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March 14, 2017

UAB graduate and professional programs highly ranked by U.S. News & World Report

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green drone streamU.S. News & World Report ranks a number of University of Alabama at Birmingham graduate programs among the nation’s best. The latest rankings were released March 14 in the 2018 edition of the Best Graduate Schools guidebook, available online at usnews.com.

In the UAB School of Nursing, the Nursing Health Systems Administration specialty program ranked No. 6, Master of Science in Nursing ranked No. 13, Doctor of Nursing Practice ranked No. 23, and the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner specialty program ranked No. 18. UAB’s School of Medicine is ranked No. 35 for top schools of medicine for research, No. 31 for its Primary Care program, and No. 15 in Geriatrics.

The largest year-over-year gain saw the UAB Collat School of Business break into the nation’s top 50 part-time MBA programs with a dramatic increase from No. 89 to No. 46.

“We’re honored that U.S. News & World Report has recognized our outstanding MBA program, ranking UAB in the top 15 percent of part-time MBA programs in the country,” said Ken Miller, Ed.D., director of the MBA program at the Collat School of Business. “We’re proud to offer a program that challenges working professionals to reach their full potential while offering convenient on-campus and online class options to maintain a work-life balance.”

Programs for which U.S. News did not release new rankings, but in which UAB is recognized among the nation’s best in its most recent assessment of those programs, include the Master of Science in Health Administration program (No. 2) in UAB’s School of Health Professions, the Doctor of Physical Therapy (No. 20), and the Occupational Therapy (No. 25) and Physician Assistant Studies (No. 16), as well as the School of Nursing’s Adult Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program (No. 14) and the UAB School of Public Health’s Master of Science in Public Health (No. 19).

“We’re honored that U.S. News & World Report has recognized our outstanding MBA program, ranking UAB in the top 15 percent of part-time MBA programs in the country. We’re proud to offer a program that challenges working professionals while offering convenient on-campus and online class options to maintain a work-life balance.”

UAB also appears in several online graduate program rankings: Best Engineering Programs for Veterans (No. 14), Best Online Graduate Nursing Programs (No. 16), Best Online Graduate Computer and Information Technology Programs (No. 19), Best Online Graduate Business Programs non-MBA (No. 22), Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs (No. 28), and Best Online Graduate Education Programs (No. 29).

Each year, U.S. News ranks professional school programs in business, education, engineering, law, nursing and medicine. The rankings in these six areas are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students. Indicator and opinion data come from statistical surveys of more than 1,900 graduate programs and from reputation surveys sent to more than 18,400 academics and professionals in the ranked disciplines. The surveys were conducted during the fall of 2015 and in early 2016. In each field, rankings of programs in various specialty areas based on reputation data alone are also presented.

The magazine also ranks programs in the sciences, social sciences and humanities on a rotating basis, usually every three years. These rankings are based solely on the ratings of academic experts, as are the health specialties.