The Rollins School of Public Health has become the first professional school at Emory ranked among the top 10 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The school placed ninth among accredited master's of public health (MPH) programs in rankings that were published in the March 10 issue of the newsweekly. The nation's 56 accredited MPH programs include 28 accredited schools of public health.
Also well placed in the magazine's rankings were the medical school, which placed 19 out of 125 medical schools; the Goizueta Business School's MBA program, which ranked 23 out of 300 accredited MBA programs; and the law school, which ranked 27 out of the nation's 178 accredited law schools.
U.S. News will also re-publish its 1996 rankings of several Emory programs in its annual guide book: the medical school's physical therapy program was tied for fifth last year; the history department was ranked 25; and the nursing school was ranked 34.
In responding to the School of Public Health's first top 10 ranking, Dean James W. Curran said, "This recognition by our colleagues in academic public health is particularly gratifying for one of the youngest of the nation's public health schools. Our growth since the school's creation almost seven years ago has been quite remarkable, in the size and quality of our faculty and student body-almost quadrupling our original numbers to 675 M.P.H. students and 60 Ph.D. students-and in our research strengths that make us the second-highest ranked school at Emory in terms of research funding with $18.2 million awarded last year."
Public health master's program rankings were determined by tallying reputation surveys completed by deans, faculty members and administrators of accredited graduate programs in public health. Emory scored 3.4 on a five point scale.
"It's very gratifying when national rankings reflect what we already know about our excellent programs," said Michael Johns, executive vice president for Health Affairs and director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. "The Rollins School of Public Health is truly a resource, to the nation as well as Atlanta, and it's a tribute to the dean, faculty and students themselves that it should be ranked among the top 10 within a few short years of its founding."
In addition to the medical school's move to an overall 19th place ranking, the school also rose in all specific categories measured in 1996, ranking 24 in student selectivity, eight in faculty resources, 29 in research activity, 22 in reputation by academics and 19 in reputation rank by intern/section directors.
The business school's ranking of 23 was arrived at using measures of student selectivity, placement success and two measures of reputation that included a survey of business school deans and MBA program directors and a survey of U.S. corporate recruiters. The MBA program ranked 25 in student selectivity, 19 in placement success, 35 in reputation rank by academics, and 28 in reputation rank by recruiters.
The School of Law was initially ranked 29 this year, but moved to 27 a few days after the rankings were released when U.S. News announced it had made an error in the law school rankings. "The recent flip-flop by U.S. News underscores the absence of any credible basis for their rankings," said Dean Howard Hunter. Rankings for the law schools were determined using measures similar to those of business school rankings, except that an additional category, faculty resources, was factored in. The law school ranked 29 in reputation by academics, and 20 in reputation by lawyers and judges.
-Lorri Preston and Jan Gleason