ARWU Engineering World Rankings UCLA dropping

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>My daughter is trying to decide between UCB,USC,UCSD and UCLA for mechanical engineering. I noticed a large drop for UCLA in world ranking. Anyone know about these rankings and why the drop? #14 in 2006 down to #33 in 2007 is a big drop. </p>

<p>Also USC jumped up alot, UCSD went up also.</p>

<p>Top 100 world universities in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences</p>

<p>World Rank in ENG ARWU 2006 Rank </p>

<p>Institution*
Country Score on Fund Score on HiCi Score on PUB Score on TOP Total Score
1 5 Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT) USA 100 100 71 91 100
2 3 Stanford Univ USA 78 98 58 90 89.6
3 25 Univ Illinois - Urbana Champaign USA 91 68 66 82 84.9
3 21 Univ Michigan - Ann Arbor USA 87 64 61 95 84.9
5 4 Univ California - Berkeley USA 74 71 69 86 83.2
6 42 Pennsylvania State Univ - Univ Park USA 74 71 63 84 80.8
7 102-150 Georgia Inst Tech USA 97 29 73 91 80.4
8 39 Univ Texas - Austin USA 68 76 60 86 80
9 13 Univ California - San Diego USA 80 67 52 83 78
10 73 Purdue Univ - West Lafayette USA 95 48 59 79 77.9
11 35 Univ California - Santa Barbara USA 53 82 47 97 76.9
12 47 Univ Southern California USA 83 58 46 87 75.4
13 37 Univ Maryland - Coll Park USA 78 58 57 78 75.1
14 56 Carnegie Mellon Univ USA 76 55 56 83 74.3
15 12 Cornell Univ USA 72 58 47 92 74.2
16 2 Univ Cambridge UK 53 61 85 73.2
17 76 Tohoku Univ Japan 48 76 74 73.1
18 6 California Inst Tech USA 43 75 46 96 71.8
19 24 Univ Toronto Canada 55 60 62 82 71.6
20 33 Northwestern Univ USA 51 68 44 95 71.2
21 16 Univ Wisconsin - Madison USA 69 51 52 81 70
22 102-150 North Carolina State Univ - Raleigh USA 63 53 50 86 69.4
22 17 Univ Washington - Seattle USA 61 55 48 87 69.4
24 8 Princeton Univ USA 49 65 41 95 69.2
25 22 Kyoto Univ Japan 36 74 77 69
26 66 Ohio State Univ - Columbus USA 69 46 50 83 68.5
27 23 Imperial Coll London UK 41 63 80 67.7
28 102-150 Swiss Fed Inst Tech - Lausanne Switzerland 46 55 82 67.6
28 89 Tokyo Inst Tech Japan 41 71 71 67.6
30 53 Univ Florida USA 64 44 53 83 67.5
31 88 Texas A&M Univ - Coll Station USA 90 21 57 74 67
32 102-150 Natl Univ Singapore Singapore 21 79 81 66.5
33 14 Univ California - Los Angeles USA 61 36 53 89 66.2</p>

2

<p>[url=<a href=“http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ARWU-FIELD2007/ENG.htm]field[/url”>http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ARWU-FIELD2007/ENG.htm]field[/url</a>]</p>

3

<p>I don’t trust these rankings… many of these schools had significant jumps over the past year. GATech went from the low 100s to #7? Penn St from 42 to 6? Harvard from 1st to 35th? Schools don’t change that much overnight. Perhaps the ranking methodology changed?</p>

4

<p>Quite useless for evaluating quality of education. Main factor in ranking is total count of graduates (bachelors, masters or Ph.D) who have won nobel prizes or field medal (issued by organizations in different fields). Heavily favors large colleges as a result who pump out more graduates and thus end up with more graduates having the awards. Rank can change significantly by a graduate winning in any particular year the nobel or field medals. Also note how it misleads – if a graduate of USC who is now a prof at UCLA wins a medal, USC moves up, not UCLA.</p>