"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," said former HMS spokesperson Peta Gillyatt after last year's rankings were released.

Harvard failed to make the top five among engineering graduate programs-the only one of the five areas of graduate education released on Friday in which Harvard was not honored. Last year Harvard was rated 25th among engineering programs. MIT's engineering program was ranked first this year.

The full rankings will be available today on U.S. News' website and in its special edition, "Best Graduate Schools." The rankings will also appear in next week's edition of the magazine. The full report will include rankings for Harvard's doctorate programs contained within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The rankings are determined by a number of quantitative factors, usually including the school's reputation among other academics, selectivity in admission, the resources available to faculty, and the success of graduates in finding jobs after graduating.

Slightly different formulas are used for each type of graduate school. The magazine typically will makes changes from year to year in the criteria it uses to rank schools, leading it to caution using year-to-year variations in school's ranking.

In addition to graduate school rankings, U.S. News also publishes a ranking of undergraduate education, a ranking that traditionally ranks Harvard among the top schools. Harvard was second to Princeton in last year's ranking; a new set of rankings will be released in September.