Penn's graduate schools are as strong as ever, according to new rankings released by U.S. News and World Report in April.
Penn made it into the top 10 on 11 different lists and remained fairly consistent with previous years in the key categories - business, engineering, medicine, law and education.
The Wharton School held its No. 3 spot on the list of best business schools and had a top-10 position on every speciality list, including No. 1 for finance and No. 2 for marketing, accounting and executive MBA.
Penn's School of Medicine was ranked third overall in research and 12th in primary care, also earning top 10 spots on lists for internal medicine, drug and alcohol abuse, pediatrics and women's health.
The Engineering School went up three spots on the overall engineering ranking - from last year's number 30 spot to this year's number 27 - and is tied at No. 7 with Rice University for bioengineering.
The Law School and the Graduate School of Education, meanwhile, have been dropping slightly in rank over the past few years.
Penn Law is at eighth place this year, down from seventh in 2008 and sixth in 2007.
Mark Eyerly, spokesman for the Law School, said he is not too concerned with the shift.
"We think rankings are most useful in helping prospective students distinguish between the very best schools, the best schools, good schools and so forth," he said. "We are comfortable that we are one of the very best schools and are not very concerned about moving a few positions."
The Graduate School of Education is ranked 13th this year, a substantial drop from being 7th in 2006.
Officials from the Graduate School of Education did not respond to requests for comment.
Admissions consultant Michele Hernandez agreed that these changes in position are not very significant.
"Most students using the graduate school rankings would know enough not to impart a huge significance to minor fluctuations in rank from year to year," she wrote in an e-mail. "These kinds of rankings are helpful to get an idea ... but you can never use rankings to split hairs between the No. 3- and No. 4-ranked school."
Penn also ranked high on the lists for social sciences and humanities, ranking ninth in economics, tying for fourth in English with Columbia University and Harvard University and tying for ninth in history with the University of California, Los Angeles.
On the specialized humanities lists, Penn was first in Medieval and Renaissance Literature and third for U.S. colonial history.
For health schools, Penn was second in midwifery, third in nursing, and fourth in veterinary medicine and health care management, where Wharton tied with the University of Washington and the Virginia Commonwealth University.
