U.S. News and World Reports released its Best Graduate Schools ranking for 2015. The publication ranks professional school programs in business, education, engineering, law and medicine. The University of New Mexico was ranked in several disciplines.
The UNM School of Medicine’s rural medicine is ranked 2nd, family medicine is 9th, while primary care is ranked 40th, tied with 8 other schools, as voted on by senior faculty and deans of schools and colleges across the United States.
The UNM School of Nursing ranks 79th, and is tied with 18 other schools. The midwifery program ranks 5th, and is tied with the University of Illinois-Chicago.
"Our national rankings directly reflect our priorities in training our healthcare work force and improving health for all New Mexicans,” said Dr. Paul Roth, UNM chancellor for Health Sciences and School of Medicine dean. “This reaffirms that we are addressing New Mexico’s unique health challenges and opportunities in providing quality healthcare to our residents across the state.”
The UNM School of Law is ranked 72nd overall, tied with six others, while its clinical training program is ranked 9th. The school also appears on the rankings’ “Most Diverse Law Schools” list because of its 34 percent Hispanic student body.
The photography program in the College of Fine Arts is ranked fifth.
The UNM School of Engineering is ranked 87th, tied with University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Mass.
The rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students, according to the publication. The data is from surveys of administrators at more than 1,350 programs and of more than 13,500 academics and professionals, conducted during the fall of 2013 and early 2014.
In the healthcare area, a total of 128 U.S.-accredited medical schools and 25 schools of osteopathic medicine were surveyed for this year’s rankings. The schools were ranked according to selected measures of academic quality, including academic reputation, student selectivity, faculty resources, and the percentage of graduating physicians who go into the primary care specialties of family practice, internal medicine and pediatrics.