GSE drops four spots in newest grad rankings

U.S. News & World Report released its annual graduate school rankings last week, with the Graduate School of Education experiencing the largest drop of any Penn graduate program.

GSE fell from 7th to 11th, while the Engineering School jumped from 32nd to 29th, the Law School advanced one spot to sixth, and the Wharton and Medical schools both remained at the third slot.

GSE is in the midst of a transitional phase, as incoming dean Andrew Porter will take the helm in August after former dean Susan Fuhrman left her post last May to assume the presidency of Columbia University's Teachers College, the top-ranked school in this year's rankings.

But Thomas Kecskemethy, GSE assistant dean, said the loss of Fuhrman likely did not play a role in the school's drop in ranking because all of the data for the report was collected before her departure.

Instead, he said, it is the growing competitiveness of GSE's peer institutions that led to the decline, not to mention the fact that a small drop in a few numbers can translate to a large fall in rank.

"Over the last five to seven years of the education school rankings, [we've seen] a considerable tightening in competitiveness among the top fifteen schools," Kecskemethy said, though he added that GSE is "firmly ensconced among the top schools in the nation."

At the 11th spot this year, GSE was only one point behind a three-way tie at eighth, meaning the fall is not quite as precipitous as it would first appear.

The school's reputation scores, based on influential surveys completed by the deans of peer institutions and superintendents of schools, rose this year but were offset by a slight rise in acceptance rate of doctoral students and a slight fall in funded research per faculty.

The rise in the school's reputation scores, Kecskemethy added, is only further proof that Fuhrman's departure did not play a role in the drop in ranking.

As for the remaining four graduate schools, other officials questioned the rankings' accuracy or, like Wharton Director of Communications Michael Baltes, simply expressed a general antipathy toward U.S. News' annual report.

"If there's information that can be provided to prospective students about a specific school," that's useful, Baltes said. "The rankings themselves are not useful at all."

Gail Morrison, vice dean for Education at the School of Medicine, said the rankings may not be entirely accurate because of specific issues in the ranking metrics and how each medical school's relationship with its affiliate hospitals is defined.

She added, however, that she's always proud of where Penn is ranked.

"Whatever we do, we don't do it purposely to look for [higher] rankings," she said. "But it's great when leaders and peers in these areas do rank us accordingly."

For students who are applying to graduate school, rankings may not mean as much as US News & World Report would like to think.

College junior Grace Lee says she's planning on applying to medical school but doesn't pay much attention to the annual rankings.

"It's nice to think about going to a really top-rank school, but medical schools all have different programs, and you have to find what's a really good fit for you," she said.

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