The university’s graduate programs received mixed reviews from U.S. News and World Report in its annual ranking of the top graduate schools in the United States.

The Georgetown Law Center and the Georgetown School of Medicine held their rankings from last year at 14th in the nation and 46th in the nation, respectively, while the McDonough School of Business’ graduate program fell seven places from its ranking last year to 34th.

Harvard earned top billing in the business and medical school categories, while Yale paced the law school rankings. The U.S. News rankings are the most prominent ranking system for graduate and undergraduate educational institutions, and are compiled using both expert opinion and statistical information.

“Georgetown is pleased that we maintained strong rankings for our graduate programs,” university spokesman Erik Smulson said.

Smulson said that the university does not read too deeply into the rankings.

“[The rankings] are only one of many measures of a program’s success,” he said. “Efforts to rank programs fail to recognize the real strength of American higher education, which is the great diversity of graduate and professional education in this country.”

The law center, which also placed 14th among law schools last year, ranked well in several law specialties, placing first in clinical training and third in tax law. According to the rankings, the school boasted a 19.3 percent acceptance rate in fall 2005, with the LSAT scores of matriculating students in the 167-170 range out of a possible 180. The rankings also took into account include measures such as bar exam passage rates, undergraduate GPA, and percentage of graduates employed at the time of graduation.

The medical school compiled a 5.2 percent acceptance rate for the fall of 2005, an identical percentage as Harvard’s top-ranked program. Georgetown, however, recorded relatively low marks in average peer institution assessment and residency director assessment scores.

Thomas O’Toole, the medical school’s associate dean of curriculum, said that the ultimate goal of graduate schools goes further than climbing magazine rankings.

“Our job is to have a medical school and program with excellently trained doctors, and that fact that we’re ranked highly is just [a bonus],” he said.

“We don’t play to the ranking system or the ranking process,” he added.

O’Toole added that the university’s ranking may have suffered because the rankings “weighted too heavily towards [research] funding.”

The graduate business school, which has ranked as high as 22nd in recent years, shared the 34th slot with Arizona State, Brigham Young and Georgia Tech