Berkeley’s undergrad engineering programs ranked No. 2 nationwide

Berkeley Engineering’s undergraduate program has retained its second-place standing in the new annual rankings released by U.S. News & World Report, tying it with Stanford University. The College of Engineering continues to offer the highest-ranked public university program.

The latest edition of U.S. News rankings assessed 1,466 U.S. bachelor’s degree-granting institutions on 17 measures of academic quality. They included all of Berkeley’s individual undergraduate programs in the top 7 — up from the top 8 last year — with civil engineering and environmental engineering ranking first and materials engineering, computer engineering and chemical engineering all in the top 3.

Each year, U.S. News evaluates engineering schools based on peer assessment surveys. To appear on an undergraduate engineering survey, a school must have an undergraduate engineering program accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. Each school is evaluated on factors such as peer and recruiter assessments, SAT scores, acceptance rates, number of Ph.D. degrees awarded, research expenditures and percentage of faculty who belong to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (Berkeley has 76 NAE members). UC Berkeley was compared with other schools whose highest engineering degree offered is a doctorate.

The magazine will release its graduate school rankings in March.

Last week, in a separate ranking, Forbes magazine judged UC Berkeley as the top-ranked university on its “America’s Top Colleges List.” This represents the campus as a whole.