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Background

U.S. News selects factors, known as ranking indicators, to assess each program in the categories outlined above. A program's score for each ranking indicator is calculated using data that the program reported to U.S. News in a statistical survey and a peer reputation survey.

Schools that failed to report data on a ranking indicator or reported on cohorts too small to be analyzed receive an estimate that for most ranking indicators equals the lowest-scoring value among respondents that reported the data. In other words, schools almost always benefit by at least demonstrating they are willing and able to provide information on their programs versus leaving questions blank. The estimates that are used for internal ranking calculation purposes aren't published.

The indicator value used for each program is the number of standard deviations its indicator score is from the mean indicator score of all other ranked programs. This accounts for statistical variance.

U.S. News multiplies these standardized values by weights it has selected for the ranking indicators and then sums these values to compute the four separate category scores. Each category score is rescaled for display purposes on usnews.com so that the top-scoring school receives a display score of 100 and the bottom-scoring school receives a display score of zero.

To produce the overall scores, U.S. News takes the raw category scores before they have been rescaled and multiplies them by the category weights detailed above. The resulting scores are then rescaled and rounded to the nearest integers from zero to 100.

Numerical rankings are assigned to programs in descending order of their overall scores, with the highest-scoring program ranked No. 1. Schools with the same scores are tied in the rankings. 

Programs whose overall scores place outside the top 75 percent do not have their rank and score published. Instead, U.S. News has made an editorial decision to publish the ranking range of all ranked schools in the bottom quartile and display them alphabetically.

For the 2019 rankings, 19 schools are designated as unranked because they reported having fewer than 10 students enrolled or because their programs were less than a year old at the time of the data collection. U.S. News did not calculate a numerical rank for these schools.

All programs with a ranking range or that are unranked are still listed in the U.S. News directory.

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