The University of Washington again has been ranked first among primary care medical schools in the country, according to annual rankings of graduate and professional programs provided by U.S.News & World Report.

The School of Medicine was tied for sixth in biomedical research. Only Harvard Medical School was ranked as high as the UW in both primary care and research.

Among programs newly ranked in 2008, academic specialties in the medical school that were ranked highly include: Family medicine (first for 17th year in a row), rural medicine (first for 17th year in a row), AIDS (fourth), women's health (seventh), internal medicine (sixth), geriatrics (seventh), drug/alcohol abuse (eighth) and pediatrics (seventh).

Other UW programs newly ranked by U.S. News in the top 10 include the graduate program in occupational therapy, which was ninth, and the pharmacy program, which was ranked fifth.

The UW College of Engineering and School of Medicine's biomedical/bioengineering specialty was ranked fifth. The computer science program was ranked sixth; the specialty in artificial intelligence was ranked fifth, systems was fifth and theory was seventh.

The UW College of Education's graduate program was ranked seventh.

The program in audiology was ranked third. Speech-language pathology was ranked fifth and clinical psychology first.

Social work's graduate program was ranked fourth.

The environmental policy and management program in the Evans School of Public Affairs was ranked fourth and the nonprofit management program was ranked fifth.

The master of fine arts program in ceramics was ranked fifth, as was the fiber arts program.

The mathematics program in statistics was ranked sixth. The nuclear physics program was ranked third.

The UW has previously been ranked the 17th best university in the world by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and 22nd of the top 100 global universities by Newsweek magazine.