The U.S. News & World Report listed the University of Wisconsin-Madison 38th in a three-way tie overall among national universities and 10th (three-way tie) among public institutions in their 2022-23 rankings. This is an increase from their 2021-22 rankings which placed Madison 42nd overall (five-way tie) and 14th among public institutions.
“As one of the world’s top universities, UW-Madison delivers a high-quality education that provides life-long value to our students,” said Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin in a statement. “While rankings are only one measure of excellence, I’m pleased to see so many areas of our success reflected.”
The report ranked 440 national doctoral universities using 10 distinct categories. These categories included graduation and retention rates, social mobility, graduation rate performance, undergraduate academic reputation, faculty resources for the 2021-22 academic year, student selectivity for the fall 2021 entering class, financial resources per student, average alumni giving rate and graduate indebtedness. The categories are weighted depending on their importance according to data experts.
According to the U.S. News & World Report’s methodology description, their ranking aims to provide prospective students with a directory containing “each school's rankings data and key characteristics about majors, campus life, costs of attending and more. Users can filter schools by selected academic and non-academic characteristics along their priorities”.
However, non-academic types of data concerning factors such as “social life” and “athletics” are not factored into the rankings.
UW-Madison ranked 28th overall and seventh among public institutions in peer reputation. This is the second year in a row UW-Madison has received these rankings. The institution also improved its ranking from 52nd to 51st in financial resources and from 59th to 57th in student excellence.
Ranked undergraduate programs include engineering, business, computer science programs and nursing.
The university’s engineering programming was ranked 13th overall (three-way tie), up from 15th (four-way tie) last year.
Within the engineering department, biomedical engineering ranked 21st (two-way tie), chemical engineering 9th (two-way tie), civil engineering 14th, computer engineering 16th, electrical engineering 15th (three-way tie), environmental engineering 25th (two-way tie), industrial/manufacturing/systems engineering 12th (two-way tie), materials engineering 14th and mechanical engineering ranked 20th (three-way tie).
Undergraduate business ranked 19th (four-way tie) overall and ninth (four-way tie) in public institutions. The program received the same rankings last year. This year real estate and insurance/risk management (two-way tie) ranked first nationally.
The computer science department improved from 18th overall to 16th (seven-way tie) and ninth to eighth (four-way tie) among public universities.
Nursing ranked 22nd (seven-way tie) overall and 17th (five-way tie) among public institutions.
UW-Madison ranks 18th overall in colleges for veterans (three-way tie) and 10th (three-way tie) among public universities, as well as 116th overall and 23rd amongst publics in the best value category.
