Our standard line on rankings is that they are one point of data among many others.

• We believe that students should seek a program that best meets their needs, using rankings as one criteria. We have found this to be true, as told to us by our students, at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
  
• Many of the individual components that make up a given ranking (for example, program size, student/faculty ratio, research $/faculty member, or citation index) might be weighted differently depending on the particular needs and desires of a student or researcher.
  
• "Un-ranked" factors such as the location of a program, cost of living issues, weather, and proximity to other institutions and cultural offerings should be considered when making a decision. After all, students, especially at the graduate level, may spend four or more years at an institution.
  
• In many cases, a school or program resides inside of a larger university (or in some cases, is integrated into a city). Meaning, when evaluating a particular school or program, it is critical to look at the entire picture.
  
• At SEAS, undergraduates in engineering and applied sciences are enrolled in Harvard College (not directly into the School).
  
• At the graduate level, degrees are administered by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Ph.D. students, across fields, engage in centralized student life resources. Likewise, research at SEAS is highly interdisciplinary, meaning that faculty and students spend significant time collaborating with colleagues in other departments, programs, and schools (from medicine to business).
  

• However you use rankings, be sure to read the fine print. Who is ranking the programs? How are they ranked? Are rankings data-driven or based upon qualitative assessments? Who makes those qualitative assessments? What factors are weighted most heavily and why? And taking engineering principles to heart, keep in mind that data can be finessed.
  

Select Rankings

National Research Council Rankings

Doctoral Programs (ranked in 2010, covering data from 2001-2006, revised rankings)

The "R-rankings" are regression-based and have a reputational component. Faculty raters were asked to rank the programs they reviewed. These rankings were then regressed against the 20 key variables that went into the rating. For every program, 500 regressions were run, and 500 ordinal rankings were thus derived. The 5th percentile is the value of the ranking at that point in the distribution, as is the 95th. We can say with 90% confidence that the true ranking falls inside this interval.

The "S-rankings" are constructed differently. Faculty respondents were asked to identify the most important of every one of the 20 key variables. Weightings for every variable were derived based on that identification. Programs were then ranked on every program’s value of those 20 variables, weighted accordingly. The 5th – 95th percentile measures represent the 90% confidence interval for the true ranking of the program.

• Applied Mathematics
• R Ranking Range: 7 (5th percentile) - 21 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 2 (95th percentile) - 8 (95th percentile)
• Applied Physics
• R Ranking Range: 2 (5th percentile) - 10 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 1 (5th percentile) - 7 (95th percentile)
• Computer Sciences
• R Ranking Range: 10 (5th percentile) - 35 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 4 (95th percentile) - 28 (95th percentile)
• Electrical and Computer Engineering
• R Ranking Range: 2 (5th percentile) - 12 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 1 (95th percentile) - 3 (95th percentile)

Notes: These data, while valuable, do not reflect the state of SEAS today (e.g., since the survey was completed in 2006, SEAS has had over a dozen new faculty hires; increased diversity among the student, faculty, and staff populations, and reported record-high levels of sponsored research dollars). In fact, the rankings took place before the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences transitioned to a school. Further, as SEAS does not have traditional departments and is closely tied with programs through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (with more than 30% of our faculty being joint appointments) it is wise to look at related programs (e.g., Physics, Mathematics, Biology, etc.) in addition to the programs represented above.

Access the full rankings data

U.S. News and World Report Graduate Schools, 2014

Best Engineering Schools (ranked in 2013, based upon 2012 data)

Harvard's graduate engineering programs ranked 23rd in the 2014 U.S. News and World Report Graduate School Rankings.

The schools ranked immediately above Harvard included the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Northwestern University; the schools ranked immediately below included Virginia Tech and Johns Hopkins University.

The top 10 engineering schools have remained relatively consistent over the past several years. For example, MIT has been listed as #1 since the rankings were first produced in 1990.

Of particular note are SEAS' research expenditures per faculty member ($693k), especially high given our relatively small size; high percentage of faculty members in the National Academy of Engineering (14.5%); low acceptance rate (9.8%); and the low Ph.D. student/faculty ratio of 5.4.

The full data (representing stats from 2012) from U.S. News is below:

Other rankings of related specialty programs in engineering and applied sciences include...

• #15 in Materials Engineering (tied with Ohio State)
• #17 in Computer Science (tied with Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania)
• #9 in Theory
• #17 in Programming Language
• #22 in Computer Engineering (tied with Johns Hopkins University and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
• #23 in Biomedical Engineering / Bioengineering (tied with Purdue University, West Lafayette; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; and the University of Virginia)
• #26 in Electrical / Electronic / Communications Engineering (tied with Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and the University of Washington)
• #30 in Environmental / Environmental Health Engineering (tied with Michigan State University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Florida)
• #30 in Mechanical Engineering (tied with Columbia University; Duke University; the University of California, Irvine; and the University of Colorado, Boulder)

Rankings of related Harvard programs include...

• #1 in Physics (tied with CalTech, MIT, and Stanford)
• #2 in Quantum
• #3 in Atomic/Molecular/Optical
• #3 in Cosmology/Relativity/Gravity
• #3 in Elementary Particles/Fields/String Theory
• #5 in Condensed Matter
• #2 in Biological Sciences
• #1 in Biochemistry/Biophysics/Structural Biology
• #1 in Cell Biology
• #1 in Immunology/Infectious Disease
• #1 in Microbiology
• #1 in Molecular Biology
• #1 in Neuroscience/Neurobiology
• #2 in Ecology/Evolutionary Biology
• #3 in Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics
• #2 in Mathematics
• #1 in Geometry
• #1 in Algebra/Number Theory/Algebraic Geometry
• #2 in Topology
• #9 in Analysis
• #3 in Biostatistics (tied with the University of Washington)
• #4 in Chemistry (tied with Stanford University)
• #1 in Organic
• #1 in Biochemistry
• #5 in Physical
• #7 in Theoretical
• #10 in Inorganic
• #6 in Statistics (tied with the University of Chicago and the University of Washington)
• #8 in Earth Sciences
• #4 in Paleontology
• #7 in Geophysics and Seismology
• #10 in Geology
• #13 in Geochemistry

U.S. News and World Report Undergraduate Programs, 2013

Best Colleges (ranked in 2012 based on 2011 data)

Harvard College, ranked #1 for 2013, has consistently ranked among the top 1 or 2 programs in the country (and tied with Princeton this year). Undergraduates pursuing degrees in engineering and applied sciences are admitted, enrolled in, and receive degrees from Harvard College.

For undergraduate engineering programs, Harvard ranked # 23 (tied with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; University of California, San Diego; the University of Maryland, College Park; the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; the University of Southern California; and the University of Washington). Note, the rankings are "based solely on the peer judgments of deans and senior faculty who rated each program they are familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished)."

Times Higher Education Supplement

World University Rankings (ranked in 2010/11)

• Harvard University ranked # 1 in World Reputation Rankings 2011
• Harvard University ranked # 1 in World University Rankings 2010

QS World University Rankings (2013)

Harvard University ranked...

• #3 overall worldwide
• #1 in Biological Sciences
• #1 in Earth & Marine Sciences
• #1 in Economics & Econometrics
• #3 in Mathematics
• #3 in Physics
• #4 in Chemistry
• #4 in Environmental Studies
• #6 in Computer Science & Information Systems
• #6 in Mechanical Engineering
• #9 in Electrical & Electronic Engineering
• #9 in Materials Sciences

Academic Ranking of World Universities

Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2010)

Harvard ranked # 1 overall (followed by University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University, MIT; U. Cambridge; Caltech; Princeton; Columbia; Chicago; Oxford; Yale).

In subject-based rankings, Harvard was #42 in Engineering; #9 in CS; # 1 in Physics; # 3 in Mathematics; # 2 in Chemistry; # 1 in Econ/Business; # 1 in Natural Sciences and Mathematics; # 1 in Life Sciences. Note, relative to its nearest peers, SEAS's core engineering program is relatively small. Moreover, faculty in departments through the University pursue related work in engineering and applied sciences.

Newsweek/The Daily Beast

Newsweek/The Daily Beast ranks the best of the best, the brightest of the bright, the nation’s schools with the most highly decorated students: America’s 25 Brainiac Schools.

Overall

1. Yale University
2. Princeton University
3. Harvard University
4. Stanford University
5. Brown University

Schools for Computer Geeks

1. Stanford University
2. Harvard University
3. University of Pennsylvania
4. Columbia University
5. Princeton University

Future CEOs

1. Harvard University
2. Stanford University
3. Columbia University
4. University of Pennsylvania
5. Yale University

Other Numbers of Note

• SEAS has expanded its faculty from 50 in 1998 to more than 80 (with 87 total participating faculty). The expansion was directed at strengthening traditional and foundational disciplines (such as applied mathematics), filling intellectual gaps (in areas such as electrical engineering and computer science), and in nurturing emerging areas such as bioengineering, nanotechnology, energy and environmental technologies, and computational sciences.
• Sponsored research at SEAS has more than doubled over the past decade, to just under $50M; monies generated from industrial partnerships have more than tripled to over $4M during the same period.

• Interest in engineering as a concentration choice among incoming undergraduates has risen from nine percent to 11 percent over the past two years.
• Over the past decade the number of applicants to SEAS graduate programs nearly tripled.
  

• The graduate program has maintained a high degree of selectivity and quality, with fewer than 13 percent of students who apply being admitted.
• SEAS faculty are among the most cited researchers in the world. View research impact data.

Placement

• Graduating seniors concentrating in engineering and applied sciences have recently been accepted to graduate programs at MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Georgia Tech, University of Cambridge, and Harvard.
  

• Our Ph.D. graduates have gone on to take positions at some of the finest research institutions in the world, including: Ben Gurion University (Israel), Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Cornell University, MIT, National University of Singapore, Princeton University, University of California–Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Sydney (Australia), University of Virginia, and right here at Harvard.

• Those pursuing careers in industry and government have worked for technology companies such as Pixar, Google, and IBM; defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman; policy and research organizations such as the National Institutes of Health; banking and investment firms like Citigroup; non-profits like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and environmental consulting groups like Boston-based CDM.

• Others have become entrepreneurs. Our graduates started Microsoft, Zappos.com, Tacit Knowledge Systems, and SupplyWorks. In fact, some of the most well-known companies in the world were started by Harvard graduates—for example, Electronic Arts, 3Com, and Sun Microsystems.

After Harvard *

* data from 2007 (most recent) alumni survey, for all degrees