A UNLV-record 26 programs – including 14 from the William S. Boyd School of Law – ranked among the top 100 in their fields as part of U.S. News & World Report's annual collection of top graduate and professional schools released today.
 
Among the university’s notable rankings were in Nuclear Engineering (28th) and Criminal Justice (29th). UNLV’s master’s and doctoral programs in Nursing also performed well, ranking 66th and 65th overall, respectively. They join an online nursing master’s program that the publication already ranks as the nation’s 7th best.
 
“Strong graduate programs are essential to our success as an institution and to our region’s economic sustainability as they produce the highly skilled scientists, engineers, teachers, policymakers, health care professionals, artists, business leaders and entrepreneurs our state needs to be competitive,” said UNLV President Keith E. Whitfield. “Graduate students enrich the university experience and bring new ideas and creative leadership to every field — assets we’ll need as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.”  
 
Boyd Law continued to show why it’s among the nation’s top public law schools, rising two places to 60th out of 193 accredited programs. For the fourth consecutive year, the school’s Lawyering Process Program ranked No. 1 nationally for legal writing, and the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution moved up one place to 5th in the dispute resolution category.
 
UNLV Law’s part-time juris doctor program also remained among the nation’s best, ranking 19th this year. The part-time program offers courses in the evening, allowing students who are employed full-time to earn a law degree in four years. Other top-100 law school programs in this year’s national rankings include Health Law (32), Clinical Training (40), Contracts/Commercial Law (45), Tax Law (60), Criminal Law (66), Constitutional Law (67), Intellectual Property (71), Business/Corporate Law (73), Environmental Law (73), and Trial Law (79). 

Other UNLV programs ranked within their field’s top 100 include doctoral programs in public affairs (83), sociology (84), political science (89), and English (99), and Lee Business School’s part-time MBA program (89). The Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering had four disciplines ranked in the top 100, with aerospace studies (62), environmental engineering (83), and civil engineering (95) joining the nuclear engineering program.
 
“These rankings are just one indicator of the incredible quality and depth of graduate education at UNLV,” said UNLV Provost Chris Heavey. “Our strong graduate programs invigorate teaching and research efforts university-wide, and they respond to and anticipate regional workforce demands that move our community forward.”
 
Each year, U.S. News analyzes more than 2,000 graduate and specialty programs in a broad range of disciplines. Programs are ranked by discipline or specialty and evaluated based on criteria specific to each degree field, expert opinions about program excellence, and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research and students.