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In a new survey of graduate programs released today by U.S. News & World Report, several UCSD programs in the social sciences were ranked among the top 10 in the country. The UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering and School of Medicine were also ranked among the nation’s best.

The rankings appear in the magazine’s 2002 Best Graduate Schools guidebook and in the April 9 issue of U.S. News & World Report, both of which will be available on newsstands April 2. The survey results also will appear on-line at www.usnews.com.

Within the Division of Social Sciences, one of the largest academic divisions at UCSD, the graduate program in political science was ranked 7th in the nation. Specialty programs in the department were also rated high, including comparative politics (2), American politics (6), international politics (9) and political theory (16). Other specialty programs ranked among the best in the survey include sociology of culture (4), Latin American history (8), cognitive psychology (7), microeconomics (15), economics (17), and psychology (17).

"These high rankings for many of the social sciences programs, especially UCSD’s political science department --which has gone from a ranking of 14 in 1996 to its current ranking of 7 -- reflect the growing excellence of the social sciences at UCSD," said Paul Drake, Dean of the Division of Social Sciences. "The rankings also reflect the increasing strength and breadth of political science, especially in the areas of comparative, international, and American politics. This is truly an achievement for a department that is only 25 years old and a graduate program which was founded just 20 years ago."

The Jacobs School of Engineering was ranked 10th among public universities and second, behind UC Berkeley, in the University of California system. In the overall national rankings, the Jacobs School came in at 16. In addition, all of the School's departments were ranked among the best in the nation including Bioengineering (3), Computer Science & Engineering in the specialty area of computer engineering (16), Electrical and Computer Engineering (16), Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the area of mechanical engineering (19), and Structural Engineering in the area of civil engineering (21).

UCSD School of Medicine continues to be ranked among the top 25 medical schools in the nation, coming in 24th in this year’s survey, tied with the University of North Carolina and New York University. The medical school’s drug and alcohol abuse program was ranked 10th, its AIDS program was ranked 12th and its Internal Medicine program was ranked 23rd.

U.S. News & World Report also reprinted rankings for graduate programs in the arts and sciences, which are based on surveys from past years. UCSD’s Department of Theatre and Dance was ranked 3rd in the nation and the Department of Visual Art’s film program was ranked 12th. In the sciences, UCSD was ranked 17th in the biological sciences, 9th in biochemistry and molecular biology, 8th in cell and developmental biology, and 10th in the neurosciences. Geology programs were ranked 11th; geophysics, 6th; mathematics, 17th; and computer science, 25th. Physics at UCSD ranked 18th in the nation, while programs in two subfields of physics, condensed-matter physics and nonlinear dynamics, were ranked 10th and 7th, respectively.

U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of graduate schools and programs are based on surveys among deans and faculty members in specific fields who judged each institution’s reputation; surveys from professionals in the field outside of academe; and objective criteria, such as research activity, faculty resources and an institution’s student selectivity. The magazine’s rankings in the social sciences and for professional schools were based on new surveys conducted in 2000; while the rankings in the arts were derived from a 1996 survey and the rankings in the sciences were from a 1998 survey.

In a comprehensive survey released in 1995 by the prestigious National Research Council, UCSD was ranked 10th in the nation for the quality of its faculty and graduate programs. The NRC study, which is considered by academics to be the most definitive survey of its kind, ranked the faculty quality of 14 graduate programs at UCSD in the top 10 in their fields.