Staff Report
UNM's School of Medicine has been ranked as one of America's best graduate schools.
The latest issue of U.S. News & World Report, on newsstands Monday, ranked 125 medical schools and 19 schools of osteopathic medicine.
The school was ranked No. 2 in rural medicine, No. 10 in family medicine and No. 12 in primary care.
"New Mexico has really come a long way in terms of putting a face onto what we're doing," said Jennifer Riordan, media relations manager for UNM's Health Sciences Center. "And we're simply thrilled."
This is the 14th consecutive year the school has been ranked in the top 15.
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"It really shows the caliber of the institution that we are," Riordan said.
Each year, the magazine ranks graduate programs in five areas, including medicine. Deans, program directors and senior faculty were asked to judge the academic quality of their programs on a 1 to 5 scale. Professionals who hire new graduates were also surveyed.
All schools in the ranking are accredited and were ranked according to academic quality, including student selectivity, academic reputation, faculty resources and the percentage of physicians that graduate and go to work in primary care.
The primary care curriculum in the school was No. 6 in terms of academic reputation and was ranked that way by deans and senior faculty nationwide.
According to the magazine's Web site, the rankings are important for students planning on going to graduate school so that they can see where they would stand in an applicant pool. They could also open up new possibilities that students were not considering.
UNM's School of Medicine is in the same league as Harvard, Stanford and John Hopkins universities' medical schools, according to the rankings.
Other programs in the medical school that received a high ranking are its Rural Medicine program with a No. 2 standing and a No. 10 ranking of the Family Medicine program, according to a medical school dean and senior faculty nationwide survey. UNM's Community Health program was No. 15.
Last year, UNM's College of Nursing ranked No. 3 for its Midwifery program, No. 15 for its Family Practitioner program and the Nursing Master's program was No. 94 out of 278.
In 2001, at No. 23, UNM's School of Medicine's Occupational Therapy program's ranking put it in the top third of similar programs nationwide.
