New rankings put MSU Sociology on the top of the world

April 9, 2025

A newly released report has ranked MSU Sociology as the third top Sociology academic institution in the world based on the numbers of citations of MSU Sociology faculty in the last five years.  

MSU Sociology follows University of Oxford (ranked first) and second-place University of Manchester, both in the United Kingdom, meaning MSU Sociology is the top ranked program in the United States. Fourth place was University of Oregon, according to the 2024 report by ScholarGPS. 

In addition, MSU Sociology is ranked 38th among all Sociology departments in the world when considering citations over the lifetime.  

MSU Professor Aaron McCright was honored as a 2024 Highly Ranked Scholar – Lifetime in the specialty of Climate Change. The ranking recognized Dr. McCright for his “exceptional productivity, noteworthy impact and quality of scholarly work in the top 0.05% of scholars in the specialty worldwide.” Another recognized scholar is MSU Sociology alumna Dr. Theda Skocpol (Harvard University). 

ScholarGPS uses the metadata from more than 200 million archival publications across the globe to calculate the citation numbers. 

“The global community of scholars included in the ScholarGPS® database is comprised of over 30 million academic, industrial, and governmental scholars from 120,000 institutions. In addition to the profiles of individual scholars, the research output and rankings of 24,353 academic institutions in over 200 countries is provided,” their website states. 

In addition to the ScholarGPS rankings, MSU Sociology is also ranked in the top 50 doctoral programs in the United States by US News and World Report for 2025.