How does U.S. News get peer assessment score?
One way of getting at the quality of a graduate program is to survey the people in the best position to have an informed opinion – academics who administer and teach in these programs and people who hire or work directly with graduates of these programs. For all disciplines we rank, we surveyed deans or program directors as well as department chairs or faculty members and asked them to rate the quality of each program in their field on a scale from “marginal” (1) to “outstanding” (5). If the respondent was unfamiliar with any program, he or she had the option of indicating “don’t know.” A second survey was sent out to practitioners in the fields of business, education, engineering, law and medicine. These people – recruiters of recent graduates from business or engineering schools, school superintendents, professionals in legal fields, including law firm hiring partners, judges and state attorneys general, and directors of medical residency programs – were surveyed using the same surve
