By Mary Jo Frank
Three U-M professional schools are ranked among the top 10 nationwide in their respective fields in U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.” The results appear in the March 22 issue.
For the first time the survey included the reputations of educational programs in four health professions.
The School of Public Health’s Department of Health Services Management and Policy ranks number one, along with a health care management concentration at Northwestern University.
The School of Dentistry is tied for third place with the University of Washington and University of Iowa. The School of Nursing ranks fourth and the College of Pharmacy ranks sixth.
In reputational rankings of graduate programs in the sciences, also new this year, the U-M ranks sixth in geology and eighth in mathematics. The magazine also ranked graduate programs in biology, chemistry, computer science and physics by reputations for scholarship, curriculum and quality of faculty and graduate students, but the U-M did not rank among the top 10 in those fields.
Among the professional schools that are ranked annually, the School of Business Administration moved from seventh to sixth place in the overall rankings, which are based on a variety of factors, including student selectivity, placement success, retention and two measures of institutional reputation.
The top five business schools among the nation’s 268 accredited M.B.A. programs are, in order, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and Northwestern University (Kellogg). The U-M is the only public school in the top 10.
Two specialty programs within the School of Business Administration—management and marketing—rank fifth among their peers nationwide.
The College of Engineering’s overall rank rose from seventh to sixth. Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranks number one, followed in order by Stanford University; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of California, Berkeley; and Purdue University.
Based on the magazine’s reputational survey among engineering deans, six specialty programs within the College of Engineering rank in the top five among their peers nationwide: aerospace (fifth this year compared to fourth in 1992), electrical/electronic (fifth this year and in 1992), environmental (second this year and in 1992), industrial/manufacturing (third this year and in 1992), mechanical (fifth this year, not ranked last year) and nuclear (second this year and in 1992).
The Law School, the highest ranking public law school, dropped from sixth in 1992 to seventh this year in the overall ranking. Yale University ranks number one, followed by Harvard University (second), Stanford University (third), the Uni-versity of Chicago (fourth), Columbia University (fifth) and New York Univer-sity (sixth).
The Medical School, which ranked 11th in 1992, this year is listed alphabetically in a second tier of top research schools that rank 11th through 20th. However, based on reputation among academics, the Medical School ranks 10th. Directors of intern-residency programs rank the School seventh by reputation.
For survey purposes, the magazine divided the nation’s 126 medical schools into two categories: those oriented toward research and those oriented toward training primary-care physicians. Rankings are based on the reputational surveys of academics and of directors of intern-residency programs, student selectivity, faculty resources and research activities.
U.S. News and World Report’s choice for the top 10 research-oriented medical schools in rank order: Harvard Univer-sity; Johns Hopkins University; the University of California, San Francisco; Yale University; Washington University; Duke University; Stanford University; University of Pennsylvania; Columbia University; and the University of Chicago. All, except the University of California, San Francisco, are private schools.
Within the second tier, three schools are private, six are public and one is a public/private.
Robert J. Morse, senior editor and director of research for the U.S. News & World Report graduate school ranking project, says the Medical School did well in many areas considered in the overall ranking. With an average reputational ranking of 8.5, the U-M did better than the University of Chicago, which ranked 10th overall. However, lower scores in areas of student selectivity and faculty resources resulted in an overall ranking for the U-M of 14th.
Executive Director of University Relations Walter Harrison says, “Read these rankings, as you should all such rankings, with caution. The schools and programs that are ranked constitute, as a group, the best such schools and programs in the country, but the many variables involved make the exact rankings very unreliable.
“It is gratifying, of course, that so many of Michigan’s programs in graduate and professional education are ranked so well—testimony to the high quality and the efforts of our students, faculty and staff. Each time U.S. News publishes these rankings I marvel at the breadth of superb academic programs we offer here.”
U.S. News & World Report did not rank liberal arts graduate programs and business school executive education programs this year. Last year the U-M doctoral program in political science was in a three-way tie for number one in the nation. The U-M placed in the top 10 in four of the six liberal arts graduate programs evaluated last year.
The magazine is rotating the program areas it ranks, according to Morse, “because we only have so much editorial space.” He notes that U.S. News devoted 25 pages to this year’s ranking report.
