U.S. News Ranks Both BYU's Law and Business Schools at 34

PROVO, Utah — Mar 31, 2006 — Brigham Young University's business and law schools are among the top 50 in the United States, reports U.S. News & World Report in its "America's Best Graduate Schools" issue, on sale Monday, April 3. Other BYU graduate programs and specialties rank in the top 100 in their categories.

The J. Reuben Clark Law School is ranked 34th, and the Marriott School of Management is also ranked 34th.

"Although no ranking system can fully evaluate a program, we are pleased to be consistently ranked among the top 20 percent of law schools in the United States," said Kevin Worthen, dean of the law school. "The growing recognition of the strength of our graduates by lawyers and judges nationwide is especially gratifying."

Ned C. Hill, dean of the Marriott School, shared similar sentiments. "We are gratified to be listed among the country's finest business schools," said Hill. "We recognize, however, the limited ability of the rankings to measure a school's quality and success. Our most important measure is the character of our graduates – something that is demonstrated over a lifetime."

The Marriott School's graduate accounting program broke into the top ten at number nine. "Our accounting faculty has done a terrific job building an innovative and practical curriculum," Hill said. "As a result, our accounting students are in high demand."

Referring to the Marriott School's ratings by corporate recruiters, Hill said, "They love the strong work ethic, analytical ability and communications skills of BYU MBA graduates. We wish we could take more credit for developing these attributes, much of which they learned from good parents and missionary service."

U.S. News ranks graduate programs in the areas of business, education, engineering, law and medicine. These rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research and students. Indicator and opinion data come from surveys of more than 1,200 programs and nearly 9,600 academics and other professionals conducted in fall 2005. The magazine also ranks programs in the sciences, social sciences and humanities based solely on the ratings of academic experts.

The following are the other BYU graduate programs and specialties ranked in the new issue:

David O. McKay School of Education

-- 77th, top education programs

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology

-- 62nd, mechanical engineering specialties

-- 74th, civil engineering specialties

-- 76th, chemical engineering specialties

-- 84th, electrical engineering specialties

Since social work and nursing schools are not newly ranked in this addition, BYU's School of Social Work retains its previous ranking of 87th and the College of Nursing maintains its previous ranking of 58th.

Full ranking reports are available in the newsstand book (2007 edition) "America's Best Graduate Schools" and online at USNews.com.