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Duke School of Nursing First in Latest U.S. News Rankings

Medicine, law, business, engineering and several Social Sciences and Humanities Ph.D. programs all rank

The Duke School of Nursing moved from fourth to first in the US News and World Report rankings. Photo courtesy Duke School of Nursing.
The Duke School of Nursing moved from fourth to first in the US News and World Report rankings. Photo courtesy Duke School of Nursing.

DURHAM, N.C. -- The Duke University School of Nursing’s master’s and doctor of nursing practice programs each placed first in the latest rankings by U.S. News & World Report magazine’s Best Graduate Schools.

Duke’s School of Medicine, School of Law, Fuqua School of Business, Pratt School of Engineering and several Social Sciences and Humanities Ph.D. programs all rank among the country’s leading institutions in their fields, according to the latest rankings that were released Tuesday.

The nursing school was also recognized in several specialty areas this year: Nurse Practitioner-Pediatric, Primary Care (second); Informatics, and Doctor of Nursing Practice-Nurse Anesthesia (third); Nurse Practitioner-Family (tied for fourth); Nurse Practitioner-Adult Gerontology, Acute Care (fifth).

U.S. News says the annual rankings are “based on statistical surveys sent to administrators at more than 1,970 graduate programs and from reputation surveys sent to more than 16,500 academics and professionals in the disciplines.”

The School of Medicine finished tied at No. 7 for research (up from eighth in 2016). Several specialty programs in the School of Medicine were also ranked: Internal Medicine (fifth); Geriatrics (tied for fifth); Family Medicine (ninth).

Duke Law came in tied at No. 10 for top law schools (up from 11th the previous year) and The Fuqua School of Business remained tied for 12th for Top MBA Programs.

Duke Law specialty areas were also ranked: Environmental Law (eighth); International Law (10th); Intellectual Property Law (tied for 12th).

Fuqua specialty programs ranked in the survey were Marketing (fourth); Executive MBA (tied for fourth); Management (tied for sixth); Finance (12th).

The Pratt School of Engineering was in a tie for 29th among the nation’s top graduate programs in that field (up from 30th last year), and tied for sixth in the specialty category of Biomedical/Bioengineering.

Among the Social Sciences and Humanities Ph.D. programs at Duke:

  • Political Science tied for seventh;
  • English tied for 13th;
  • Sociology shared 15th place;
  • Economics tied for 16th place;
  • Psychology tied for 17th place, and
  • History shared the No. 18 ranking.

Within specialty areas, history’s African–American section ranked second, while political science’s Political Theory ranked sixth, as did its American Politics program.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Ph.D. categories were last updated in 2013.

The magazine issues annual rankings for law, business, engineering, nursing and medical schools. Other rankings are issued less frequently, including those for public policy analysis.

For more information, visit https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools.