Graduate Schools Keep High Marks

And while college administrators continue to downplay their importance and accuracy, they admit that the rankings do carry some weight with potential students.

"Carolina's primary goal remains becoming America's best public university, not winning a rankings race devised by a magazine," UNC Chancellor James Moeser wrote in a statement released Friday.

But when campus administrators open this year's rankings, they will find that UNC graduate schools and programs ranked by the magazine remained almost identical to last year's results.

Several of the programs, including the School of Law, the School of Education, and the Research area within the School of Medicine each fell one spot in the rankings to 23rd, 18th and 24th, respectively. Kenan-Flagler Business School remained at No. 18 in the rankings, while the Primary Care area of the School of Medicine went up two spots to No. 6 on the list.

Medical school Dean Jeffrey Houpt said that while the rankings might not be completely accurate, they do have an impact on people outside of the school. "(The rankings) become important because prospective students believe them," Houpt said.

He also pointed out that UNC's medical school was one of the few schools nationwide that performed well in both the research and primary care categories.

Several UNC doctoral programs also placed high in the rankings, including public affairs, which moved up two spots to No. 12; chemistry, which stayed at No. 15; computer science, which remained at No. 21; English, which fell one spot to No. 18; history, which went up one spot on No. 13; political science, which fell five spots to No. 15; psychology which went up one spot to No. 17; and sociology, which went down one spot to No. 5.

Many doctoral programs covering the arts, sciences, social sciences are ranked only every three years and are not included in this year's edition.

Within the doctoral programs, administrators also said that while it is nice to be recognized, the rankings are more important to potential students then officials within the department.

"We certainly pay attention to (the rankings)," said Michael Crimmins, vice chairman of graduate studies for the Department of Chemistry. "It's not something that is incredibly important, but people outside the school certainly pay attention to them."

Crimmins also said that while the rankings have little impact on research grants given to the department because those are usually given to individuals, they do help in drawing new students.

And Stephen Weiss, chairman of Department of Computer Science, said the ratings are accurate only in a broad sense. "The one that is ranked number one is certainly better than the one ranked 50th," Weiss said. "But it is next to impossible to distinguish between schools ranked at say number 22 and 23."

But while Weiss said department recruiting might benefit from high rankings, administrators in the department don't focus too much on improving the rankings. "It's nice to be ranked but we don't say, 'What can we do to be ranked higher in U.S. News & World Report?'"

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.