Hey. I am considering applying for WPI because they had a campus visit to my school. Their presentation was spectacular and I further researched the school. They have a lot of research and labs for engineering and robotics specifically, but the school ranks so low in computer science and engineering rankings (I mostly look into the Times Higher Education ranking since I’m an international student). I don’t understand why it ranks under many schools that don’t even have a designated department for CS?
More than likely they have lower research output than other universities.
I think THE relies heavily on published research and whether that research is referenced by other works. It’s mainly a graduate level ranking.
And there is little or no adjustment for the size of the school. WPI is small.
The overall level of research is heavily influenced by the size of the faculty and particularly the number of PhD students as it is tied to published research. WPI list about 200 full time PhD graduate student profiles and 4,578 undergraduates. Many of WPI’s comparison institutions have much larger PhD programs. By way of comparison, RPI has over 700 PhD students.
Because of the research based WPI Plan, this leads to confusion. EVERY WPI student actually does three different projects and some are published in respected journals, but this is not common for BS candidates in any university. This level of professional journal publication is still largely dependent on PhD candidate output and large graduate schools. This list may interest you as WPI does a lot of problem solving for US corporations… Please see https://www.wpi.edu/research/areas