Stanford Takes Lead In New Rankings

The Medical School remained Harvard’s last hold-out as Stanford University graduate programs rose to the top in a new set of national rankings released Friday.

In the annual graduate school rankings by U.S. News & World Report, Harvard Medical School placed first as it has for more than five straight years.

However, Harvard fared slightly worse overall than in years past, when as many as three of the five graduate schools included in the rankings have taken top honors.

The Graduate School of Education (GSE) has placed first for the past three years but lost out to Stanford in Friday’s rankings, while the Business School and the Law School remained at second and third place, respectively—both behind Stanford.

Only Harvard’s 17th-ranked graduate program in engineering failed to make the top three.

Stanford tied for 11th place in medical school rankings—the only one of the five professional schools ranked by U.S. News in which Harvard beat out its California rival.

University spokesperson Alvin Powell declined to comment on Harvard’s performance in individual rankings.

“It’s nice to be on the U.S. News & World Report list,” he said. “But the most important thing is that students find the best school for them.”

GSE, which tied with UCLA for second place, fell in the rankings in part because first-ranked Stanford had a lower student-to-faculty ratio as well as a lower acceptance rate and higher peer assessment scores—all of which figure into the magazine’s formula.

Faculty at GSE are unconcerned with the drop, said spokesperson Christine Sanni. Any policy changes in school policy would come after the appointment of a new dean—a spot currently filled by two acting deans—and not in response to rankings.

“I think they’re pretty gratified to be in the top rankings and in the company of schools like Stanford,” Sanni said of GSE faculty, “and I think the deans remain proud of the intellectual capacity of the school.”

The U.S. News rankings, which are based on statistical data about students’ and schools’ performance as well as opinion surveys of experts in each field, have drawn criticism from educators around the country for excluding more subjective factors such as individual student experience or quality of teaching.

An open letter by the national Law School Admissions Council, endorsed by the dean of Harvard Law School (HLS), has criticized rankings systems as “unreliable.”

Law school deans at Yale and Stanford, which beat out Harvard for the third straight year, also signed the letter. Harvard had held second place for ten years before Stanford jumped ahead in 2000.

HLS has received low marks on its student-to-faculty ratio—higher than both Stanford and Yale—and has hired two new professors for next year as part of an effort to add 15 faculty over the next decade.

While HLS spokesperson Michael Armini declined to comment on Harvard’s place in the rankings, he said the rankings favored smaller schools. HLS is larger than both Yale and Stanford—which makes it harder for Harvard to maintain a low student-to-faculty ratio.

Armini said the faculty had considered reducing its student population last year—a move that would have improved the school’s ranking—but voted down the proposal because they felt education at the school would suffer.

The second-ranked Business School had shared first place with Stanford two years ago before falling to second last year.

Although Harvard had a slightly larger number of graduates employed three months after graduation, Stanford boasted a lower acceptance rate and higher average scores on graduate admissions exams, as well as higher starting salaries for graduates.

In doctoral programs in the sciences, which were not ranked last year, Harvard tied for second place in mathematics, chemistry and biological sciences and shared third place with four other schools in physics.

The University’s doctoral programs in applied math, geology and computer science were not among the top five in their fields.

In U.S. News’ most recent college rankings, Harvard and Yale tied for second place behind Princeton. New rankings for that category will come out in September.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.