Purdue's graduate programs continued their elevation in latest U.S. News & World Report rankings

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — In the U.S. News & World Report’s 2024-25 Best Graduate School Rankings, 13 programs earned top 10 placements as Purdue continues to elevate its graduate education and research across the board.

“Purdue graduate students and faculty in master’s, doctoral and professional degree programs are among the best in the country,” Purdue President Mung Chiang said. “The latest graduate and research rankings reflect the success of our students and colleagues across multiple colleges as we continue to support scholarly excellence at scale.” 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

• Purdue recognized among world's best in latest QS rankings and rises to No. 8 among U.S. public universities
• Purdue University Online continues to achieve high national rankings
• Purdue University undergraduate national ranking jumps 8 spots, with 13 undergraduate programs in top 10 in the U.S.

Purdue’s heralded agricultural and biological engineering graduate program earned a No. 1 ranking for the fourth consecutive year. In the College of Engineering, 10 out of 12 departments ranked among the top 10 nationally, the best result in college history, with seven improving year over year:

• Agricultural and biological engineering: No. 1
• Aeronautics and astronautics: No. 2 (up four spots)
• Civil engineering: 5 (up two spots)
• Industrial engineering: 6 (up two spots)
• Electrical engineering: No. 7 (up one spot)
• Computer engineering: No. 8. (up two spots)
• Mechanical engineering: No. 8
• Environmental engineering: No. 9 (up three spots)
• Nuclear engineering: No. 10 (up one spot)
• Biomedical engineering: No. 7 (among universities without a medical school)

Several areas related to the Purdue Computes initiative, including the Department of Computer Science — joint across the College of Science and College of Engineering — also saw gains year over year: 

• Computer engineering: No. 8. (up two spots)
• Computer systems: 13 (up one spot)
• Computer science: 19 (up one spot) 

The reimagined Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business continued its positive momentum, as the information systems and part-time MBA programs each appeared in the rankings for the first time. Also, these top 10 programs maintained or enhanced their ranking:

• Production-operations: No. 3
• Project management: No. 4 (up three spots)
• Supply chain management: No. 7 (up two spots)

“Our graduate students are at the heart of our mission as a leading public land-grant research university, and we’ve consistently prioritized investments in their success,” said Patrick J. Wolfe, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity. “The hard work of Purdue faculty to elevate our graduate programs and their scholarly impact has driven this continued rise in national rankings, particularly in key strategic areas of enormous consequence to the university as a whole.”

In the School of Nursing in the College of Health and Human Sciences, the Doctor of Nursing Practice program jumped seven spots to No. 24, the biggest gain of any Purdue program in this ranking cycle. The overall master’s program also moved up three spots, to No. 22. Last August the Purdue University Board of Trustees approved plans to construct a transformative Nursing and Pharmacy Education Building, which will continue to accelerate the program’s significant growth. 

The 2024-25 Best Graduate Schools rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinion about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students, and students’ postgraduate outcomes. Data for the rankings in business, education, engineering and nursing disciplines came from statistical surveys of 2,225 programs and from reputation surveys sent to approximately 5,766 academics and 10,941 professionals, conducted in fall 2023 and early 2024. To gather the peer assessment data, U.S. News asked deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding).  

The visibility and stature of Purdue University continues to grow, as evidenced by these latest U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings and several other accolades recently accrued:

• Earlier this month, Purdue was ranked as a top 8 public university in the U.S., in the top 25 overall domestically and in the top 90 globally in the 2025 QS World University Rankings.
• In February three Purdue online engineering master’s programs placed No. 1 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of best online programs. Several other online programs made significant leaps to underscore Purdue’s mission to deliver high-quality online programs at scale.
• In the 2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Purdue surged seven spots domestically and over 40 spots globally, ranking No. 9 among U.S. public land-grant universities.
• Purdue enjoyed its best-ever showing in U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 Best College rankings of undergraduate programs, jumping to No. 17 among public universities on a list of 435 ranked national universities and earning a sixth consecutive top 10 Most Innovative (No. 7) ranking.

About Purdue University 

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Writer/Media contact: Derek Schultz, dcschultz@purdue.edu 

Sources: Mung Chiang, Patrick J. Wolfe