bluestskies

Everyone agrees that US News' rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. That was never the issue. Does anyone want to share their personal or perceived rankings?

They are completely irrelevant (and absolutely misleading) for public policy schools that focus on international affairs, so they most certainly aren't the "best source out there." Somehow I doubt, even for pure "public affairs" schools, Indiana is better than Harvard and Georgia better than Princeton, which has nothing to do with prestige and everything to do with a school's resources, quality of faculty, and so on. Public affairs as an academic, non-professional discipline is what is being measured here. It's like "public relations" as an academic discipline (i.e. irrelevant). Academicians will have a natural bias toward academic programs, and most of the top programs discussed on this forum are not pure academic programs and most blend public with international affairs. If US News attempted a similar ranking for international affairs programs with no public affairs ranking, it would be like using APSIA to survey schools about the quality of pure public policy programs. It doesn't make sense and it's a fundamental flaw with the ranking. Anyone who goes to Indiana thinking they're at a more highly regarded program than Harvard/HKS is absolutely, 100% delusional. The schools with the best reputation in the government/public sector/NGOs as well as the private sector are not represented accurately in this ranking.

Well civil discourse be dammed I guess. I do think that you are on point in that schools such as Syracuse and Indiana are ranked too high. That said, I think if you look at the top 25 say (and forget about their ordering) you would essentially have the biggest players in the public affairs area. Clearly there will always be exceptions and oversights, but as a very general guide to the top schools in a field it can be a helpful resource.
 
No one should take the number ranking very seriously, but I stand by my initial assertion that the rankings have a worse reputation than they ought to. If you can believe it, I once saw on this very same forum site someone be characterized as being "delusional" purely because they showed mild support for the US News rankings. How absurd is that?
 
I think if anyone is making decisions based on any ranking system than they are making a mistake. Everyone should come to a decision based on their own criteria of what is important to them.

While I too agree that the rankings do have some innate inaccuracies, I do think it provides a glimpse into a schools quality. The survey is administered to deans, directors and department chairs of the 266 public affairs institutions in the US (two per school), who I would hope have some amount of expertise on the subject even if they are biased.  A basic 1 to 5 quality score is given and then averaged to come up with the final ranking. The response rate is actually 39% which really isn't that bad (if you have ever administered a large survey before you will know).  I think the point is well taken that public affairs is loosely defined, but US News doesn’t even create the definition they are supplied a list of schools by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. All of this information can be found in their methodology section (a section that most people do not know exists it would seem).
 
To be clear I don’t put too much stake in these rankings, but I do think they get a worse reputation than they deserve. Honestly, it is the best source out there and while imperfect (and skewed toward academia) it does provide some useful information about a programs quality. No one should ever make a decision based solely on these ranking, but as you search for schools I don’t think keeping them in mind does any great disservice to you.

Just look at the top schools being talked about in this forum.... half aren't even on the US News top 25, mainly because those schools have an international affairs focus, but also because the US News definition of "public affairs" is completely unclear (and so is their methodology). The survey response rate is notoriously low (somewhere in the low 30th percentile), and professors will have a natural bias toward pure academician-types that are often only half the faculty at top programs. US News also has the International Studies and Politics ranking (http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/best-universities-politics-and-international-studies) that is more accurate for int'l affairs programs but is still an academic ranking and not oriented toward professional schools.

Oh Jesus, everyone knows the US News ranking is wildly inaccurate. No need to repost it here thus giving it more false credence. Asking people to provide their own rankings accomplishes literally nothing except revealing the biases of everyone here. If you want an informal assessment of the top programs, you can search practically every thread in this forum. 

How would you rank the MPA programs? US News' top 25 rankings are below. What are your top 5? Top 10? Top 25? What makes a MPA program better than others in your mind?
 
Rank School name Score #1  
Syracuse University (Maxwell)
Syracuse, NY
4.5 #2 Indiana University–​Bloomington Bloomington, IN
4.4 #3 Harvard University (Kennedy) Cambridge, MA
4.3 #4 University of Georgia Athens, GA
4.2 #5 Princeton University (Wilson) Princeton, NJ
4.1 #6 New York University (Wagner) New York, NY
4.0 #6 University of California–​Berkeley (Goldman) Berkeley, CA
4.0 #6 University of Southern California (Price) Los Angeles, CA
4.0 #9 Carnegie Mellon University (Heinz) Pittsburgh, PA
3.9 #9 University of Kansas Lawrence, KS
3.9 #9 University of Washington (Evans) Seattle, WA
3.9 #12 American University Washington, DC
3.8 #12 George Washington University (Trachtenberg) Washington, DC
3.8 #12 University of Michigan–​Ann Arbor (Ford) Ann Arbor, MI
3.8 #12 University of Wisconsin–​Madison (La Follette) Madison, WI
3.8 #16 Arizona State University Phoenix, AZ
3.7 #16 Duke University (Sanford) Durham, NC
3.7 #16 Florida State University (Askew) Tallahassee, FL
3.7 #16 University at Albany–​SUNY (Rockefeller) Albany, NY
3.7 #16 University of Kentucky (Martin) Lexington, KY
3.7 #16 University of Minnesota–​Twin Cities (Humphrey) Minneapolis, MN
3.7 #16 University of Texas–​Austin (LBJ) Austin, TX
3.7 #23 Georgetown University Washington, DC
3.6 #23 Georgia State University (Young) Atlanta, GA
3.6 #23 Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey–​Newark Newark, NJ
3.6  

I have no idea as to how the job market is in CA, but I do know it's quite good here in Seattle, especially for techie things. Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks are headquartered here, and Google is rumored to be adding a 3rd campus in the city, and all are constantly hiring (less Starbucks than the other three), especially in the CS field. I also believe Facebook is expanding here into bigger office spaces and we are this hub for startups...lots and lots of small companies are popping up, backed by massive investors. It's crazy how many people I know know who are coming straight out of their undergrad CS degrees with no experience and jobs starting in the 6 figures. Makes me wish I could rewind the clock and start again haha! 
 
I work right by the Amazon campuses in Seattle and not only have they just spent close to 1 billion dollars on building/leasing in this area over the last 5 or so years (adding something like 2 million square feet of office space), but are expected to keep on growing (and I can attest to at least one other huge campus coming in as it's quite literally across the street from my building and we are watching them demolish the current space and begin construction now).
 
I think if you come to town to visit the school, you should definitely try to tour some of these companies and get a feel to see if it's a culture you could see yourself in.