Wharton retained its No. 3 ranking. The Graduate School of Education moved up to 10 from 18. And the law school, which rose to 8 from 11, joined law schools across the country in terming the rankings "unreliable."

Unreliable or not, Penn made a strong showing in this year's U.S. News & World Report annual rankings of graduate and professional school programs, scheduled to have been available on newstands Feb. 23.

Among business schools, Penn tied for No. 3 with Columbia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, behind Harvard and Stanford, tied for No. 1.

The law school tied for No. 8 with the universities of Michigan and Virginia. Yale led, and Harvard and Stanford tied for No. 2; Columbia and Chicago, No. 4; New York University, No. 6; and Berkeley, No. 7.

Of the 10 top-ranking schools of law, eight joined with the Association of American Law Schools and 164 of the nation's 180 American Bar Association-endorsed schools to criticize the rankings as too subjective in a letter sent to 93,000 current law-school applicants, according to the Feb. 19 Wall Street Journal. Only No. 2 Harvard and No. 4 University of Chicago in the top group declined to sign the letter.

In medicine, Penn moved up to tie for No. 4 with Duke and Yale, behind Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Washington University.

The Graduate School of Education returned to the top 10 for the first time since 1995.

A new ranking for nursing schools places Penn No. 2, tied with the University of California, San Francisco, behind the University of Washington.

The School of Engineering ranked No. 32, up from No. 33 a year ago.