UCSF Schools Rank Highly in 2018 US News Survey

By Laura Kurtzman

UCSF School of Medicine students Mengya Wu and Manuel Gonzalez talk in the UCSF library
Photo by Steve Babuljak

UC San Francisco’s School of Medicine ranked in the top five nationally in this year’s U.S. News & World Report survey of best graduate schools.

The school was ranked fourth in training medical students in biomedical research and third in primary care education, the two broad categories in which the magazine rates medical schools nationally. In these two ratings, UCSF’s medical school ranks as the top public institution for research training and the only medical school in the nation, public or private, ranked in the top five in both categories.

The School of Medicine also received Top 10 rankings in six of seven specialty areas ranked by U.S. News, including internal medicine, in which UCSF was ranked No. 1; women’s health, in which UCSF was No. 2; pediatrics; family medicine; geriatrics; and drug/alcohol abuse.

“With the privilege of being a great university comes the responsibility to serve,” said Talmadge E. King, Jr., MD, dean of the School of Medicine. “We are proud to be recognized for training doctors who will excel in all domains, whether as pioneering physician-scientists or as champions for the most vulnerable in our community.”

The UCSF School of Nursing was also highly rated in the new U.S. News rankings. UCSF was in the Top 10 in all five of the nursing programs offered by the school that are ranked by the magazine – adult gerontology acute care; adult gerontology primary care; family; pediatric primary care; and psychiatric/mental health across the lifespan. Due to an administrative oversight, the school as a whole was not included in the overall rankings this year.

In 2016, the last year for which U.S. News & World Report ranked nurse midwifery programs, UCSF’s was ranked first.

UCSF also has top schools of dentistry and pharmacy, but dental schools are not ranked by U.S. News, and the magazine did not rank pharmacy schools this year. Science PhD programs, which fall under UCSF’s Graduate Division, also were not ranked this year.

UCSF’s schools of medicine, nursing and pharmacy, along with the School of Dentistry, are part of an integrated hospital and biomedical research enterprise that includes two Top 10 hospitals and world-class biomedical research laboratories.

UCSF students Philip Kingsford, Jacob Gindi, and Yeeann Chen talk
Photo by Susan Merrell

The U.S. News rankings are based on data provided by schools, as well as information from surveys of school leaders. Other factors include the amount of funding that faculty receive from the National Institutes of Health; the rates at which graduates enter primary care residencies in family practice, pediatrics and internal medicine; how selective each school is in admitting students; and the ratio of full-time science and clinical faculty to medical students.

Medical specialty areas are ranked based on ratings made by medical school deans and senior faculty at peer institutions who are asked to identify up to 10 schools offering the best programs in each specialty.

“Education is a core mission of UCSF,” said UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS. “We’re proud that our professional schools continue to be top-ranked in the nation, both in training the next generation of scientists, as well as training the next generation of clinicians, especially primary care physicians, which are in critical demand.”

Results are published in the magazine’s 2018 issue of “Best Graduate Schools,” which appears online Tuesday.

UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland – and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.