The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration lost some ground and the Dartmouth Medical School again failed to improve in this year's edition of the U.S. News and World Report "America's Best Graduate Schools," which places Tuck in eighth place among business schools and again excludes DMS from the Top 50 medical schools.
Tuck's ranking in the U.S. News survey has declined each of the last two years, falling from sixth in 1995 to seventh in 1996, and eighth this year.
Previously, the Tuck School had steadily rose from 10th place in 1992 to sixth place in 1995.
Dean of the Tuck School Paul Danos called the slip from seventh to eighth "insignificant," saying it was the result of "statistical bouncing around without much meaning."
He said U.S. News was "splitting hairs and making distinctions where no distinctions exist."
Despite the slip, Danos asserted Tuck is among the best business schools in the nation -- especially since the school improved its ranking in eight out of nine categories, losing ground only in the "Reputation Rank by Academics" category.
Danos said the Tuck School's high ranking was particularly impressive because its small size -- Tuck has only 180 graduates per class while some of the bigger business schools have over 1000 -- makes visibility difficult.
"When you look at real quality," he said, "Tuck is right at the very top."
With Tuck still considered among the elite in the nation, Danos said the school is in "a very strong position in the market" -- and he added he did not expect this year's slip in the U.S. News rankings to affect applications.
Since the Tuck School accepts only 12.6 percent of its applicants -- second only to Stanford Business School -- Danos said he thinks it will remain "very competitive."
While Tuck continued its strong showing in the U.S. News survey, the Dartmouth Medical School was absent from the Top 50 again.
Medical School Director of Communications Hali Wickner downplayed the importance of Dartmouth's absence from the listing, noting that the school's small size is a great handicap when DMS is compared with mammoth medical schools like Harvard University's.
"You have to look at the criteria that each graduate school is ranked on," she said.
Medical schools can be ranked in one of two categories -- research institutions and primary care institutions.
DMS, which takes fewer than 100 students per year, does not have enough students to qualify for the primary care rankings, so it is rated as a research institution, Wickner said.
"Dartmouth doesn't even come close" to larger institutions with greater funding, Wickner said.
"My understanding is not every school has a chance to be ranked," she said. "We are never able to come up to the figures to be even considered."
Wickner said the school's unrated status should not affect applications or admissions to the school.
"We are an excellent school by quality of faculty and quality of our curriculum," she said. "We get over 7,000 applications a year and we only have a class size of about 85."
The Medical School is satisfied with its current size and strategies, Wickner said, and has no plans for expansion.
"Our class size works well for the way we are," she said.
This is the eighth year that U.S. News has ranked graduate schools. The weekly magazine also ranks undergraduate institutions in a fall edition that has recently come under fire from many schools.
