program, based on data from a review of 1,393 awards and honors given by various scholarly organizations. The committee identified awards as "Highly Prestigious" or "Prestigious", with the former given a weight of 5. Award recipients were matched to the faculty in all programs. For each program, the number of awards for an individual faculty member was the sum of the weighted awards times the faculty member's allocation to that program. The variable shown here equals the sum of these individual values divided by the number of faculty allocated to the program. Your weight = 5. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
Student support and outcomes (Student Outcomes): This variable is a composite of other measures of student support and outcomes, including 6-year or 8-year graduation rates (for non-humanities programs and humanities programs, respectively), time to degree, job placement within academia, percentage of first-year students with full financial support, and whether a program collects data about the employment outcomes of its graduates. The relative importance of these variables was determined by the direct assessments of some 50 faculty in each field. Your weight = 3. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
% graduating in 6 years (Grad 6 years): This variable shows the percentage of students (full-time and part-time) receiving a doctorate within 6 years. It was constructed with data from the program questionnaire. Programs reported the number of graduate students who entered in different cohorts from 1996-1997 to 2005-2006. In each cohort, programs indicated the number of students who completed in 3 years or less, in their 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th years, and in 10 or more years. Males and females were reported separately. The completion rate equals the number of students in a given cohort who completed their doctorate in 6 years or less divided by the number of students in the cohort. This computation was made for each cohort from 1996-1997 to 2000-2001. Later cohorts were not considered because many students completed after 2005-2006, the final year in which data were collected. The average 6-year completion rate was calculated from 5 cohorts. Your weight = 3. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
Professional development (Profes Devel): This measure indicates the number of professional-development opportunities and oversight mechanisms for graduate students. In a 2006 questionnaire, programs indicated how many, out of a possible 18, resources existed for the support of doctoral students or doctoral education. Your weight = 2. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
Instruction in statistics (Stats Instruct): The program or institution provides instruction in statistics to graduate students (2006). Your weight = 2. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
Orientation for new graduate students (Orient): The program or institution provides an orientation program for new graduate students (2006). Your weight = 2. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)
Orientation for new international graduate students (Intl Orient): The program or institution provides an orientation for new international graduate students (2006). Your weight = 2. Larger values are better. (Source: NRC, 2010)

Data Sources

Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System: IPEDS is an annual, comprehensive set of surveys of all colleges and universities in the United States. The surveys are conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. Learn more
National Research Council: The National Research Council conducts periodic assessments of doctoral programs in the United States. Our data comes from the most recent assessment in 2010. Learn more
Survey of Earned Doctorates: The NSF/NIH/NEH/USED/USDA/NASA Survey of Earned Doctorates is an annual survey of all new recipients of doctorates from US universities at graduation. The average of the response rates for the 2000–2004 surveys was 92%. Learn more
Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering: The Survey is an annual assessment of the number and characteristics of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in science, engineering, and health-related fields It is conducted by the National Science Foundation. Learn more

* Value is missing. The value shown is based on the average for other programs in the same field. Learn more.