Several Graduate Programs Fare Well in U.S. News Rankings
Several academic programs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have earned high ratings in U.S. News and World Report‘s 1997 ranking of graduate programs.
UW–Madison ranked 6th overall in education and placed high in several education specialties: 1st in curriculum and instruction; 2nd in administration, educational psychology, elementary education and secondary education; 3rd in educational policy; and 5th in counseling.
The university’s social work and veterinary medicine programs both were ranked 9th. Engineering was 12th overall, with specialty rankings of 5th in both chemical and nuclear engineering.
Pharmacy was 16th, and fine arts was 19th overall and 2nd in printmaking. Other UW–Madison rankings included 20th in music and 38th in law.
As a business specialty, the real estate program at UW–Madison was ranked 3rd, though the overall MBA program did not make the top 50.
The U.S. News & World Report’s eighth annual guide to graduate programs will be available on newsstands March 3. It focuses this year on 16 disciplines; not all fields are ranked every year.
UW–Madison Vice Chancellor John Torphy said that the high rankings were gratifying. “However,” he said, “U.S. News rankings – high or low – should be taken with a very large grain of salt. And the same is true regarding rankings in other magazines.
“Apparently 11 of the 16 disciplines ranked are based strictly on peer reputation, while the other five include a variety of additional factors. Peer review and reputation usually result in higher rankings for UW–Madison than such criteria as ‘selectivity’ and ‘faculty resources.’ For example, based on peer reputation, the School of Education would rank 2nd rather than 6th, and the Law School would rank 18th nationally, 6th among public universities and 2nd in the Big Ten.”
Other reviews of graduate programs, such as the National Research Council (NRC), are more rigorous and accurate, said Torphy. The NRC conducts a major review of graduate programs every decade. In 1995 the NRC placed 16 UW–Madison doctoral programs in the nation’s top 10, and another 35 programs made the top 25. The survey asks nearly 8,000 faculty members around the country to rank 41 different fields at 274 doctorate-granting universities.
CONTACT: John Torphy, (608) 263-2509