UNCW's graduate nursing and social work programs shot up more than 20 spots each on U.S. News & World Report's Best Graduate Schools list, according to an announcement Tuesday.

Five of the University of North Carolina Wilmington's programs made the publication's 2019 list: the part-time M.B.A. program (No. 187); public affairs M.P.A. degree (No. 135); and master’s degree programs in education (No. 150), nursing (No. 141, up 22 spots from last year) and social work (No. 75, up 28 spots) all received recognition, a news release stated.

The release said that among the UNC System institutions, UNCW’s master’s in social work program ranks behind only UNC Charlotte and UNC Chapel Hill.

“Our graduate programs in nursing and social work have a proud history of providing quality learning experiences,” said College of Health and Human Services Dean Charles Hardy. “The continued improvements we see in our rankings from last year to this year are a strong endorsement of the quality of our faculty and their dedication to the pursuit of excellence.”

For the annual graduate school rankings report, U.S. News uses data from statistical surveys of more than 2,012 programs and from reputation surveys sent to more than 20,500 academics and professionals, stated the release.

The peer reputation data is gathered by asking deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field, according to U.S. News & World Report. To determine the business and education rankings, surveys were also given to professionals who hire new graduates, the release said.

This year, for the first time, U.S. News reduced the value of reported GPA, GRE and GMAT scores for full-time and part-time MBA programs and GRE scores in the education rankings if less than 50 percent of an entering class submitted those scores, according to a U.S. News news release. "U.S. News believes this lack of data means the scores are not representative of the entire class," the release stated.