Winners of the annual academic Olympics were announced in Monday's issue of U.S. News and World Report, which featured its 1998 "Best Graduate Schools" rankings.

Harvard captured gold for its Medical and Business schools and for Ph.D. programs in economics and political science.

"Harvard University is America's best medical school," the magazine reported for the second year in a row. Second and third spots went to Johns Hopkins University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Unlike the games in Nagano, ties for first place are possible, and the Graduate School of Business shared a top spot with Stanford's business school. Last year Harvard placed first, Stanford second. Third place this year was shared by Columbia, M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management, and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

In law school rankings, Yale was first for the ninth consecutive year. Harvard and Stanford shared second place.

The Law School Admissions Council, an association of law schools, expensively protested the rankings. The Council spent $50,000 to send letters to 93,000 law school applicants warning them that choosing a school on the basis of the magazine's assessments "may be hazardous to your health." Robert Clark, Dean of Harvard Law School, did not participate in the protest. However, it is well known that he believes the Law School should not rank second to Yale's.

The Association of Dental Schools boycotted the ratings by not replying to evaluation questionnaires sent by the magazine.

The Graduate School of Education placed third, up from fourth in 1997 and behind Columbia's Teachers College and University of California, Berkeley.

Harvard ranked 25th among engineering schools, the same place as last year. M.I.T. took first; Stanford and UC-Berkeley tied for second.

In a ranking of Ph.D. programs in economics, English, history, political science, psychology, and sociology, Harvard took first place in political science, and shared first in economics with M.I.T. and Stanford. The University ranked third in English, sixth in history and psychology, and seventh in sociology.

For the first time, the magazine ranked public affairs programs, and the Kennedy School of Government's program won second place in this category behind Syracuse University.

Additional information and rankings are available at www.usnews.com.

-- William J. Cromie