The University of Virginia School of Medicine improved its ranking to 23rd in the nation for research-intensive schools in this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings. UVa. is the only medical school in the Commonwealth to be included in the top 50 and is one of just six schools in the mid-Atlantic, including Johns Hopkins, Duke and U.N.C., to crack the Top 30 in the research-intensive schools category.
“We are very pleased with the continued recognition for the work our faculty is doing in training the next generation of physicians, providing outstanding and innovative patient care and conducting ground-breaking research,” said Dr. Arthur Garson, Jr., vice president and dean of the UVa. School of Medicine.
A major contributor to UVa’s success is its ability to attract research funding from the National Institutes of Health. In a year when some schools saw declines in the tens of millions of dollars in NIH funding, grants for medical research at UVa. held steady at $144.9 million, according to U. S. News. “With the reduction in NIH funding nationally, our researchers’ success point to long hours of experiments and long hours of grant writing – demonstrating how dedicated they are to their science,” said Garson.
One hundred and forty-five medical schools were surveyed. Other indicators included peer assessment, enrollment, undergraduate GPA, acceptance rates, scores on the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test), and faculty-student ratio.
