A Resource: NRC S-Rankings Translated into Actual Rankings

[buckinghamubadger]

I am posting this to help people who are either earlier along in the process or perhaps some who are making decisions. Based on the analysis of placement of programs I was considering the NRC rankings are much better indicators of program strength than the USNWR rankings. This said, no rankings are perfect. They are a short cut. I encourage everyone to do their own research on placement, fit, funding and a variety of other factors. This only acts as a starting point.

 

This post hopes to eliminate some of the rankings ambiguity by translating their ranking range into a single ranking. This is done by ranking the programs first by their high S rank and breaking ties by ranking them by their low S rank. Alternatively one could use an average of the two, but I found that too time consuming. Here are the rankings ranges translated into a single rank using that method.

1. Stanford
1. Harvard
3. Michigan
4. NYU
4. Penn State
6. Rice
7. UCSD
8. SUNY Binghamton
9. Columbia
10. Yale
11. WashU
12. Duke
13. Princeton
14. George Washington
15. UC Davis
16. UC Berkeley
17. Illinois
18. Indiana
19. Emory
20. Texas A&M
21. MIT
22. Pitt
23. SUNY Stony Brook
24. Michigan State
25. University of Washington
26. Florida State
27. UNC
28. Wisconsin
29. Ohio State
30. Arizona
31. Rochester
32. Cornell
33. Minnesota
34. USC
35. UC Riverside
36. Chicago
37. Missouri
38. UCLA
39. Vanderbilt
40. Brown
41. Maryland
42. Kentucky
43. New Mexico
44. Northwestern
45. UC Irvine
46. Colorado
47. Purdue
48. Penn
49. Texas
50. Washington State
51. Oregon
52. LSU
53. Iowa
54. Nebraska
55. Mississippi
56. Rutgers
57. Arizona State
58. Notre Dame
59. Florida Intl. (IR)
60. Kansas
61. Georgia State
62. Wisconsin-Milwaukee
63. South Carolina
64. Connecticut
65. Temple
66. Florida
67. Miami
68. UMass
69. Boston University
70. Delaware
71. Virginia
72. Georgetown
73. Syracuse
74. Alabama
75. Boston College
76. UCSB
77. Wayne State
78. Johns Hopkins
79. Tennessee
80. SUNY Buffalo
81. Howard
82. North Texas
83. Brandeis
84. Texas Tech
85. Georgia
86. Florida Intl. (Poli Sci)
87. Oklahoma
88. Western Michigan
89. Cincinnati
90. Illinois-Chicago
91. Missouri-St. Louis
92. American
93. CUNY
94. Northern Illinois
95. Hawaii
96. Houston
97. Southern Illinois
98. Houston
99. SUNY Albany
100. Old Dominion
101. Loyola-Chicago
102. Claremont
103. Nevada
104. Catholic University
105. University of Dallas



 

[Wiesbaden]

Very interesting and they make me think more about the ranking.

 

Btw, some conventional ranked schools like BC, Syracuse, JH, or Georgetown, relatively got a low-level ranking. Expensive tuition or other factors influence their ranking? I am curious about differences which make the disparity. 

 

P.S. Houston mentioned twice I think

 

 

[buckinghamubadger]

My bad, Houston is #96 just ahead of SIU. That means that there is either one program missing or they factored University of New Orleans (the one program that they did not rank) in in some funny way

[buckinghamubadger]

47 minutes ago, Wiesbaden said:

 I am curious about differences which make the disparity. 

 

 

US News uses a survey of academics on program reputation. This leads to programs like UCLA, Penn and Northwestern, which have big name professors, to be ranked higher than programs like Washington and Stony Brook which seem to place better.

 

NRC factors in 21 separate measures, presumably uses regression modeling, to come up with their rankings. These include I believe stuff like funding, publications of students and faculty and student outcomes (don't quote me on those exact criteria, but stuff like that)

[guest56436]

NRC would be better if it was more frequent, but it's not frequent enough to be considered accurate.

[buckinghamubadger]

@Comparativist, to each their own. To me the US News rankings seem somewhat arbitrary, and I'll take infrequent over arbitrary. And every five years or so isn't very frequent either. 

But I suppose it has it's strong points. It is more frequent which may mean more responsiveness. There could also be something to be said for reputation which likely matters on the job market. Big named professors are great if you can become one of their grad students.  I much prefer the NRC. They probably aren't old enough to be completely outdated yet (2010).

 

But like I said earlier, rankings are just a shortcut. Everyone applying should do their own research.

[encyclopediabrown]

Cool! For various reasons, there's a huge difference between the NRC survey-based rankings you posted here and the NRC regression-based rankings. For what it's worth, the regression-based rankings seem more reflective of the perceived status hierarchy in the discipline, as of the mid-2000s anyway. Of course perceived status != actual training quality.

[Sheldon2017]

The following ranking is based on a research conducted by Robert Oprisko in 2013. This study looks at every person listed as assistant, associate, or full professor during the 2012-2013 academic year. It is based on placement record.*

*This does not take cohort size into account. As such, percentage of students placed isn't represented here. 

 

Top Political Science Programs in Placing Ph.D.s in Tenure-Track Jobs at Research Universities

Rank (Total)	University	Total Ph.D. Alumni Placed	Total Placements of Assistant Professors
1	Harvard U.	272	46
2	U. of California at Berkeley	216	45
3	U. of Michigan	170	32
4	Yale U.	165	27
5	U. of Chicago	155	21
6	Columbia U.	139	36
7	Stanford U.	137	43
8	Princeton U.	118	26
9	UCLA	100	31
10	MIT	93	11
11	U. of Wisconsin at Madison	93	18
12	U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	91	25
13	Cornell U.	87	24
14	U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities	84	17
15 (tie)	Indian U. at Bloomington	74	12
15 (tie)	Ohio State U.	74	22
17	U. of Rochester	64	16
18 (tie)	Duke U.	61	23
18 (tie)	Northwestern U.	61	11
20	Washington U. in St. Louis	56	12
21	U. of California at San Diego	53	25
22	Johns Hopkins U.	52	12
23 (tie)	U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	47	12
23 (tie)	U. of Texas at Austin	47	15
25	New York U.	42	11
26 (tie)	U. of Iowa	41	9
27	Michigan State U.	41	10
28	U. of Virginia	40	7
29	Syracuse U.	39	6
30	Florida State U.	38	17

[SerenityNow!]

@Sheldon2017 Those are the rankings I used to determine where to apply. I essentially looked at which schools on this list realistically produce professors and then out of that group selected the ones that best matched my research interests and location preferences.

However, I think that each of these rankings hold a different purpose, e.g. if you are after prestige and name recognition than you may find News and World Reports to be most helpful but if your aim is to become a professor than another ranking focused on that may be more useful. I think it is best to be an informed customer and check out all the different rankings and systems and look at the inputs in the different ranking systems but at the end of the day things like department fit, POIs, location, etc... should probably outweigh rankings when determining which program to attend.

[diter91]

2 hours ago, Sheldon2017 said:

The following ranking is based on a research conducted by Robert Oprisko in 2013. This study looks at every person listed as assistant, associate, or full professor during the 2012-2013 academic year. It is based on placement record.

 

Top Political Science Programs in Placing Ph.D.s in Tenure-Track Jobs at Research Universities

Rank (Total)	University	Total Ph.D. Alumni Placed	Total Placements of Assistant Professors
1	Harvard U.	272	46
2	U. of California at Berkeley	216	45
3	U. of Michigan	170	32
4	Yale U.	165	27
5	U. of Chicago	155	21
6	Columbia U.	139	36
7	Stanford U.	137	43
8	Princeton U.	118	26
9	UCLA	100	31
10	MIT	93	11
11	U. of Wisconsin at Madison	93	18
12	U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	91	25
13	Cornell U.	87	24
14	U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities	84	17
15 (tie)	Indian U. at Bloomington	74	12
15 (tie)	Ohio State U.	74	22
17	U. of Rochester	64	16
18 (tie)	Duke U.	61	23
18 (tie)	Northwestern U.	61	11
20	Washington U. in St. Louis	56	12
21	U. of California at San Diego	53	25
22	Johns Hopkins U.	52	12
23 (tie)	U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	47	12
23 (tie)	U. of Texas at Austin	47	15
25	New York U.	42	11
26 (tie)	U. of Iowa	41	9
27	Michigan State U.	41	10
28	U. of Virginia	40	7
29	Syracuse U.	39	6
30	Florida State U.	38	17

 

Is this placement record based on a particular range of dates (eg 1990-2012) or in each department's entire history?

[buckinghamubadger]

@diter91, that is the number of professors with PhDs from the program in question currently with TT jobs at R1 Universities. As you point out, there is little control for the date of the appointment or the size of the program. The assistants is meant to control for date of appointment and if you read the article, placement efficiency is meant to control for size. This only includes R1 jobs. I used to be a much bigger fan of the Oprisko et al rankings than I am now for the reasons discussed here.

[buckinghamubadger]

@SerenityNow!, ". I think it is best to be an informed customer and check out all the different rankings and systems and look at the inputs in the different ranking systems but at the end of the day things like department fit, POIs, location, etc... should probably outweigh rankings when determining which program to attend"

Absolutely right, the rankings are just a short cut. Everyone needs to do their own research