odyssey

We all know it's nonsense if you compare social science/humanities fields with STEM. ? It's always harder to get into STEM fields than communication. Don't know if communication has lower acceptance rates, but if that's the case then probably it's a function of funding: engineering departments have more funding for students, so they can have higher acceptance rates. If that makes sense. Also, some communication departments may not give you guaranteed funding, but you can still get funding outside the department but still within the university. This is a more difficult route, of course. For example, you can get an RA or TA position in, say, Anthropology or Sociology, or a project assistantship in non-academic institutes that would waive for your tuition, provide stipend, insurance, etc. So there are actually a lot of choices within the university, and the department that admitted you but didn't give you funding is likely to help you access outside resources. Again, this is a hard route, but fairly doable for those who really want to get into that department for "super compelling" reasons (i.e., you only got accepted to THAT department, so you don't have "so many great options").

Some graduate programs in the US don't require you to have a master's degree. There are "straight"-to-PhD programs where you get your MA on your second year after completing your thesis, then continue with the PhD program afterwards with the completion of additional courses and of course dissertation.

I agree that the NCA rankings are outdated, but there's a lot of more recent rankings based on different sets of criteria. 2010 NRC rankings, but uses 2006-2007 data: http://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124717/ Here's an explanation of the method: http://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Elaborate-Ranking-of/124633 This one's my favorite ranking. Also published in 2010, this study used network analysis to examine doctoral program reputation based on faculty-hiring patterns: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01487.x/full 2012 ranking based on citation: http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/022/1/022122.html 2017 CWUR ranking based on citation: http://cwur.org/2017/subjects.php#Communication Hope these help!