When most people think of a 10-spot, the $10 bill comes to mind. But for Cornellians, a 10-spot is the university's ranking in two recent national surveys.

In its Nov. 7 issue, The Scientist magazine listed Cornell in 10th place in its U.S. survey of the best places for life scientists to work in academia. And the November/December issue of the journal Foreign Policy named Cornell as the 10th-best school in the country for students interested in pursuing an international relations career in academia.

In The Scientist's third annual survey, the top three U.S. institutions for a life scientist to work were Clemson University, Trudeau Institute and the J. David Gladstone Institutes, respectively. Cornell was the only Ivy League university in the top 15. in a separate survey by the publication, the top three international, or non-U.S. institutions, for life scientists to work were Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and two Canadian universities, the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta.

The most important factors contributing to workplace quality for a U.S. life scientist included, in order, personal satisfaction of the work itself, a good health-care plan, good working relationships with peers, a fair tenure review and a clearly laid out tenure system. Interestingly, an institution's reputation did not factor heavily in workplace satisfaction (25th).

The magazine received 2,603 valid responses to the survey, representing 135 individual institutions; 91 U.S. institutions and 44 non-U.S. institutions that had five or more responses were evaluated.

"What makes the results of this survey so valuable is that professionals are providing unfiltered insight into their workplace," said Richard Gallagher, publisher of The Scientist. "People don't praise their place of work in a blind survey unless they truly mean it."

Similarly, Cornell was ranked by international relations professors in a list of the top international relations schools for students looking to pursue academic careers in the field, according to Foreign Policy. The survey of more than 1,100 colleges and universities asked professors to name the best schools for both academic and policy careers.

For a career in academia, Harvard was top ranked, while Johns Hopkins took the title for students aspiring to a public policy career.