For the sixth consecutive year, Harvard Medical School has been named the top medical school in the country in U.S. News and World Report's annual "America's Best Graduate Schools" survey, according to a statement the magazine released yesterday.

In other listings, the Harvard School of Education ranked first, the Law School second and the Business School fourth.

The issue containing the survey will hit newsstands on Monday.

The Business and Law Schools both came very close to being number one. The top school in each category received 100 points; Harvard Business School had 99.3, while Harvard Law School checked in at 99.2.

Representatives from the Medical and Education Schools said they were pleased with their number-one ratings, but they added that it is impossible for a single survey to accurately distinguish between graduate schools.

"I was delighted when I found out. It's the first time education schools have been ranked [by U.S. News], and it's nice to be recognized as having the best faculty and the best students in the country," said Dean of the School of Education Jerome T. Murphy. "However, I also think it's very hard to rank schools like this in perfect order."

Harvard Medical School Public Information Officer Keren R. McGinity said the survey dealt only superficially with some subjects, such as academic mission, criteria for acceptance and differences in faculty and research resources.

"[The U.S. News] questionnaire is very straightforward and quantitative," McGinity said. "It is not qualitative."

Yale Law School spokesperson Cynthia Atwood also cautioned against taking the survey too seriously.

"It's very flattering to be ranked number one, but we don't put a lot of credence in these polls," Atwood said.

Director of the Harvard Law School Press Office Michael J. Chmura agreed with Atwood, saying that "we comply with [U.S. News'] request for data, but we also believe the survey doesn't accurately reflect the quality of our school."

"For example, we have an extremely high rate of employment out of school," Chmura added. "It doesn't make any sense that we're ranked at a lower level."

Chmura said he believed that the survey did nottake many factors into account, including the LawSchool's recent $150 million campaign "aimed atexpanding faculty and resources at a time whenmost other colleges are reducing their assets."

To achieve a more comprehensive assessment ofeach school, U.S. News asked more questionson its survey this year than in previous years.

But the rankings have changed little comparedto last year. Just as it has done seven times inthe past nine years, the Medical School held thenumber one ranking. The Law School stayed atnumber two behind Yale University, which earnedthe top rating for the sixth straight year. TheBusiness School fell slightly from third to fourthplace, edged out by MIT, the Wharton School ofBusiness at the University of Pennslyvania andStanford, respectively.

Rankings were based on four general criteria:student selectivity, faculty resources, reputationand job placement for graduates. The magazine'sstaff converted these numbers into percentiles andthen combined them to arrive at an overallranking