Ranking Top Universities with Great Engineering

Greg is interested in going to a great engineering school, and specifically one with a strong computer science program. Greg is also interested in going to a top ranked university with a strong liberal arts curriculum. Some colleges are ranked high in both (e.g. MIT & Stanford), but many are strong in one and relatively weak in the other (e.g. our hometown Georgia Tech which ranks 4th in undergraduate engineering but 35th overall according to the US News Rankings).

Now that the 2009 rankings have been published I've created a special composite ranking of colleges that blends the US News engineering, computer engineering and overall 'best' national universities lists. (of course keep in mind that any college ranking is imperfect/controversial and should only be used as a general guide for your own detailed research.)

Without further ado, here's the first ever US News/Cobb Ranking of Top Colleges with Great Engineering:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Stanford University
3. California Institute of Technology
4. Princeton University
5. Cornell University
6. University of California--Berkeley
7. Carnegie Mellon University
8. Northwestern University
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. University of Michigan
11. Rice University
12. Columbia University
13. Duke University
14. Johns Hopkins University
15. Georgia Institute of Technology
16. University of California--Los Angeles
17. University of Illinois
18. University of Wisconsin

This list tracks pretty closely with how Greg had intuitively ranked these schools based on his research. The one surprise was Northwestern, which hadn't been on his radar until now.

If you'd like a copy of my spreadsheet, or more detailed description of the model I built to generate these rankings, please leave a comment with your email address.