The answer to this question is not intended to be a ranking and should not be interpreted as such. There are several major problems with ratings like the Gourman Report and the US News and World Report. Such rankings are often unsubstantiated and anecdotal, their accuracy is questionable, and they do not focus on the subfields of an area. When selecting a graduate school, students should look for schools which not only have excellent programs in their general area of research but also at least one faculty member whose research interests mesh well with the student's. Accordingly, we've broken down this list according to topic, and sorted the schools within each topic in ALPHABETICAL ORDER. For a school to be added to a topic area, there should at least two faculty actively conducting research in that area and the school should have a "good" reputation in that area. Exceptions are made for schools which only have one faculty member in the area, but that professor is a "leader" of the area, or for fields where the total number of people working in the area is small in the first place. The general idea behind these criteria is to ensure that a school has enough activity in the area that a student who considers one of these schools won't be disappointed if one of the faculty in that area is on sabbatical or isn't taking students. Note that the research need not be conducted in the school's computer science department for the school to be listed -- in some cases we've included schools where the research is being conducted in a different department or special laboratory. The best way for students to discover which schools are good in a field is to ask professors (and graduate students) in their undergraduate school for suggestions on where to apply. Reading the research journals in the field is another good method (see part 3 of the FAQ). A genealogy of AI thesis-advising relationships is available by anonymous ftp as cs.ucsd.edu:/pub/rik/aigen.rpt Although intended to complement citation analysis and free-text information retrieval as tools for understanding the AI community and their connections to other disciplines, it may be useful to prospective graduate students. For example, it may help you understand the historical context of a given professor's perspective. 2,600 MS and PhD theses have been tabulated so far. If you'd like to contribute additional listings (including year, title, abstract, school, advisor, committee members, and subsequent employment), write to Rik Belew <rik@cs.ucsd.edu> or fax 619-534-7029, for the questionnaire. A copy of the questionaire and more information is available in cs.ucsd.edu:/pub/rik/announce.t A list of email addresses for CS departments is posted once a month to the newsgroup soc.college.gradinfo. The Association for Computational Linguistics publishes a directory of graduate programs in Computational Linguistics ($15 for members, $30 for others). It includes several useful indices (e.g., index of faculty and a list of references). Contact Association for Computational Linguistics, Walker, C. N. 925, Bernardsville, NJ 07924-0925, phone/fax 908-204-1337, or send email to acl@bellcore.com. NOTE THAT THIS LIST IS PRELIMINARY AND BY NO MEANS COMPLETE. Please feel free to suggest schools that are particularly strong in any of these areas, or to suggest new areas to be listed. Schools with excellent programs in most fields: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) MIT Stanford Georgia Tech Imperial College Indiana Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS) Johns Hopkins University Maryland Rutgers SUNY/Buffalo Toronto UC/Berkeley UCLA Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Michigan Univ. of Pennsylvania Univ. of Pittsburgh Univ. of Rochester Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Univ. of Texas/Austin Yale Universities with 2 or more AAAI Fellows: Note: Some Fellows have changed their affiliation since being named, so this list isn't completely accurate. 12 MIT 11 Stanford University 10 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) 6 Univ. of Massachusetts 5 Univ. of Toronto 5 Univ. of Texas at Austin 5 Univ. of Pennsylvania 5 Rutgers 3 Northwestern 3 UCLA 3 Univ. of Edinburgh 3 Univ. of Illinois 3 Univ. of Maryland 3 Univ. of Southern California (USC) 3 USC/Information Sciences Institute 2 Brown University 2 Duke University 2 Harvard 2 Univ. of California, Berkeley 2 Univ. of Pittsburgh 2 Univ. of Rochester 2 Univ. of Sydney Universities with only one AAAI Fellow include: Columbia University, George Mason, Georgia Tech, Imperial College, New Mexico State, Ohio State, Oregon State University, Oxford, P. and M. Curie University, SUNY/Binghamton, SUNY/Buffalo, Saint Joseph, San Jose State, Syracuse, Tufts, UC Irvine, UC/Santa Cruz, UCSD, Univ. of Birmingham, Univ. of British Columbia, Univ. of Cambridge, Univ. of Linkoeping, Univ. of Marseille, Univ. of Minnesota, Univ. of Sussex, Wellesley, Yale The full list of AAAI Fellows and their affiliations is available by anonymous ftp as ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/pubs/faqs/ai/aifellow.txt AI and Manufacturing: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) -- CIMDS Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Toronto AI and Medicine: MIT Stanford Univ. of Pittsburgh Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) AI and Legal Reasoning: Imperial College Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Artificial Life: MIT (Brooks' mobots) NYU Santa Fe Institute (SFI) Stanford UC Santa Cruz UCLA UCSD Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Delaware Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Automated Deduction/Theorem Proving: Imperial College Stanford Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Oregon Univ. of Texas/Austin Case-Based Reasoning/Analogical Reasoning: Chicago Georgia Tech Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS) Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Pittsburgh Cognitive Modelling: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Georgia Tech Indiana SUNY Buffalo Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Michigan Cognitive Science: Brown University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Georgia Tech Indiana University/Bloomington Johns Hopkins MIT Princeton Rutgers SUNY/Buffalo Stanford UC/Berkeley UC/San Diego Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Colorado/Boulder Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Minnesota Univ. of Pennsylvania Univ. of Rochester Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Computational Biology: Carnegie Mellon University Johns Hopkins University Rutgers UC/Berkeley Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Pennsylvania Univ. of Wisconsin/Madison Computer Vision: See Machine Vision Connectionism/Neural Networks: Boston University, Cognitive and Neural Systems Department (ART networks) Brown University CalTech Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Indiana Johns Hopkins University MIT Ohio State Univ. Stanford Syracuse University Texas A&M Toronto UC/Berkeley UC/Irvine UC/San Diego UCLA UNC/Chapel Hill Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Colorado/Boulder Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Pennsylvania Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Univ. of Wisconsin Decision Theory and AI: Berkeley MIT Stanford Univ. of Michigan Univ. of Washington Distributed AI: Georgia Institute Of Technology MIT Nova Southeastern University Stanford University Univ. of Maryland Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Michigan Emotion: Carnegie Mellon University Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS) Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Fuzzy Logic: Berkeley Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Genetic Algorithms: George Mason Univ. Indiana Stanford (Koza) UC San Diego UCLA Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Univ. of Michigan Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Integrated AI Architectures/Software Agents: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Stanford Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Michigan Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Intelligent Tutoring, AI & Education: Carnegie Mellon University (Cognitive Science Department) Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS) Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Pittsburgh Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Knowledge Representation: Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS) Stanford SUNY/Buffalo Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Oregon Logic Programming and Logic-based AI: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Imperial College Stanford UCLA Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Melbourne Univ. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Univ. of Oregon Univ. of Pennsylvania Machine Discovery: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Machine Learning: Brown University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) George Mason Georgia Tech Johns Hopkins University MIT UCI Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Michigan Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute Univ. of Texas/Austin Univ. of Wisconsin Machine Vision: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Columbia Johns Hopkins MIT Oxford SUNY/Buffalo UCLA UNC/Chapel Hill Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Rochester Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Univ. of Wisconsin Natural Language Processing (NLU, NLG, Parsing, NLI, Speech): Brown Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Columbia Georgia Tech Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS) ISI Indiana Johns Hopkins University MIT Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Engineering Penn Rutgers Stanford SUNY/Buffalo Toronto UCLA Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Pittsburgh Univ. of Rochester Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Waterloo (stylistics, MT, discourse) Nonmonotonic Reasoning: Imperial College Stanford UCLA Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Oregon Toronto Philosophy of AI: Berkeley MIT SUNY Buffalo Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences Planning: Brown University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Imperial College MIT Stanford SUNY Buffalo Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Oregon Univ. of Pittsburgh Univ. of Rochester Univ. of Washington/Seattle Waterloo Production Systems/Expert Systems: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Stanford Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Qualitative Physics and Model Based Reasoning: Northwestern ILS (Forbus) Univ. of Oregon Univ. of Texas/Austin Univ. of Washington Reasoning Under Uncertainty (Probabilistic Reasoning, Approximate Reasoning, etc.): Brown University George Mason Oregon State University Stanford UCLA Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Rochester University of South Carolina Robotics: Bristol Polytechnic, UK Brown California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Georgia Tech Harvard Hull University, UK Johns Hopkins University MIT Naval Postgraduate School New York University (NYU) Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences North Carolina State Univerisity/Raleigh (NCSU) Oxford Purdue Reading University, UK Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Salford University, UK Stanford Swiss Federal Institute of Technology UC/Berkeley Univ. of Alberta Univ. of Edinburgh Univ. of Kansas Univ. of Kentucky Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst Univ. of Michigan Univ. of Paris INRIA Univ. of Pennsylvania Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute Univ. of Utah Univ. of Wisconsin Yale Search: UCLA Univ. of Maryland/College Park Univ. of Oregon Temporal Reasoning: Imperial College Virtual Reality: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Cal Arts Columbia Florida Institute of Technology MIT Media Lab Naval Postgraduate School Naval Research Lab RPI Stanford Syracuse Toronto UIUC UNC/Chapel Hill Univ. of Alberta, Banff Univ. of Birmingham England (School of Computer Science) Univ. of Central Florida Univ. of Geneva Univ. of North Carolina/Chapel Hill (UNC) Univ. of Tokyo Univ. of Virginia (UVA) Univ. of Washington/Seattle -- HIT Lab Vision: See Machine VisionGo Back Up