<p>Best</a> Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report</p>
<p>U.S. News has just released its newest rankings of graduate school programs at universities across the country. About half of the disciplines have new rankings this year while the other half are from last year or the year before.</p>
<p>Many posters here on CC think of Princeton primarily as an undergraduate institution. They see the absence of professional schools of law, medicine and business as indicating a weaker graduate program. Princeton's focus is not on professional schools (with the exception of the Woodrow Wilson School and the School of Architecture) but its graduate programs leading to PhDs in the humanities and sciences are among the best in the country.</p>
<p>U.S. News offers its analysis of the strength of many of the core PhD programs in the humanities and sciences, including Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Economics, English, History, Mathematics, Physics, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. </p>
<p>Among these core disciplines, only the following schools have programs that rank among the top fifty institutions for all twelve. Their average scores for these twelve basic programs in the sciences and humanities are as follows (on a scale of 1.0 to 5.0) :</p>
<p>Average
Score Institution</p>
<p>4.8------------Berkeley and Stanford</p>
<p>4.7------------Harvard</p>
<p>4.6------------Princeton</p>
<p>4.5------------</p>
<p>4.4------------Yale</p>
<p>4.3------------Columbia and U. of Chicago, U. of Michigan</p>
<p>4.2------------Cornell, UCLA and U. of Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>4.1------------</p>
<p>4.0------------UT Austin</p>
<p>3.9------------Duke, Northwestern and UC San Diego</p>
<p>3.8------------Johns Hopkins, U. of Minnesota and U. of Washington</p>
<p>3.7------------</p>
<p>3.6------------Ohio State, Penn State, UC Davis </p>
<p>3.4------------UC Santa Barbara</p>
<p>No other schools ranked within the top 50 programs in all twelve basic disciplines.</p>
<p>Berkeley and Stanford are the stars of the show here. Both have very large graduate programs in the humanities and sciences and both are outstanding. Even so, Princeton comes in just behind the leaders while doing so with substantially smaller departments.</p>
<p>Another comparison is of the number of ranked programs within the top ten nationally, the top five nationally or the number one ranking in the nation. That comparison looks like this:</p>
<p>Number of Programs
in the Top
Ten Nationally
Out of 12 Ranked
Programs</p>
<p>12----------Berkeley and Stanford
11----------Harvard and Princeton
10----------
9-----------
8-----------
7-----------Columbia, Yale
6-----------U. of Chicago and U. of Michigan
5-----------UCLA
4-----------
3-----------Cornell, Northwestern and U. of Wisconsin
2-----------Duke, Johns Hopkins, U. of Minnesota and UT Austin
1-----------Penn State, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and U. of Washington</p>
<p>Number of Programs
in the Top
Five Nationally
Out of 12 Ranked
Programs</p>
<p>12---------Stanford
11---------
10---------Harvard and UC Berkeley
9-----------
8-----------
7-----------
6-----------Princeton
5-----------
4-----------Yale
3-----------U. of Chicago and U. of Michigan
2-----------Columbia
1-----------Cornell, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and U. of Wisconsin</p>
<p>Number of
Programs Ranked
Number 1 in the Nation
(out of 12)</p>
<p>6-----------Stanford and UC Berkeley
5-----------
4-----------
3-----------Harvard and Princeton
2-----------
1-----------U. of Chicago and Yale</p>
<p>Princeton's graduate school strengths are in both the sciences and the humanities. U.S. News has ranked it the best in the nation in the following disciplines:</p>
<p>Economics (tied with Harvard, MIT and U. of Chicago)
History (tied with Berkeley, Stanford and Yale)
Political Science (tied with Harvard and Stanford)</p>
<p>It is also ranked second in the nation in math and third in sociology. </p>
<p>Mathematics (tied with Berkeley, Harvard and Stanford)
Sociology (tied with U. of Michigan)</p>
<p>A number of programs have been left out here because they are specialized and not all the highly ranked schools have them. These include engineering, public affairs, nursing/specialized health fields and fine arts. Princeton is highly ranked in the first two though they have not been included.</p>
<p>While the strength of graduate programs in the humanities and sciences is not directly related to the quality of undergraduate education, it does indicate something about the quality of the faculty in these basic disciplines. </p>
<p>While Princeton is justifiably proud of the quality of its undergraduate program, it is equally strong in graduate education, something that is often overlooked on these boards.</p>