For the 24th year in a row, the chemical engineering graduate program at UC Santa Barbara has ranked among the top ten public universities in U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 Best Graduate Engineering Schools report, which was released on April 8. The graduate school rankings were based entirely on peer surveys submitted by department heads at public and private universities across the country. The UCSB chemical engineering program ranked No. 9 among public universities and No. 14 overall out of 135 institutions.
UCSB’s materials program tied for first among public universities and third overall out of 118 public and private institutions, climbing one spot among public universities and two slots overall compared to 2024. The mechanical engineering program continued its ascent in the rankings and was listed at No. 15 among public universities and 24th out of 185 total universities. The program has moved up nine spots overall and four slots among public universities since 2023. The computer science program remained at No. 13 among public universities and 27th out of 210 total institutions, while the electrical and computer engineering program tied for 15th among public universities and 27th out of 188 schools.
As a whole, the UCSB COE graduate program tied for No. 16 among public universities and 31st overall out of 196 institutions. Information used to compile the college rankings included statistical data and surveys submitted by engineering deans and recruiters. The UCSB engineering program ranked fourth among public universities and ninth overall out of 199 universities in the percentage of faculty who are members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), at 10.3 percent. Nearly one-quarter of the faculty in UCSB’s Chemical Engineering Department are members of NAE, including Rachel Segalman, James B. Rawlings, Michael Doherty, and Glenn Fredrickson.
The 2025 rankings further demonstrate that the COE stands among the world’s elite programs, a fact reflected in UCSB’s ranking among the top two public universities in terms of research impact in engineering and physical sciences for the past fourteen years in the annual Leiden Rankings. Produced by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands, the Leiden Rankings are based on bibliographic data on scientific publications from the Web of Science. In the 2024 rankings, which evaluated data from 2019-2022, UCSB ranked second among public universities and eighth overall with 3.3 percent of its publications belonging to the top one percent of their field. UCSB also ranked No. 8 worldwide in the inaugural Times Higher Education Interdisciplinary Science Rankings. A total of 749 universities from 92 countries and territories were evaluated through eleven metrics. The survey recognized research projects as being interdisciplinary only if they involved two or more scientific disciplines from computer science, engineering, life sciences, and physical sciences.
