BU ranks 25th for undergraduate AI in U.S. News 2027 rankings

U.S. News & World Report released its 2027 Best Colleges rankings on September 22. On its list of the top undergraduate computer science programs for artificial intelligence, BU placed 25th.

BU also set a record overall. It ranked 34th among national universities, eight spots higher than last year and its best finish in the list's 43 years. U.S. News ranked 422 universities.

How the AI list works

The AI rank measures reputation. Survey respondents nominated up to 15 of the best programs in each discipline. A program needed at least seven nominations to earn a rank, and U.S. News ordered programs by how many nominations they received.

Peers rank BU's AI work well above its computer science program as a whole, which placed 52nd on the broader list.

What peers may be noticing

BU built a central AI office in April 2025. The AI Development Accelerator (AIDA) pulls the University's AI work into one initiative. Computer science professor John Byers leads it as executive director. Engineering professor Yannis Paschalidis directs AI in academics and also runs the Hariri Institute.

AIDA's projects reach students directly. TerrierGPT opened to faculty and staff in September 2025 and gives the BU community free access to leading chatbots. AIDA also runs AI at BU, a four-hour, self-paced online course for undergraduates, and some instructors planned to require it before their Spring 2026 classes.

Research money followed. In July 2026, the National Science Foundation awarded BU $20 million to help build a national network of AI-driven cloud labs. Douglas Densmore, Paschalidis, and Keith Brown lead the work. A month earlier, BU became a core member of an NSF institute that uses AI for physics research, alongside MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, and Tufts. CDS assistant professor Siddharth Mishra-Sharma leads BU's part.

Individual faculty are drawing notice too. CDS faculty fellow Brian DePasquale won a 2026 Sloan Research Fellowship for AI models of how the brain perceives smell. CDS assistant professor Joshua Peterson leads a DARPA-funded study that aims to predict when people will trust AI decision-makers. Deepti Ghadiyaram came to BU in 2024 after working at Meta AI and Runway. She now co-directs the Hariri Institute's AI Research Initiative, which has more than 20 core and affiliated faculty. In engineering, Eshed Ohn-Bar runs the Human-to-Everything (H2X) Lab, which develops autonomous systems that give people real-time assistance.

Terrier Intelligence

Terrier Intelligence launched in July 2026 as a free, independent directory of more than 350 AI labs, clubs, classes, and professors at BU.