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

• We believe achieving "fit" (finding a program that best meets the needs of a particular student) is far more important than any one numerical ranking. 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

U.S. News and World Report

Best Engineering Schools (ranked in 2009)

Harvard's graduate engineering programs ranked 18th (tied with Princeton University and University of California, Santa Barbara).

Harvard also ranked #4 in Biological Sciences, # 3 in Physics, # 2 in Mathematics, #9 in Earth Sciences, #16 in Computer Science, #5 in Chemistry.

U.S. News and World Report

Best Colleges (ranked in 2009)

Harvard College, ranked # 1 in 2009, has consistently ranked among the top 1 or 2 programs in the country. Undergraduates pursuing degrees in engineering and applied sciences are admitted, enrolled in, and receive degrees from Harvard College.

Times Higher Education Supplement (QS Rankings)

World University Rankings (ranked in 2009)

Harvard University ranked # 1 overall; #1 in Life Sciences and Biomedicine; # 4 in Natural Sciences; # 1 in Social Sciences; #1 in Arts and Humanities; and #22 in Engineering and IT.

Engineering and IT

1. MIT
2. University of Calfironia, Berkeley
3. Stanford
4. University of Cambridge
5. Caltech
...
22. Harvard
23. Princeton
24. Cornell
25. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Academic Ranking of World Universities

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Harvard ranked # 1 overall.

Other Numbers of Note

• SEAS has expanded its faculty from 50 in 1998 to more than 70 (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 over $35M; monies generated from industrial partnerships have more than tripled to over $3M 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