Harvard's medical, business and education graduate schools are the nation's finest, according to a just-released U.S. News and World Report survey.

Harvard's main competitor for first place in several graduate programs--including business and several Ph.D.s in the humanities--is now as likely to be Stanford than be Yale, the rankings show.

The Harvard Law School--which tied Stanford for second last year--fell to third this year.

Both the Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Graduate School of Education (GSE) also held the top spots last year in the survey, which the magazine's editors admit to being somewhat subjective.

In two of the magazine's categories--reputation by other academics and by medical professionals--HMS has consistently earned a number one rating. The money the school has collected in research grants, which topped $587 million last year, also contributed to its high position. Though other schools were rated higher in some medical specialties like primary care and internal medicine, HMS topped the list in such specialties as AIDS research and treatment and in pediatric.

The Harvard Business School tied for first with Stanford but received solo top marks in how company recruiters perceive the school.

Though Stanford has an acceptance rate twice as low as Harvard's, HBS grads earn an average of about $'1,500 more their first year out of the school.

The magazine ranked GSE slightly higher than Stanford's School of Education, though the latter tends to attract applicants with higher entrance examination scores and has a better faculty-to-student ratio.

Despite being ranked so highly, Peta Gillyatt, a spokesperson for HMS, said potential applicants ought to take such rankings with a grain of salt.

"We're very pleased to be number 1, but the U.S. News rankings are a quantitative survey and it is not possible to capture the many facets of the medical school experience in it," Gillyatt said.

According to an explanatory article on the magazine's educational ranking web site, www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/, the rankings are based on test scores, faculty-to-student ratio, "insider ratings," budget and research grants, starting salaries for graduates, among other criteria.

Schools can receive a weighted average of 100 points. HMS placed first with its 100.0 score, which was 27 points ahead of its nearest competitor, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore

Most of the graduate programs run by Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) were clustered individually in the survey.

Though the GSAS ranked within the top seven for nearly every one of its programs, Harvard's Ph.D program in computer science placed 17th, tied with Purdue.