In a continuation of its 2025 rankings of best graduate and professional schools, U.S. News & World Report placed Case Western Reserve University at No. 51 among all engineering schools. This marks a two-spot rise for Case School of Engineering, as U.S. News shifted its methodology to focus more on research and faculty productivity.

“Seeing our ranking improve as more emphasis was placed on the outstanding efforts of our faculty and researchers came as no surprise,” said Ragu Balakrishnan, the Charles H. Phipps Dean of the Case School of Engineering. “Though no external rankings can truly show the exceptional work happening across the Case School of Engineering, I am pleased to see this more quantitative approach reflecting our work.”

This change in methodology was in line with most of the rankings that came out earlier this spring: emphasizing research and reducing focus on reputation, faculty resources and selectivity. Engineering and medicine’s rankings were delayed due to questions about source data; medicine rankings are expected to come out next month.

This year, the research metric (50% of the overall ranking) included total research expenditures (25%), average research expenditures per faculty member (15%) and a new measure: faculty research (10%), which uses bibliometric data from Scopus provided by Elsevier. 

Other aspects of the overall ranking included peer assessment (12.5%), recruiter assessment (12.5%), doctoral degrees awarded (9%), doctorate-to-faculty ratio (6%), percentage of faculty in the National Academy of Engineering (5%) and acceptance rate (5%).

U.S. News & World Report also provides specialty rankings, which are based solely on peer assessments by department heads in each area. Case School of Engineering saw a range of results across its programs—with impressive jumps, relatively stable returns and a few marked declines:

• #21: Biomedical engineering (no change)
• #32: Aerospace, aeronautical and astronautical engineering (down three)
• #34: Materials engineering (up eight)
• #42: Chemical engineering (down eight)
• #44: Industrial, manufacturing and systems engineering (down three)
• #45: Mechanical engineering (up one)
• #50: Electrical, electronic and communications engineering (down five)
• #51: Civil engineering (up nine)
• #55: Computer engineering (down eight)

U.S. News & World Report ranks undergraduate programs in the fall. To see the full graduate/professional rankings, visit the U.S. News & World Report website. The Daily will report medicine rankings when they become available.