3 medical schools ranked with best
From News & Observer Staff Reports
Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill and East Carolina University have three of the best medical schools in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report's 2007 rankings of graduate schools, which were published in its April 10 issue. Duke and UNC-CH also rated highly in business, and Duke and N.C. State University were among the top 50 in engineering.
How much weight do schools give to such rankings?
"We pay attention to the rankings, but we do not let them drive our decision-making," said Alison Hope Jesse, senior associate director of MBA admissions at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School. "We are gratified when our efforts are recognized."
They are recognized by students, too, Jesse says. "They do influence application volume, but the way in which applicants use ranking information varies. Nearly all use rankings as an initial screen to select a handful of schools to which they will apply. For schools like us, being in the top 20 is an advantage."
The magazine says the rankings in business, education, medicine, law and engineering are based on expert opinions and statistics measuring the quality of faculty, research and students, gathered from surveys of more than 1,200 programs and about 9,600 academics and professionals in the fall of 2005. (Ratings in the sciences, social sciences and humanities are based solely on the opinions of academic experts.)
Here are the top five schools in the main disciplines, including ties, plus area schools in the top 50:
SCHOOLS OF BUSINESS
1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. Pennsylvania
4. MIT
4. Northwestern
11. Duke University
20. UNC-Chapel Hill
LAW SCHOOLS
1. Yale
2. Stanford
3. Harvard
4. New York University
4. Columbia (New York)
11. Duke University
27. UNC-Chapel Hill
39. Wake Forest
MEDICINE -- PRIMARY CARE
1. Washington
2. UNC-Chapel Hill
3. Oregon Health and Science University
4. Michigan State College of Osteopathic Medicine
4. Massachusetts -Worcester
6. Duke University
6. East Carolina
25. Wake Forest
MEDICINE -- RESEARCH
1. Harvard
2. Johns Hopkins
3. Pennsylvania
4. California- San Francisco
4. Washington U. in St. Louis
6. Duke University
20. UNC-Chapel Hill
41. Wake Forest
ENGINEERING
1. MIT
2. Stanford
3. California- Berkeley
4. Georgia Tech
5. Illinois
30. Duke University
33. N.C. State
EDUCATION
1. Harvard
2. Teachers College, Columbia
2. UCLA
4. Stanford
5. Vanderbilt
29. UNC-Chapel Hill
50. UNC-Greensboro
