Purdue graduate programs in engineering, business and health again rank among the nation’s finest

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University continues to elevate its graduate learning and research efforts across multiple disciplines, placing 12 academic programs in the top 10 of the U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 edition of its best graduate school rankings.

Purdue’s engineering college jumped one spot to No. 5 (tied with Caltech) in the U.S. News survey released Tuesday (April 8), with five engineering disciplines surging into the top five and 10 among the top 10 in the U.S. among more than 220 public and private engineering schools ranked. Purdue also is the leading engineering program in the 18-member Big Ten.

Purdue’s agricultural and biological engineering graduate program, jointly led by the colleges of Agriculture and Engineering, earned a No. 1 ranking for a fifth consecutive year. Industrial engineering jumped to No. 3 overall, its highest ranking since 2004. And biomedical engineering rocketed to No. 5 among colleges without a medical school, its highest level in a decade.

“Purdue has made strides not only across our traditional areas of core STEM strength, with engineering a particular standout,” said Purdue Provost Patrick Wolfe, “but also across our declared strategic initiatives in computing and AI; in business; and in human, animal and plant health.”

A breakdown of Purdue’s top graduate engineering programs is as follows:

• Agricultural and biological engineering: No. 1
• Industrial engineering: No. 3 (its highest mark in two decades)
• Aeronautics and astronautics: No. 5  
• Civil engineering: No. 5 
• Biomedical engineering: No. 5 (among institutions without medical programs or a jointly administered BME program with a medical school) and No. 24 overall
• Mechanical engineering: No. 7 (its highest mark in 17 years)
• Electrical engineering: No. 9 
• Computer engineering: No. 9 
• Environmental engineering: No. 10
• Nuclear engineering: No. 10 
• Materials engineering: No. 12 (unchanged)
• Chemical engineering: No. 14 (up two spots)

Purdue’s strategic initiatives made a particularly strong showing in this year’s rankings.

Driving the Purdue Computes initiative, shared jointly between the colleges of Science and Engineering, Purdue’s Department of Computer Science stood out in specialty areas among more than 200 institutions: 

• Programming language: No. 13 
• Computer systems: No. 13
• Artificial intelligence: No. 23 

The reimagined Mitch Daniels School of Business also continued its upward trajectory as specialty areas posted strong rankings in the survey of over 500 U.S. institutions with master’s level business programs:

• Production operations: No. 6
• Supply chain management: No. 11
• Business analytics: No. 16 

Aligned with the university’s comprehensive One Health initiative, Purdue’s speech-language pathology program continues to rank among the nation’s best, maintaining its No. 2 spot. The program, a part of the College of Health and Human Sciences, prepares clinicians to provide solutions to a range of communication and swallowing disorders that have major effects on individuals’ health and well-being.

Purdue also had strong showings in additional health-related graduate programs, including:

• Audiology: No. 5 
• Master’s in nursing: No. 23 
• Doctor of Nursing Practice: No. 25

Construction is underway on the $160 million Nursing and Pharmacy Education Building, a transformative 186,000-square-foot facility on the West Lafayette campus that will continue to accelerate key One Health programs. 

“Purdue’s rankings reflect and affirm why the 160-plus graduate programs in West Lafayette and Indianapolis continue to attract top-tier graduate and professional students as well as postdoctoral scholars to our institution in pursuit of scholarly excellence and impactful research opportunities,” said Haley Oliver, vice provost for the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars.

Data for the rankings in the six primary disciplines — business, education, engineering, law, medicine and nursing — came from statistical surveys and peer assessment surveys sent to academics and professionals in respective fields, conducted in fall 2024 and early 2025. In some cases, data from these surveys was combined with third-party information.

The 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.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. 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 comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.