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April 13, 2006

U.S. News rankings included Pitt programs

Several Pitt disciplines and subspecialties were included among the nation’s top graduate schools in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings.

Each year, the magazine measures graduate programs in five major disciplines (business, education, engineering, law and medicine), using quality indicators such as peer assessments, entering students’ test scores, faculty/student ratios and reputation ratings drawn from inside and outside academia.

Information on the five disciplines was published in the magazine’s April 10 edition.

This year Pitt’s disciplines ranked 48th — business; 31st — education; 54th —engineering, and 60th — law. Medicine was split into two rankings: Pitt’s medical school was ranked 16th in research and 33rd in preparation of primary care physicians.

The magazine also produces an expanded supplement that includes more extensive listings, and top 10 rankings for subdisciplines and specialty program areas.

In addition, U.S. News offers an expanded on-line edition of its rankings, with even more extensive listings. The on-line version is the source for this story.

The magazine this year also ranks graduate programs in the natural sciences, last ranked in 2002, and in library and information studies graduate programs, last ranked in 1999.

The magazine’s web site (www.usnews.com) also includes rankings done in previous years; only new rankings are summarized here.

There were no new rankings in the social sciences and humanities, fine arts, health subspecialties or public affairs areas.

U.S. News methodology

According to U.S. News, rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students. “For the rankings in all five areas, indicator and opinion data come from surveys of more than 1,200 programs and almost 9,600 academics and other professionals conducted in fall 2005,” U.S. News stated.

To gather the opinion data, the magazine asked deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 (“marginal”) to 5 (“outstanding”).

In the five disciplines, the magazine also surveyed professionals in the field who are directly involved in the hiring process.

“The statistical indicators used in our rankings of business, education, engineering, law and medical schools fall into two categories: inputs, or measures of the qualities that students and faculty bring to the educational experience; and outputs, measures of graduates’ achievements that can be linked to their degrees,” the magazine stated.

Depending on the field, output measures vary, U.S. News stated. For example, indicators in the business discipline include starting salaries after graduation and the time it takes graduates to find jobs. For law, indicators include state bar exam passage rates and how long it takes new attorneys to land jobs.

Every school’s performance is presented relative to the other schools with which it is being compared. Tied schools are listed alphabetically.

The magazine modified its law school ranking methodology slightly from last year’s.

“After consulting with law school placement officials, we reduced the weight given to the employment rate of law school grads immediately upon finishing their studies and increased the weight placed on their employment rate nine months after graduation,” according to U.S. News. “We also returned to using the reported median LSAT and undergraduate GPA for full-time law school entrants,” instead of a calculated median used last year because of an absence of verifiable data for the actual median.

“The American Bar Association now requires schools to report these data, permitting us to confirm the figures submitted to us,” the magazine stated.

Business

The Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business was ranked No. 48 out of 80 business schools listed in the expanded on-line edition. That ranking is up nine spots from 2005.

According to U.S. News, all 399 master’s programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business were surveyed. Of these, 240 provided the data needed to calculate rankings using the magazine’s methodology.

Quality indicators for business schools included overall academic quality assessment as determined by deans and directors of accredited M.B.A. programs, as well as by corporate recruiters; job placement success, and student selectivity (GMAT scores, undergraduate GPAs and proportion of applicants accepted).

One business specialty at Katz was ranked nationally. The school’s information systems specialty was ranked tied for 16th with the University of California-Irvine, out of the 27 programs listed.

Business specialty rankings are based solely on ratings by business school deans and directors of accredited master’s programs from the list of schools surveyed.

They were asked to nominate up to 10 programs for excellence in each of the 12 specialty areas listed.

Education

Pitt’s School of Education ranked 31st (the same as last year) out of 76 education schools listed on line in this year’s rankings.

Of the 276 education schools granting doctoral degrees surveyed, 240 provided the data needed to calculate rankings, according to U.S. News.

Quality indicators for education schools included quality assessment by school deans and deans of graduate studies, as well as a survey of school superintendents; student selectivity (GRE scores and acceptance rates); faculty resources (student-teacher ratio, percentage of full-time faculty winning awards or holding journal editorships, the number of doctoral degrees awarded in the past year and the proportion of students in doctoral programs), and total school research expenditures (separately funded research conducted by the school’s faculty).

The school’s educational psychology specialty was ranked 15th nationally among the 24 such specialties listed. Last year, the program was tied for 21st nationally.

Specialty rankings are based solely on nominations by education school deans and deans of graduate studies from the list of schools surveyed. They selected up to 10 top programs in each of 10 areas.

Engineering

Pitt’s School of Engineering was ranked 54th this year, down from tied for 49th last year.

Programs at 199 engineering schools that grant doctoral degrees were surveyed, with 185 responding. (Data from the previous year were used for two additional schools that were affected by Hurricane Katrina.) Those 187 schools provided the data needed to calculate rankings; U.S. News lists the top 95 doctoral programs in its on-line premium edition.

Quality indicators for engineering schools include the same indicators used for education schools, that is, quality assessment, student selectivity, faculty resources and research activity.

Pitt also had eight engineering specialty programs listed among the nation’s best by U.S. News. Those rankings are based solely on assessments by department heads in each specialty area. The magazine listed 12 engineering specialties altogether.

Pitt’s specialty program in biomedical/bioengineering tied for 14th with the University of California-Berkeley and Washington University in St. Louis. Last year Pitt tied for 15th in this specialty.

Forty-six such programs were listed.

Pitt’s program in chemical engineering tied for 40th again this year. Pitt tied with Case Western Reserve, Lehigh and Vanderbilt universities, as well as with SUNY-Buffalo. A total of 65 specialty programs were listed.

The school’s civil engineering specialty area, which tied for 62nd last year, tied for 74th this year among 85 institutions listed overall. Pitt tied with the universities of Illinois-Chicago, Kentucky, Missouri-Columbia, Nevada-Reno, New Mexico and Utah State, as well as with Brigham Young University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Stevens Institute of Technology.

Among 83 programs listed in the electrical/electron/com-munications specialty area, Pitt tied for 61st (tied for 55th last year) with Oregon State and Texas Tech universities, the universities of Delaware, Illinois-Chicago and New Mexico, as well as with SUNY-Stony Brook and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Pitt’s environmental/environ-mental health specialty this year was ranked tied for 53rd with Illinois Institute of Technology, among 54 institutions. Pitt’s program did not make last year’s list in that specialty.

In the industrial/manufactur-ing specialty category, Pitt was tied for 20th among the 35 programs listed by the magazine’s on-line edition, up four spots from last year’s ranking. Pitt tied with the universities of Arizona, Illinois/Urbana-Champaign and Texas-Austin.

Last year, Pitt was unranked in the engineering materials specialty. This year, the program was tied for 40th among the 51 programs ranked nationally by U.S. News. Pitt tied with Columbia University, Michigan Technological University, SUNY-Stony Brook and the University of Southern California.

Among 91 specialty programs in mechanical engineering, Pitt’s program tied for 62nd; last year it tied for 60th. Pitt tied with Auburn, Brigham Young, Clemson, Colorado State, Northeastern and Washington State universities, as well as with the University of Utah and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Law

For overall quality, Pitt’s School of Law was tied for 60th (tied for 52nd last year) with Illinois Institute of Technology, the universities of Missouri-Columbia and Tennessee-Knoxville and Villanova University, out of a total of 180 accredited law schools nationwide. The on-line edition ranks the top 100 schools.

Schools of law were assessed for quality, as measured by surveys of deans and three faculty members per school; student selectivity; job placement success (employment rates for 2004 graduates at graduation and at nine months after graduation, and bar exam passage rate), and faculty resources (average expenditures per student for instruction, library and supporting services; financial aid, student-teacher ratio and total number of volumes in the library).

Nine law specialty areas also were ranked by U.S. News. The rankings are based on votes by law faculty who are listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers 2004-2005 as teaching in each specialty, or by directors of clinical and legal writing programs.

In the health care law specialty, Pitt’s program ranked 13th among the top 19 such programs listed.

Pitt tied with George Mason University and the University of Akron for 24th among intellectual property law specialty programs. The magazine listed the top 27 such programs nationally. Pitt’s program was not ranked in last year’s list.

U.S. News also ranked all 180 law schools based on a diversity index of data collected by the magazine “to identify law schools where students are most likely to encounter classmates from different racial or ethnic groups.”

The magazine created the index based on the total proportion of minority students — not including international students — and the mix of racial and ethnic groups on campus.

The methodology source is the International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

According to the magazine, Pitt law school’s diversity index is 0.25 (maximum score is 1.0), which tied it nationally for 128th (same rank as last year) with Case Western Reserve, Mercer, Wake Forest and Washburn universities, and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

African Americans, who represent 7 percent of the Pitt law school 2005-2006 student body, are the largest minority group, according to the magazine.

“Because student-body ethnic diversity data are not consistently compiled and reported as yet for other types of graduate schools, U.S. News prepared a diversity table for law schools only,” the magazine’s on-line version stated.

Medicine

U.S. News issues two separate medical school rankings, one emphasizing research activity and the other a school’s preparation of primary care physicians.

Pitt’s School of Medicine was ranked 16th (last year it tied for 16th) for research among 64 medical schools listed, and was tied for 33rd (tied for 40th last year) for primary care preparation among the 68 schools listed in the on-line edition.

In the primary care category, Pitt tied with Indiana University-Indianapolis and Ohio State University, as well as with the universities of California-San Diego and Maryland.

The magazine surveyed the 125 accredited medical schools plus 19 accredited schools of osteopathic medicine for both primary care and research rankings; 126 schools provided the data needed to calculate rankings in both medical school categories.

Quality assessment indicators for both categories were based on surveys of deans of medical schools, deans of academic affairs, heads of internal medicine and directors of admissions. Those indicators include research activity; primary care rate (the percentage of graduates who enter primary care residencies averaged over the past three graduating classes); student selectivity, and faculty resources.

Among medical school specialties, Pitt’s AIDS program tied for 17th among 20 such programs listed in the U.S. News on-line edition. Pitt was tied with Baylor College of Medicine and Emory and Stanford universities. Last year, Pitt tied for 19th in this specialty area.

Pitt’s drug/alcohol abuse program tied for 13th (among 17 listed) with Boston and Brown universities, and the universities of North Caroline-Chapel Hill and Washington. Last year, Pitt tied for 17th among such programs.

The geriatrics specialty at Pitt was ranked 11th among 24 programs listed, up from 13th last year.

Internal medicine was ranked 23rd (down one spot from last year) among 27 schools listed.

The pediatrics specialty program was ranked 17th among 21 programs listed nationally. Last year the program tied for 15th.

Pitt’s women’s health program ranked 5th (6th last year) nationally among 20 such programs listed.

Medical specialty rankings are based solely on ratings by deans and senior faculty at peer schools, who were asked to identify up to 10 schools offering the best programs in each of eight specialty areas.

Library and information studies

U.S. News ranked 50 master’s degree programs in the United States that are accredited by the American Library Association.

Rankings for the top programs nationally in library and information studies were derived from a 2005 survey of deans, program directors and senior faculty at those schools. The survey response rate was 51 percent.

The questionnaires asked individuals to rate the academic quality of programs at each institution as outstanding (5); strong (4); good (3); adequate (2), or marginal (1). Individuals who were unfamiliar with a particular school’s programs were asked to select “don’t know.” Scores for each school were totaled and divided by the number of respondents who rated that school.

For overall quality of its programs, Pitt was ranked tied for 7th with Indiana University-Bloomington and the University of Texas-Austin. The magazine’s on-line edition listed the top 32 such programs nationally.

Pitt also was ranked in six of the seven specialty areas surveyed by U.S. News.

In the archives and preservation specialty, Pitt ranked 4th nationally among nine such programs listed on line.

Pitt was ranked 10th among the top 11 programs listed in the digital librarianship specialty.

The University topped the list of nine programs listed in the health librarianship specialty.

In the information systems specialty, Pitt was tied for 5th with Drexel University. The magazine listed 12 such programs overall.

Pitt was tied for 9th with the University of Hawaii-Manoa in the school library media specialty. U.S. News listed a total of 17 such programs on line.

Pitt’s services for children and youth specialty was ranked 4th among the 11 programs listed.

Sciences

Rankings of doctoral programs in the sciences are based on the results of surveys sent to academicians in each discipline during the fall of 2005.

Surveys were conducted in biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and physics. The universe of schools surveyed consisted of schools that awarded at least five doctoral degrees, according to the National Science Foundation report “Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards” for the years from 1999 through 2004.

Questionnaires were sent to the department heads and directors of graduate studies at each program in each discipline. Response rates were as follows: for the biological sciences, 21 percent of those surveyed responded; for chemistry, 30 percent; for computer science, 52 percent; for mathematics, 40 percent, and for physics, 39 percent.

Specialty rankings in the sciences are based on nominations by department heads and directors of graduate studies at peer schools from the list of schools surveyed. These respondents ranked up to 10 programs in each area.

Pitt’s biological sciences tied for 56th nationally among 163 such programs listed in the on-line edition of U.S. News. Pitt tied with Arizona State University and OGI School of Science and Engineering-Oregon Health and Science University, as well as the universities of Alabama-Birmingham, Colorado-Denver and Health Sciences Center, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts-Amherst, Oregon, Rochester, Texas Health Science Center-Houston and Utah.

Of the 92 programs in chemistry listed on line, Pitt’s program tied for 34th with the universities of California-Davis, Florida and Utah.

In computer science, Pitt’s program was tied for 51st with Arizona State, Michigan State and Texas A&M-College Station, as well as with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The magazine listed 71 total programs in computer science.

U.S. News listed 101 programs in mathematics in its on-line edition. Pitt’s program was ranked tied for 63rd with Arizona State, Iowa State and Northeastern universities.

The physics program at Pitt tied for 50th with Case Western Reserve University, CUNY Graduate School and University Center, and the universities of Notre Dame and Southern California. A total of 94 such programs were ranked nationally.

—Peter Hart


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