Graduate programs at the University of Wisconsin ranked consistently high in the U.S. News and World Report released Friday, which named 33 programs to the top 10 in the nation.

The key disciplines included in the 2007 graduate school rankings were business, law, medicine, engineering and education. The rankings took many factors into consideration, some of which include admissions requirements, student-body profiles, financial-aid information and starting salaries in specific fields.

"The rankings show that we have a very good reputation — in some cases, even top of the line," Virginia Sapiro, associate vice chancellor for teaching and learning at UW, said. "The rankings were mostly in the sciences and the professions, where [UW was] consistently scored quite good."

UW's ranked programs include:

– School of Business, ranked 31st
– School of Education, ranked seventh
– College of Engineering, ranked 15th
– School of Medicine, ranked 28th best school for research
– School of Law, ranked 32nd
– Library and Information Studies, ranked 11th
– Biological sciences, ranked 12th
– Chemistry, ranked seventh
– Computer science, ranked ninth
– The earth sciences, ranked ninth
– Mathematics, ranked 14th
– Physics, ranked 16th

Kerry Hill, communications director for the UW School of Education, said consistently high rankings for the school means drawing in the most qualified faculty and attracting quality students.

Surveys conducted by the school, Hill said, show very high placement after graduation, with most students holding jobs or attending higher education three years after leaving UW.

The UW School of Business, too, has reported "skyrocketing" placement numbers, up to 94 percent in 2005 from 82 percent in 2004, according to Rebecca Smith, public relations director for the School of Business.

While Smith said the U.S. News rankings are exciting and show "definite progress," the main factors the School of Business gears its programs toward are student quality, student satisfaction and placement — all of which have been up, especially since the launch of a specialized MBA program, new in 2004 and the only of its kind in the nation.

Although positive attention gained from high rankings is beneficial for UW's reputation, Sapiro noted, she warned about taking rankings too seriously.

Rankings such as these, she said, are mostly based on other administrators' views of graduate programs across the country and are therefore largely subjective.

The most beneficial function of the rankings is as a "framework for a first look," Sapiro said. She advised prospective students to look more closely at individual programs of interest using the rankings as a guide.

UW Graduate School Dean Martin Cadwallader also said that rankings are only one factor to consider when evaluating graduate programs, since "rankings are only as good as the variables they consider."

A strong graduate program will attract strong students, and the prospect of working with high-quality students in the classroom, as teaching assistants and in research will draw strong faculty in reciprocal fashion, Cadwallader noted.

"[The rankings] show strength across the board, which is something we always work for," he said.