Andrew Szeri

While we have our own internal standards for assessing and maintaining academic quality, in which the Graduate Division plays a significant role, it’s been gratifying to see that highly regarded national and international measures judge that UC Berkeley continues to do very well — superbly, in fact.

In the just-released 2013 U.S. News and World Report rankings of graduate programs, Berkeley is again rated among the very best in the nation, with 14 of its programs ranked #1 and most other ranked programs either maintaining or improving position. English, History, and Sociology programs all ranked #1. In Engineering and Business, Berkeley is the top-ranked public university and in Law is second only to Virginia. A detailed summary of the rankings is available online (PDF).

Also in March, based on a survey of more than 16,600 academics worldwide, Berkeley was again “firmly cemented into the ‘elite six’ of world universities” in the 2013 reputational rankings released by Times Higher Education, the United Kingdom’s leading educational news publication. Berkeley has been in the top six since the inception of THE‘s reputational rankings. A large gap in esteem separates those six institutions from the rest of the universities ranked in the survey. UC Berkeley has remained a model of “access and excellence” by being creative, entrepreneurial and innovative, as Chancellor Robert Birgeneau reports in an article that accompanies the new rankings on the Times Higher Education website.

These rankings are just two more reasons to be confident that your education at Berkeley is an excellent investment and the ongoing value of your degree will continue to be high.

Although California, like other recession-impacted states across the country, has reduced its financial support of higher education, alumni and friends of UC Berkeley have stepped up to meet the challenge. In the last few years our campus has become, as the Chancellor has reported, the country’s top fundraising institution without a medical school, an extraordinary expression of commitment to the continued excellence of the University of California, Berkeley.

Andrew Szeri signature

Andrew J. Szeri
Dean of the Graduate Division

P.S.  A reminder, if you plan to leave campus for research or other educational pursuits, note that you can be covered by UC traveler insurance while participating in UC-sponsored and supervised off-campus activities both domestically and abroad. You’ll need to register, which you can do online at the UCOP Risk Services website.  Before and/or while you travel, let your program staff know where you’ll be and how to contact you. This is necessary not only for insurance purposes but in order for the campus to help in case of emergencies.