The Tickle College of Engineering (TCE) ranked 32nd amongst public institutions in the US in the 2021 U.S. News and World Report graduate school rankings, which came out this morning.

The college ranking is one place lower than last year, despite the college’s rise in grad recruiter perception and the fact that more of its programs climbed rather than fell. This is four places higher in the rankings than five years ago and positions the college in the top 30th percentile of all public schools ranked.

“We are pleased that six of our graduate programs rose in the rankings,” said Janis Terpenny, Dean of the Tickle College of Engineering and Wayne T. Davis Endowed Dean’s Chair. “It is also great to see that seven of our graduate programs are in the top 35 among public institutions, but our goals and aspirations are higher still.”

Electrical engineering rose two places among publics to 30th, joining computer engineering at that ranking and placing it in the top 22nd percentile among publics.

Mechanical engineering saw the biggest climb among disciplines at UT, rising from the 44th- to the 33rd-ranked public ME program, placing it in the top 26th percentile.

Nuclear engineering came in as 7th among publics and 8th overall nationally.

Aerospace engineering held steady at 28th among publics and rose to 38th overall program in the nation.

Civil engineering joined the top-35 crowd, rising two places among public programs, placing it in the top 31st percentile.

The college’s materials science and engineering program now ranks 31st among publics.

Rounding out the rankings, industrial engineering, chemical engineering, and biomedical engineering came in at 41st, 48th, and 63rd, respectively. Biosystems engineering and soil science, which is run through the Herbert College of Agriculture, rose to 23rd among publics. Rankings for computer science graduate programs have not yet been released.

U.S. News and World Report ranks graduate programs each spring based on dean and department head votes in the fall, with undergraduate programs being ranked in the fall from spring votes.

Colleges as a whole are ranked based on a variety of factors, including peer and recruiter perception, research expenditures, doctorate degrees granted, and enrollment, while department rankings are based solely on perception scores from other department heads.

The rankings are meant to help the next round of students make decisions, so the year given for rankings is always one year ahead, meaning this round was the 2021 graduate rankings.