AI/ML PhD Rank/Reputation: UMass Amherst vs. University of Maryland College Park

[Space?]

I am fortunate to be choosing between UMD and UMass PhD offers.  My area is AI/ML.  While other factors, such as (especially) research/advisor match, (and to a lesser extent) local area, stipend amount, etc. will likely be the deciding factors in my decision, I do not want to entirely ignore rank/reputation (for example, all else being equal, rank/reputation could be a tie-breaker) and was wondering about how people felt about the rank, reputation, and overall relative quality of the two programs.  Here are my thoughts/observations so far:

1. UMD is ranked higher overall in CS, but UMass has a better AI rank.
2. Contradicting #1 to some extent, I have had two professors at my current institution outright tell me that UMass is the better overall program.
3. My thoughts (at least prior to talking to those professors) was that the ranking difference was probably fairly insignificant.  There is a similar 6-year old thread here that mostly agrees with this thought, but it is a bit dated and things could have changed.

What do you all think?  Are the professors I talked to right about UMass being significantly better? Are the posts in that old thread more correct about the two being about the same?  Do you all have any other thoughts or advice about the two programs?  Thank you!

Edited March 5, 2017 by Space?

[machinescholar]

52 minutes ago, Space? said:

I am fortunate to be choosing between UMD and UMass PhD offers.  My area is AI/ML.  While other factors, such as (especially) research/advisor match, (and to a lesser extent) local area, stipend amount, etc. will likely be the deciding factors in my decision, I do not want to entirely ignore rank/reputation (for example, all else being equal, rank/reputation could be a tie-breaker) and was wondering about how people felt about the rank, reputation, and overall relative quality of the two programs.  Here are my thoughts/observations so far:

1. UMD is ranked higher overall in CS, but UMass has a better AI rank.
2. Contradicting #1 to some extent, I have had two professors at my current institution outright tell me that UMass is the better overall program.
3. My thoughts (at least prior to talking to those professors) was that the ranking difference was probably fairly insignificant.  There is a similar 6-year old thread here that mostly agrees with this thought, but it is a bit dated and things could have changed.

What do you all think?  Are the professors I talked to right about UMass being significantly better? Are the posts in that old thread more correct about the two being about the same?  Do you all have any other thoughts or advice about the two programs?  Thank you!

I am also an upcoming PhD student in ML, and have done some non-trivial research about these programmes during my application. I agree with your professors and many of my professors also said something similar that UMass CS reputation is stronger than what USNews gave it credit for, i.e., USNews CS Ranking: UMass (#25) vs UMD(#15) and USNews AI ranking UMass (#12) vs UMD(#16).

In academia, a department reputation mostly correlate with the number of papers they published in the top tier journals & conferences. According to this website: http://csrankings.org/. As a whole, UMass CS research output is almost identical to UMD (5.4 ~ 5.3). However, for AI, UMass is almost 50% better (19.8 vs 13.2). Refined further to only ML research (the first 3 categories), UMass still outperforms UMD (24.1 vs 16.9). 

That being saids, PhD decision ties down to your POI, research fit and placement record. But I am sure you would make the decision wisely...

 

Edited March 5, 2017 by machinescholar

[Space?]

I could not have asked for a more thorough or detailed answer; thank you!  I will certainly remember that the POI and research fit is the single most important factor and vastly outweighs considerations of rank or reputation, but it is good to know that the overall UMass AI/ML research quality is well above that of UMD.  Thank you again.

[pascal_barbots_wager]

Yeah, USNWR rankings are not worth very much. They're a few years out of date and the ranking criteria is too coarse anyway. I would not use rankings as much of a deciding factor here (the schools don't differ much by this metric anyway).