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March 11, 2014

UW regains top U.S. News rank in medicine; other areas get high marks

In its annual spring ranking of graduate programs, U.S. News & World Report ranked University of Washington programs in medicine, education, law, business and engineering among the top 26 in the country, with the UW School of Medicine rated No. 1 overall for primary care.

Medical schools are ranked generally in two categories, primary care and research. UW held the top primary care ranking for 19 consecutive years before placing second a year ago. This year it has regained the No. 1 ranking for primary care and also is ranked No. 10 for research.

In addition, UW gained high marks for teaching in several medical specialties, including No. 1 in both family medicine and rural medicine, fourth in AIDS education, fifth in pediatrics, seventh in both geriatrics and internal medicine and tied for ninth in drug and alcohol abuse.

Each year U.S. News ranks schools of business, education, engineering, law and medicine using two types of data – the opinions of experts about program excellence and statistical information on the quality of faculty, research and students. Along with the new annual rankings, the magazine also publishes rankings of programs conducted in previous years.

“These rankings show great success and high regard for the University’s graduate programs across a broad range of disciplines and specializations,” said UW President Michael K. Young.

“The faculty teaching our graduate students are in most instances the very same faculty teaching our undergraduates, so we take this as a very positive referendum on the quality of programs across the university. It is a measure of the quality of our faculty who attract very high caliber students to come here to study with them.”

This year, U.S. News also gave high marks to:

• The UW College of Education, seventh overall nationally and second among public universities. Its special education program ranked seventh, secondary education was ninth and administration/supervision ranked 11^th.
• The Law School, 24^th overall and 12^th in intellectual property law.
• The Foster School of Business, tied for 25^th nationally.
• The College of Engineering, 26^th nationally and tied for seventh in biomedical/bioengineering.

In addition, U.S. News ranked doctoral programs in the biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, Earth sciences, mathematics, physics and statistics. UW ranked:

• No. 3 in statistics (Department of Biostatistics, tied with Harvard University as highest-rated for biostatisticss) and also tied for No. 7 (Department of Statistics).
• Tied for No. 6 overall in computer science, and rated fifth in both artificial intelligence and systems and ninth in theory.
• No. 11 in Earth sciences.
• No. 19 overall in biological sciences, and third in genetics/genomics/bioinformatics.
• No. 22 overall in physics and No. 2 in nuclear physics.
• No. 24 in chemistry.
• Tied for No. 25 in mathematics.

In separate national peer-assessment surveys, the UW Information School ranks third nationally among library and information studies schools, and the Evans School of Public Affairs tied for ninth among public affairs schools.

Disciplines not included in the new U.S. News ratings but in which the UW has been highly ranked in the most recent report before this year include nursing (tied for first); clinical psychology (tied for second); audiology, social work, and speech-language pathology (all tied for third); public health (tied for sixth); physician assistant (tied) and health care management (eighth); pharmacy (tied for 10^th); occupational therapy (tied for 15^th); psychology (tied for 14^th); sociology (tied for 20^th) and political science (28^th).

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Tag(s): Rankings

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