U.S. News and World Report has placed Cornell at the top of its rankings for best undergraduate engineering science/engineering physics program for the second year in a row. In its overall rankings for Best National Universities, Cornell is tied with Washington University in St. Louis for 12th place; last year Cornell was tied for 13th with Johns Hopkins University, and was 14th the year before that.

The top billing in engineering physics by U.S. News was based on the recommendations of peer institutions, unlike the magazine's overall rankings, which use a complex formula.

And in Washington Monthly's second annual college rankings, which gives top billing to colleges that are engines of social mobility, Cornell ranks No. 8 (out of 245) this year -- the highest rating among Ivy League schools in the national universities category. Last year Cornell was ranked No. 4.

Cornell was also ranked by U.S. News and World Report as:

Cornell also was ranked 19th in Newsweek's online International Edition (Aug. 21-28) in their rankings of the world's Top 100 Global Universities. That edition also includes a story on the boom in satellite campuses around the world that features Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and quotes Cornell Weill's Dean Antonio Gotto.

"I am pleased that some of the dimensions of Cornell's greatness are recognized by the rankings," said Cornell Provost Biddy Martin. "As it should be, Cornell consistently ranks as one of the top universities in the country -- indeed, in the world."

Engineering physics at Cornell is known as applied and engineering physics. The specialty was born at the dawn of the nuclear age to produce engineers with a strong understanding of basic nuclear physics. It has expanded over the years into plasma physics, solid-state physics and other areas important to industry.

The Washington Monthly based its national university rankings on three factors equally: community service (such as alumni in the Peace Corps and percentage of federal work-study grants devoted to community service projects), research (including how valuable to research is to society) and social mobility (such as the number of low-income students a school graduates). Top-ranked were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California-Berkeley and Pennsylvania State University.