hashslinger

The job market works both ways. My alma mater, a PhD-granting institution (R1) ranked in the 70s, doesn't have many faculty members from the upper tiers. In fact, only two faculty have PhDs from top-ten schools. A few years ago, they rejected a well-published Yale applicant for someone with a much less prestigious degree for reasons of "fit." I don't think this kind of story is at all anecdotal, either. If it were--if going a school outside of the top 25 spelled doom--then programs like Minnesota, USC, Penn State, WUSTL, SUNY Buffalo, and Washington would be considered completely worthless. And yet, in the last few years, I've encountered recent up-and-coming scholars from all of these programs who managed to land fantastic jobs. Oh yeah, that Semenza guy that everyone keeps quoting? Got his PhD at "low-ranked" Penn State.

Not to nitpick, but I wouldn't consider Summit/Hudson/4th to be part of Clintonville. That's North campus, plain and simple, and it's a bad area. Avoid avoid avoid. As far as Clintonville goes, you want to stay north of Arcadia and west of Indianola. And anything on the east side of the railroad or I-71 should also be avoided.

I would recommend staying away from Olde Towne East. It's relatively far from campus, and it's definitely close to some bad areas. It's "in transition" and some of the houses are really beautiful, but I'm assuming that it's popping up in searches because it's cheap. Avoid. I lived in Clintonville for two years and absolutely loved it. It's extremely walkable and has many interesting bakeries and coffee shops and restaurants. In fact, I've never heard anyone complain about Clintonville in my entire life until I logged on and saw this thread. It's definitely not unsafe, and I've never heard this stuff before about homeowners and renters not getting along. Then again, I lived in an apartment. I absolutely loved loved LOVED Clintonville. Be aware that the West side of High St. is slightly nicer than the East side, and that North Clintonville (north of North Broadway) is definitely more suburban. Grandview is nice but the rent is not cheap. I'd say that the majority of Columbus is safe and walkable. But this is coming from someone who's lived in major east-coast cities. Columbus has crime just like anywhere else. Just don't live smack in the middle of the campus area. You get a lot of petty crime, but worse, you get a lot of hard-living, partying students, and they're the worst.

Can anyone help me make sense of the new NRC rankings for English programs? More importantly, can anyone tell me if these rankings are worth paying attention to? I guess I'm mainly looking here: http://graduate-scho...______________U and here: http://chronicle.com...English/124728/ I guess I'm just utterly mystified. I know that the US News list we've been going off of for years has a weakness for "big names" and undergraduate reputation, but I'm pretty surprised by some of these results. I never thought I'd see a world where University of Kentucky and Arizona State are considered better than Cornell and Chicago, and where UConn is considered better than JHU and Duke. (I'm not knocking those programs. I'm just saying.) Also, U.S. News favorite Berkeley's so low-ranked it might as well just pack it in (it's now behind Oklahoma. I didn't even know Oklahoma had a PhD program). What's going on here? How important is this list when deciding to apply to programs? When on the job market?