UC Berkeley Web Feature
U.S. News & World Report ranks UC Berkeley's Ph.D programs in the top five in all 15 academic categories
Berkeley alone among universities in attaining this collective ranking20 July 2005
BERKELEY – The new 2006 edition of U.S. News & World Report's listing of top graduate schools shows that experts rank UC Berkeley's Ph.D programs in the top five in all 15 categories considered by the news magazine — an accomplishment attained in that survey by no other university.
As part of the news magazine analysis, academics were asked to assess the quality of the doctoral programs at peer institutions. That assessment placed UC Berkeley in the top five in the following categories: biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, applied math, physics, geology, economics, English, history, political science, psychology, sociology, education and engineering.
"There is no question that UC Berkeley offers outstanding doctoral programs across a broad variety of disciplines, from engineering to English," said Mary Ann Mason, dean of the graduate division. "There is no comparison for depth and breadth of graduate education."
UC Berkeley programs have been honored for decades. UC Berkeley ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top 10 of the National Research Council rankings, for example. And the Times Higher Education Supplement, a weekly British newspaper focusing on higher education issues, last year named UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in providing the best education in the world (see full account).
The U.S. News & World Report's 2006 edition Ph.D program rankings* are shown in the chart below:
| Ph.D Institution: | UC Berkeley | Stanford | MIT | Harvard | Princeton |
| Biological Sciences | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 9 |
| Chemistry | 1 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 14 |
| Computer Science | 1 | 1 | 1 | 20 | 9 |
| Economics | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Education | 4 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Engineering | 3 | 2 | 1 | 20 | 11 |
| English | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 | |
| History | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 | |
| Geology | 3 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 11 |
| Mathematics | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Applied Math | 5 | 4 | 1 | 21 | 5 |
| Physics | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Political Science | 5 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 4 |
| Psychology | 2 | 1 | 11 | 5 | 5 |
| Sociology | 2 | 6 | 8 | 6 | |
| Percent of programs in top 5 | 100% | 93% | 82% | 67% | 57% |
Source: U.S. News & World Report website. Note: Science rankings are from 2002 (Geology 1999); Education, Engineering, Social Science and Humanities are from 2005. (Minimum 10 programs)
*Rank is based on mean peer assessment judging academic quality. Schools that achieve the same score in the ranking model are given the same rank.
The chart above was compiled by the Graduate Division, UC Berkeley.