The Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (TCOM) jumped to 29th in rankings for primary care medical schools this year, according to U.S. News & World Report's ranking for 2010. This is the college's eighth consecutive appearance in the top 50. The Physician Assistant program ranked 34th, the Department of Family Medicine ranked 17th, and TCOM was listed as 3rd in percentage of graduates entering primary care residency.

"This is an exciting time to be a part of TCOM," said Alan Podawiltz, DO and acting dean of the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. "Not only do our students continue to outscore all other osteopathic medical students on the COMLEX exam, our class size continues to grow. We are now educating more osteopathic physicians than ever before, and more of our graduates enter primary care than any other Texas medical school."

Each year, U.S.News & World Report ranks professional school programs in business, education, engineering, law and medicine. The rankings are based on expert opinion about program performance and statistical indicators that measure the quality of the school's faculty, research and students.

To gather the opinion data, U.S. News & World Report surveyed deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1, which was marginal, to 5, which was outstanding. Professionals who hire new graduates were also surveyed for the rankings.

 The print version of U.S. News & World Report will be published April 28.

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