University Times

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 2 edition.

This year Pitt ranked 51st in business; tied for 35th in education; tied for 50th in engineering, and tied for 57th in law. Medicine was split into two rankings: Pitt’s medical school tied for 15th in research and tied for 18th 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 online edition of its rankings, with even more extensive listings. The online version was the source for this story.

Based on the ratings of academic experts, the magazine this year also ranked graduate programs, last ranked in 2003, in certain health disciplines.

This year, updated rankings of PhD programs in biological sciences and chemistry were included “to correct a problem with last year’s survey that left some programs off the survey instrument,” according to the magazine.

The magazine’s web site (www.usnews.com) also includes rankings done in previous years; only new rankings (2007) are summarized here.

There were no new rankings in the other natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, fine arts, library and information studies 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. “These data come from surveys of more than 1,200 programs and some 12,500 academics and professionals that were conducted in fall 2006,” 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 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 passing rates and how long it takes new attorneys to land jobs.

The weights applied to the indicators reflect the magazine’s judgment about their relative importance, as determined in consultation with experts in each field.Every school’s performance is presented relative to the other schools with which it is being compared. Tied schools are listed alphabetically.

Business

The Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business was ranked No. 51 (48th last year) out of 66 business schools listed in the expanded online edition.

According to U.S. News, all 407 master’s programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business were surveyed. Of these, 113 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 MBA programs, as well as by corporate recruiters and company contacts who hired MBA graduates from previously ranked programs; job placement success (mean starting salary and employment rates for 2006 graduates), and student selectivity (GMAT scores, mean undergraduate GPAs and proportion of applicants accepted).

One business specialty at Katz was ranked nationally. The school’s information systems specialty was tied for 18th (tied for 16th last year) with the University of California-Irvine, out of the 28 programs listed in the online version.

Business specialty rankings were based solely on ratings by educators at peer schools. Business school deans and MBA program heads were asked to nominate up to 10 programs for excellence in each of the 12 specialty areas listed.

Education

Pitt’s School of Education tied for 35th (31st last year) with the universities of Delaware and Illinois-Chicago, out of 61 education schools listed online in this year’s rankings.

Of the 277 education schools granting doctoral degrees surveyed, 243 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 nationwide in a sampling of districts; student selectivity (mean GRE scores of doctoral students entering in fall 2006 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 fall 2006 students in doctoral programs), and total school research expenditures (separately funded research, public and private, conducted by the school’s faculty, averaged over fiscal years 2005 and 2006).

The school’s educational psychology specialty was tied for 19th nationally with Indiana University-Bloomington and the University of Iowa among the 22 such specialties listed. Last year, Pitt’s program was ranked 15th nationally.

Specialty rankings were based 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 tied for 50th with Arizona State University, up from 54th last year.

Programs at 199 engineering schools that grant doctoral degrees were surveyed, with 191 providing the data needed to calculate rankings; U.S. News listed the top 95 doctoral programs in its online edition.

Quality indicators for engineering schools included 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 were 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 16th with the University of Virginia. Last year Pitt tied for 14th in this specialty. Forty-nine such programs were listed.

Pitt’s program in chemical engineering tied for 34th, up from a tie for 40th last year. Pitt tied with Case Western Reserve, Iowa State and Washington (St. Louis) universities, the universities of Houston, Maryland-College Park and Southern California, and Virginia Tech. A total of 58 specialty programs were listed.

Pitt’s civil engineering specialty, which tied for 74th last year, tied for 60th this year among 75 institutions listed. Pitt tied with Louisiana State, Northeastern, Tufts and Washington State universities.

Among 80 programs listed in the electrical/electron/communications specialty area, Pitt tied for 57th (tied for 61st last year) with Clemson, Colorado State, Drexel, Lehigh and Polytechnic universities, SUNY-Stony Brook and the universities of Illinois-Chicago, Missouri-Rolla and New Mexico, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Pitt’s environmental/environmental health specialty in engineering this year tied for 56th (tied for 53rd last year) with Lehigh and Northeastern universities, among 57 institutions.

In the industrial/manufacturing specialty category, Pitt was tied for 19th (tied for 20th last year) among the 35 programs listed by the magazine’s online edition. Pitt tied with Arizona State and Ohio State universities.

This year, Pitt’s engineering materials specialty tied for 52nd (tied for 40th last year) among the 57 programs ranked nationally by U.S. News. Pitt tied with Dartmouth College, the universities of Delaware, Tennessee-Knoxville and Utah, and Washington State University.

Among 95 specialty programs in mechanical engineering, Pitt’s program tied for 65th; last year it tied for 62nd. Pitt tied with Auburn, Boston and Brigham Young universities, as well as with the universities of Rochester and Utah and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Law

For overall quality, Pitt’s School of Law was tied for 57th (tied for 60th last year) with the universities of Cincinnati and Utah out of a total of 184 accredited law schools nationwide. The online edition ranked the top 100 schools.

Schools of law were assessed for quality as measured by two surveys conducted in fall 2006. The dean and three faculty members per school were asked to rate schools from “marginal” (1) to “outstanding” (5). Lawyers and judges also rated schools. Other indicators were student selectivity (median LSAT scores, median undergraduate GPA and proportion of applicants accepted as students who entered in 2006); job placement success (employment rates for 2005 graduates at graduation and at nine months after graduation, as well as bar exam passing rate), and faculty resources (average 2005 and 2006 expenditures per student for instruction, library and supporting services; financial aid; 2006 student-teacher ratio, and total number of volumes in the library).

Nine law specialty areas also were ranked by U.S. News. The rankings were based on votes by law faculty who are listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers 2005-2006 as teaching in each specialty, or by directors of clinical and legal writing programs. They named up to 15 of the best in each field.

In the health care law specialty, Pitt’s program tied with Harvard University, ranking 15th among the 19 such programs listed. Last year the program ranked 13th.

Pitt ranked 22nd among the 31 intellectual property law specialty programs. Last year, the program tied for 24th.

U.S. News also ranked all 184 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 a 1992 article published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

According to the magazine, Pitt law school’s diversity index is 0.24 (maximum score is 1.0), which tied it nationally for 140th (tied for 128th last year) with Suffolk and Widener universities, and the universities of Akron and Nebraska-Lincoln.

African Americans, who represent 6 percent of the Pitt law school 2006-2007 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 online 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 tied for 15th (last year 16th) in the research category among 64 medical schools listed. Pitt tied with Cornell University and the University of Chicago.

In the primary care preparation category, Pitt was tied for 18th (tied for 33rd last year) among the 67 schools listed in the online edition. Pitt tied with Dartmouth Medical School, Michigan State, Wake Forest and Yeshiva universities, the universities of California-Los Angeles, Iowa and Missouri-Columbia and Texas Southwestern Medical Center-Dallas.

The magazine surveyed the 125 accredited medical schools plus 20 accredited schools of osteopathic medicine for both primary care and research rankings; 128 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 and osteopathic schools, deans of academic affairs, heads of internal medicine and directors of admissions.

In both categories those indicators included student selectivity (mean composite Medical College Admission Test score, mean undergraduate grade point average and the proportion of total applicants accepted for the class entering in 2006), and faculty resources (ratio of full-time faculty to students in 2006).

In the research category only, research activity was included in the rankings. It was defined as total dollar amount of National Institutes of Health research grants, and the average amount of those grants calculated per full-time faculty member, both averaged for fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

In the primary care category, the magazine measured the percentage of graduates who entered primary care residencies in the fields of family practice, pediatrics and internal medicine, averaged over the past three graduating classes.

Among eight medical school specialties ranked by U.S. News, Pitt’s programs were ranked in five.

Pitt’s AIDS program tied for 15th with Cornell University among 19 such programs listed in the magazine’s online edition. Last year, the program tied for 17th.

The geriatrics specialty at Pitt was ranked 15th (11th last year) among 19 programs listed.

Internal medicine was ranked 22nd this year, up from 23rd last year, among 26 schools listed.

The pediatrics specialty program was ranked 11th, up from 17th last year, among 21 programs listed nationally.

Pitt’s women’s health program ranked 4th (5th last year) among 20 such programs listed.

Medical specialty rankings were based 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.

Health Disciplines

The health disciplines 2007 rankings in U.S. News were based on the results of peer assessment surveys sent in fall 2006 to deans, other administrators and/or faculty at accredited degree programs or schools in each discipline.

Respondents rated the academic quality of programs on a 5-point scale: outstanding (5 points); strong (4); good (3); adequate (2), or marginal (1), based on their assessment of the curriculum, faculty and graduates. They were instructed to select “don’t know” if they did not have enough knowledge to rate a program.

The programs listed here are ones where Pitt was ranked in the U.S. News 2007 national rankings.

Pitt’s health care management (formerly called health services administration) master’s program was tied for 20th with Duke, Trinity and U.S. Army/Baylor universities, among 43 such programs listed.

The nursing master’s program tied for 7th nationally with Oregon Health and Science and Yale universities, and the universities of Illinois-Chicago and Maryland-Baltimore. Nationwide, there are 185 such programs.

Nursing specialty rankings were based solely on ratings by educators at peer schools. From the list of nursing schools surveyed, nursing educators nominated up to 10 schools for excellence in each area.

The adult nurse practitioner program tied for 9th with Rush University, among 12 schools listed.

The pediatric nurse practitioner program at Pitt ranked 6th among 17 such programs.

The clinical nurse psychiatric/mental health program tied for 6th among nine programs listed. Pitt tied with Indiana University, Purdue University-Indianapolis, Rush University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Among 86 nursing-anesthesia master’s programs, Pitt’s ranked 5th.

In fall 2006, surveys were conducted for 2007 rankings of schools of public health accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health. The response rate was 78 percent, according to the magazine. Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health ranked 11th among the top 25 public health schools nationally.

Sciences

The 2007 rankings of doctoral programs in the biological sciences and chemistry were based on the results of surveys sent to academicians in each discipline during the fall of 2006. The surveys were conducted by Synovate.

The schools surveyed awarded at least five doctoral degrees, according to the National Science Foundation report “Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards” for the years from 2000 through 2005.

Questionnaires were sent to the department heads and directors of graduate studies at each program in each discipline.

Pitt’s biological sciences program tied for 58th (tied for 56th last year) among 165 such programs listed in the online edition of U.S. News.

Pitt tied with Arizona State and New York universities, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the universities of Alabama-Birmingham, California-Santa Barbara, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts Medical Center-Worcester and Utah.

Of the 91 programs in chemistry listed online, Pitt’s program tied for 43rd (tied for 34th last year) with Colorado State and Duke universities, and the University of Southern California.

—Peter Hart