According to U.S. News, the Jacobs School ranks 13th among the nation's top 192 engineering schools and 7th in the nation among public universities. The Jacobs School academic departments have highly ranked Ph.D. programs including:

The Department of Bioengineering ranks 2nd in the nation for biomedical engineering. The department has ranked among the top five programs in the nation every year for the past decade.

The interdisciplinary Bioinformatics program, ranked 13th in the nation, is offered jointly by eight UCSD departments including the Jacobs School's bioengineering and computer science and engineering departments.

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) ranks highly in all categories surveyed: computer systems (11), computer science (14), theory (15), programming language (19) and artificial intelligence (19).

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) ranks 17th for its programs in electrical engineering and communications, and 18th in computer engineering, a program offered in both ECE and CSE.

The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering ranks highly for mechanical engineering (26) and aerospace engineering (23).

The Department of Structural Engineering is ranked 18th in the specialty of civil engineering.