In this year's U.S. News and World Report rankings of graduate programs, Penn's numbers stayed fairly steady.
The Graduate School of Education, which experienced the biggest drop last year from seventh to 11th, rose one spot this year to 10th. The Engineering, Medical and Law Schools each fell one spot, to 30th, fourth and seventh, respectively. The Wharton School remained at third.
Penn Law spokesman Mark Eyerly said a change in criteria may have contributed to the drop in the Law School's rankings.
In previous years, Eyerly said, U.S. News and World Report asked law schools to report the number of graduates employed, still seeking employment and not seeking employment nine months after graduation. This year, they were not asked to distinguish between the groups of unemployed graduates.
Eyerly added that while the Law School takes the rankings seriously, they do not overemphasize them.
"Their criteria may not be students' criteria," he said.
Changes were also made in calculating education-school rankings, including how the student-faculty ratio was calculated and how the number of degrees awarded are considered.
Robert Morse, who is in charge of the rankings at U.S. News and World Report, said Penn benefited from these adjustments because the changes favored education schools that offer both Ph.D. and Masters' programs.
U.S. News and World Report does not rank every graduate program in the School of Arts and Sciences each year. Instead, it alternates in the programs that it ranks, this year evaluating the Physics and Mathematics departments.
The last time those departments were ranked was in 2006.
That year, Penn's Physics program was ranked 16th, and this year it was 13th. The Mathematics program received a ranking of 18th, down one slot.
Jack Nagel, the associate dean for graduate studies at the School of Arts and Sciences, said he is pleased by the Physics department's move up in the rankings, but added that there is not much of a difference between the scores of Penn and the schools ranked just above it.
"A change in a tenth of a point can jump you a few places," he said.
Rankings for the departments were determined by experts ratings' of the programs on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. Penn's Physics score increased from 4 to 4.2 and the Mathematics score fell from 4.1 to 4.
Officials from Wharton, the Graduate School of Education and the School of Medicine did not respond to requests for comment.
