According to Scott Schnackenberg, TC's Director of Institutional Studies, "The rankings are very similar to last year, except for Vanderbilt making a leap forward largely due to a significant increase in the average GRE scores of their incoming doctoral students. The TC data is very similar to last year (actually slightly better on most items), but we continue to be weaker than most of the other top schools in faculty-funded research, which accounts for 30 percent of the ranking.

While the gross amount of funded research at TC is actually slightly more than at the other top schools, our "per capita" figures (the amount of funded research per faculty member) is lower than any other school in the top seven. As has been the case the past two years, the rankings are ‘research' rankings, and as such favor schools whose primary mission is research-as opposed to those, say, that are heavily concerned with teacher education.

Each year, US News ranks graduate programs in the areas of business, education, engineering, law, and medicine. These 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. For the rankings in all five areas, indicator and opinion data come from surveys of more than 1,000 programs and nearly 7,000 academics and other professionals conducted in the fall of 2002.

In the area of specialties, programs in the ten areas ranked best by education school deans, TC was ranked third in Curriculum/Instruction, fourth in Elementary Education and Education Policy, fifth in Secondary Education, seventh in Administration/Supervision, eighth in Educational Psychology, and ninth in Higher Education Administration.

Published Thursday, May. 1, 2003