28 May 2008 – 9:00am

The Planetizen 2009 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs — the essential resource for prospective planning students — is now available. Covering 100 programs in the United States and Canada, the Guide features detailed program profiles, listings of the best schools and the insights of current students and planning professionals.

Planetizen has released its latest list of the top graduate programs in urban planning as part of its 2009 edition of the Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs – with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill coming in at the top three spots.

With detailed profiles of 100 programs in the U.S. and Canada, the 2009 Guide is the most thorough and comprehensive resource covering master’s degree programs in urban planning, and is an essential tool for anyone considering graduate study in urban planning and closely related fields.

In addition to the list of the top 25 programs as ranked by the editors of Planetizen, the 2009 Guide also features a list of the top planning programs according to educators and practitioners, rankings by region, tuition, and financial aid, and listings of the best schools by academic specialty. Profiles of current graduate planning students and professionals in the field give prospective students a better idea about what it means to study planning and the professional opportunities it can provide. Inside information from experts in the field will help prospective students better understand whether planning is the right field for them, which schools might be a good fit, and how they can improve their graduate school applications.

To produce the second edition of the Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs, Planetizen enlisted the help of the professional opinion research firm Davis, Hibbitts, and Midghall, Inc., based in Portland, Oregon. During the Fall of 2007, Planetizen surveyed hundreds of professionals, educators and students — along with the schools themselves — to gather information about what makes a good planning school, and to find out which schools meet those criteria.

First published in 2006, the Planetizen Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs has been widely praised by prospective planning students as being the single most important tool used in deciding which schools they would apply to and attend. This new edition of the Guide includes even more information previously unavailable to prospective planning students. In addition, Planetizen consulted with a special committee of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) during the production of the Guide to ensure that the 2009 edition met the needs and expectations of students, planning programs and faculty alike.

Rounding out Planetizen’s list of the top ten programs are Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Cornell University, Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, and the University of Pennsylvania.

For more information, or to order a copy of the 2009 Planetizen Guide To Graduate Urban Planning Programs, visit www.planetizen.com/guide.


Original Source: http://www.planetizen.com/topschools