Temple University's flagship graduate and professional programs continued their ascent with a strong showing in the 2014 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings released today.

"In my first three months at Temple, I have been truly impressed with the quality of education we provide at the undergraduate, graduate and professional level. Temple truly is one of the great urban universities in the nation," said President Neil Theobald.

Temple’s Beasley School of Law is ranked #56 up from #58 last year, maintaining its position as the second-highest ranked law school in Pennsylvania. The Law School’s program in trial advocacy stayed at #2 and its programs in legal research & writing (#5), in part-time programs (#12) and in international programs (#13) remain among the nation's most highly ranked.

The full-time MBA program at Temple's Fox School of Business earned a #58 ranking, while its international program moved up two spots to #23 and part-time MBA one spot to #46.

Temple’s College of Education rose six spots to #47. Several programs in the College of Engineering moved up in the rankings including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and civil engineering. In the College of Liberal Arts, rankings for both political science and sociology increased.

The Temple School of Medicine earned a #51 ranking among research-oriented medical schools in the nation. Temple had the second-highest ranking of all medical schools in Philadelphia for this category.

U.S. News does not rank every graduate program annually. In recent years, Temple has had other highly ranked graduate programs including criminal justice (#11), fine arts (#13), healthcare management (#24), clinical psychology (#26), speech-language pathology (#29), occupational therapy (#31) and physical therapy (#44).

"We need to take advantage of every opportunity to remind students, alumni, donors, elected leaders and the people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that Temple University is a tremendous asset, as well as a great value," the president said.

U.S. News ranks professional school programs in business, education, engineering, law and medicine every year based on “expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research, and students.”

In addition to these five programs, U.S. News periodically ranks other graduate school programs according to the ratings of academic leaders.

Visit the U.S. News website for more on how its graduate school rankings are determined.