Iowa State’s agricultural and biosystems engineering graduate program is ranked No. 3 in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report magazine. The program improved one spot from its 2014 ranking.

The magazine does not rank every type of graduate program every year, instead they choose one area of focus each year. Iowa State’s agricultural and biosystems engineering graduate program is in the category of “biological/agricultural engineering.”

According to the magazine’s website, the overall ranking is based on the collective ratings from a survey of academics at peer institutions. A 1 to 5 or marginal to outstanding rating is used. Iowa State received an overall score of 4.4.

“It’s a very old program that’s been a high quality program for a very long time,” said David Holger, associate provost for academic programs and dean of the graduate college.

Holger said he heard about the ranking at almost the same time it was released to the public, and that the magazine has been doing these types of rankings annually for quite some time.

Other ISU graduate programs, such as Veterinary Medicine, Business and Education, have been ranked by U.S. News and World Report Magazine as well, but the agricultural and biosystems engineering program is one of the highest.

Many of the people who help compile these ratings know about the agriculture and biosystems engineering program because they graduated from Iowa State and are now working at peer universities, Holger said.

Purdue University and Texas A&M University earned the No. 1 and 2 rankings, respectively.

Recently completed Sukup Hall, which houses the program, contributed to knocking University of Illinois out of the top three.

“I expect that they’ll be growing their graduate program and that they’ll be doing even more exciting things and groundbreaking research than they have in the past because now they’ve got the facility that will allow them to do that,” Holger said.

Sukup Hall is only a part of the reason that the program received such a high ranking.

“The quality of faculty is what attracts good students to the department and good students and faculty do good things that get all kinds of national attention,” Holger said.

The combination of the new facility and the quality of the faculty in the department helped push Iowa State’s graduate program to the number three ranking.

Holger says that the program will keep moving up and improving in order to remain a high quality and to stay competitive over time.

Other graduate programs that have seen noticeable rankings were higher education and administration (16th overall) and aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering (23rd overall).

A complete list of the rankings can be viewed at www.grad-schools.usnes.rankingsandreviews.com.