Education: The Brightest and the Best

Ever fascinating, if almost undefinable, is the status rating of the nation's major universities. The Conference Board of Associated Research Councils, composed of a number of learned societies, this week offers a tentative guide to scholarly excellence. In the chart below, which covers six of the 32 disciplines that were evaluated, TIME combines the board's ratings on two basic criteria of the 16 used in the study: the quality of the faculty, and how well the program trains students. Because of the difficulties of making overall comparisons, the board decided against picking the top institutions. In TIME's interpretation of the board's two key criteria, the University of California at Berkeley is rated as the leading engineering school, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, and the California Institute of Technology tied with the University of Illinois. In the liberal arts and sciences, Berkeley edged out old rival Harvard, which was followed by old rival Yale, Stanford and the University of Michigan.