<p>Can the graduate major rankings in the USnews be the same indicator to the undergraduate rankings? For exmaple, UCSD' political science is ranked 8 in the usnews graduate rankings, can i infer that UCSD has same academic capacity in the undergraduate according to graduate rankings?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t use USnews. The methodology for their rankings within a field is based 100% on peer assessment.</p>
US News is out to sell magazines. Curricula is best weighed by peer assessment. Scandals have afflicted schools with US News-everyone is out to uplift their selectivity ranking so they are fudging. Best things to use-how good is the course catalog-is it barebones or thick. What businesses recruit there? How good is its library is paramount. Professors can be good & fair or lousy, hard, & obnoxious & uncaring. TAs can actually be decent teachers or incomprehensible. The key is how good the course catalog is in depth of courses.
No comment on US News methodology or whether other similar sites may offer more credibility. I’ll address the broader question of whether undergraduate and graduate rankings are related and the answer is… it depends. And it depends largely on how related and “close” together in time the programs are.
I’ll use my alma mater, UIUC, as an example. We have a fairly strong undergraduate business program but our graduate (MBA) are comparatively lacking. So, you see many of the more motivated UIUC business students do not return for an MBA at Illinois for many reasons (eg, we’re in the middle of a corn field, far away from major cities or nice beaches?). However, for degrees that people do immediately after undergrad such as a 1-year master’s program (MA; MS, etc) I would say there’s considerable similarity in rankings because many of the students in the program will be of the same caliber.