The Brown & White

The College of Education and the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science ranked among the elite in the US News & World Report's list of top graduate schools in the country.

The education college ranked No. 40 out of 242 schools. The engineering college was ranked No. 42 out of 192 colleges of engineering that grant doctoral degrees.

J. Gary Lutz, interim dean of the education college said the rank is only one metric used to judge the quality of Lehigh's graduate programs.

"The magazine takes into account a wide range of characteristics and then weights them according to their view of relative importance," Lutz said.

The ratings look at incoming student measures, research activity and peer ratings, he said.

Lutz said he sees the rankings as only a small portion of what students should take into consideration when applying to graduate schools.

S. David Wu, dean of the college of engineering said the idea of ranking universities provides a consumer report style comparison between institutions.

Also, it is important to look at what the rankings focus on, Wu said.

"Before drawing any conclusions about the ranking, it is important to know how they actually determine the ranking," he said. "Most importantly, against which group of schools is the ranking established."

Most of the engineering programs that are ranked above Lehigh are much larger, with some three to four times Lehigh's size, Wu said.

"We are proud of the fact that despite our size, the Lehigh engineering graduate program is ranked among the group of most prestigious schools in the U.S.," he said.

Wu said Lehigh deserves high rankings because it is one of the finest institutions in the U.S. and offers an education that is competitive with the very best institutions in the world, both graduate and undergraduate.

How much the ranking reflects the quality of the graduate programs is difficult to measure.

"While the rankings put us among the right company, they do not truly reflect the overall quality Lehigh offers," said Wu.

He said the criteria occasionally changes, so the exact aspects used to determine the rankings may affect schools' positions each year.

Lutz sees the graduate programs in the education college as high quality regardless of the methodology used to judge them.

But Lutz encourages students to do extensive research of graduate programs, and look at as many different aspects of a school as possible.

"Someone making a decision as to where he or she wants to do graduate study should become as informed as possible about the nature of the institutions and the programs they are interested in," Lutz said.

Researching universities means different things for different students. Wu believes the rankings effect an institution's popularity with international students more than with students from the U.S.

"We see more significant impact on international students, who tend to watch the US News rankings closely," Wu said. "This makes sense as they do not have as much information available to them and are not likely to visit the campus before they come."

Wu said the number of undergraduate students who choose to stay at Lehigh for these graduate programs varies from year to year, but typically 50 to 80 engineering graduate students are undergraduates from Lehigh.

The presidential scholarship, a program that grants students with above a 3.75 GPA a free fifth year, attracts many qualified students to stay at Lehigh for graduate school, Wu said.

"Most engineering graduate programs do not offer scholarship for master's students," Wu said, "so the president's scholarship provides an attractive financial package for Lehigh students."

Graduate student Erin Williams said it's exciting to see Lehigh within the top percentage of schools.

"It's only natural to look at rankings to see where your university falls," Williams said.

Although it's exciting, she said she doesn't think it should be the main decisive factor for choosing a school.

"I did not base my decision off of any particular rankings, but Lehigh does have a strong reputation with or without these," she said. "It seems like the criteria used is pretty thorough. I would think the list is reasonably valid."

Along with the top 50 rankings earned by the graduate schools, Lehigh was ranked No. 31 out of 262 colleges for the nation's outstanding research universities in U.S. News and World Report's list of "America's Best Colleges for 2008."