UPenn’s Medical School Attains High Ranking

Congratulations to the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania for having tied for third place on U.S. News & World Report’s national ranking of medical schools! It was the only one of the six medical schools in the Philadelphia region to crack the magazine’s Top 50 list. UPenn tied with Johns Hopkins University and the University of California-San Francisco when it came to the best medical schools for research, falling behind only Harvard University (at first place) and Stanford University. Coming in just below the Top 50 cutoff were The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, which landed a spot of 54th on the research list, and the Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, which came in 56th.

The Peralman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania made a strong showing in national rankings of medical schools.

The magazine ranked medical schools in two categories. Besides research, the other area of ranking was primary care. Of all the local medical schools, the University of Pennsylvania placed highest on the list, tying at 11th place with the University of Colorado and the University of Pittsburgh. The University of Washington swept the top place in that category, with Thomas Jefferson University coming in 54th. U.S. News & World Report used multiple metrics to compile their rankings, including National Institutes of Health funding for the research rankings and, for primary care, what percentage of graduates entered the field of primary care.

Then there were the lists of top specialty programs, in which UPenn also made a strong showing. Specialty rankings were compiled by medical school deans and senior faculty members. Penn ranked first place for pediatrics, third place for women’s health, and fourth place for internal care.

The school was no slouch when it came to nursing, either. The University of Pennsylvania’s nursing master’s degree program was ranked first in the nation last year, but slipped to second behind Johns Hopkins University this year. Villanova University tied for 58th with 10 other schools, and Thomas Jefferson University tied for 70th with five other schools. The nursing rankings were based on “surveys of nursing school deans and deans of graduate studies at nursing schools along with other factors such as faculty resources, like the ratio of full-time equivalent master’s students to full-time equivalent faculty and a school’s proportion of 2015 full-time faculty with doctoral degrees and research activity, which includes NIH funding and other federal and non-federal research grants,” according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.