The Top Schools For Urban Planners

The 4th Edition of the Planetizen Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs is now available. The new Guide includes Planetizen's ranking of the Top 25 Graduate Urban Planning Programs.

Planetizen has released its list of the top 25 graduate programs in urban planning as part of the 4th Edition of the Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs (Guide). For the third straight release, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology occupies the top spot in the rankings. The University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign round out the top three. The entire list, available in the Guide, ranks the top 25 graduate planning programs.

After completing a large-scale data collection effort during the spring of 2014, Planetizen worked with statistical consultant New American Dimensions to produce the Guide's rankings. Throughout the process, Planetizen consulted with a special committee of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning to ensure that the 4th edition met the highest standards of data collection and analysis.

As a public service, we publish the list of the top 10 graduate programs on Planetizen. The top 10 Planning Programs for 2015:

Top 10 Graduate Urban Planning Programs, 2015
	2015 RANK
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	1
University of California, Berkeley	2
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	3
University of California, Los Angeles	4
Georgia Institute of Technology	5
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey	6
Cornell University	7
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	8
University of Southern California	9
Harvard University	10
Source: Planetizen Guide to Graduate Planning Programs, 4th Edition
www.planetizen.com/topschools Copyright 2015 Planetizen

Recruiting Top Talent

In addition to the academic rankings, the Guide provides a comprehensive package for prospective students considering graduate studies and a career in planning. To help potential students make informed decisions, the Guide includes profiles of current graduate students and professional planners, breakdowns of the rankings by categories, like region and school size, and a detailed profile page of 97 schools in the United States.

"The goal of the Guide is to provide the best possible information about graduate planning programs so that the best possible students can make an informed decision to enter a critical and evolving field," says Chris Steins, editor and chief of Planetizen.

The Future of Planning
Taken together, the student profiles, professional profiles, and program profiles provide insight into current and future trends in planning. For instance, in all three sections of the Guide, Planetizen noticed new attention to the term resilience: six schools made reference (up from one in the 2012 edition of the Guide) to curricula or internships in the emerging field of planning and designing for resilience in the face of environmental threats like rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and earthquakes.

Learn more about the 4th Edition of the Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs.

Search for graduate, undergraduate, and certificate programs in urban planning and related fields from around the world in Planetizen's Online Directory of Urban Planning Programs.