For more than 150 years Penn State has been a leader in higher education, as shown by rankings from those who monitor academe from the outside. Programs in all five departments in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences are consistently rated highly in many rankings, including U.S. News & World Report. Here are a few examples of recent rankings, primarily relating to our academic standing.
U.S. News and World Report Rankings
Graduate Programs
- 1st - Geology, Earth Sciences specialty (2018)
- 3rd - Environmental Sciences, Earth Sciences specialty (2018)
- 4th - Geochemistry, Earth Sciences specialty (2018)
- 5th - Earth Sciences overall (2018)
- 5th - Petroleum Engineering (2020)
- 11th - Materials Engineering (2021)
Undergraduate Programs
- 5th - Petroleum Engineering (2021)
- 10th - Materials Engineering (2021)
- 22nd - Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs (2021)
Best Global Universities
- 26th - Materials Science
- 30th - Geosciences
Online Education
Penn State World Campus's online programs are among more than 1,200 programs surveyed by U.S. News and World Report and are ranked best in the nation. Only regionally accredited institutions whose programs are offered mostly or entirely online were evaluated.
- 6th - Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs
- 7th - Best Online Graduate Education Programs
- 8th - Best Online Bachelor's Programs
Note that specialty rankings are not available in all disciplines at the undergraduate level, and not all disciplines are ranked every year.
QS World University 2018 Rankings by Subject
- 5th - Minerals and Mining Engineering
- 32nd - Earth and Marine Sciences
- 36th - Materials Science
- 43nd - Environmental Studies
- 44th - Geography
National Science Foundation Research Expenditure Rankings
Penn State’s research enterprise ranks first nationally, tied with Johns Hopkins University, in the breadth and depth of its expertise, according to the latest National Science Foundation rankings of Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) research expenditures by key fields and subfields in science and engineering, released in January 2021. The rankings, for the 2019 fiscal year, show Penn State and Johns Hopkins each with 16 research fields ranked in the top 10 in expenditures.
EMS programs ranked in the top twenty are:
Engineering
- 5th - Overall
- 2nd - Metallurgical and Materials Engineering (Subfield)
Physical Sciences
- 12th - Overall
- 1st - Materials Science (Subfield)
Environmental Sciences
- 18th - Overall
- 8th - Atmospheric Science and Meteorology (Subfield)
- 9th - Geological and Earth Sciences (Subfield)
