ranking

[shepardn7]

I don't understand what people mean when they say you need to go to a "Top 20" school to get a job in History or any humanities field. Are they strictly talking about US News rankings from 2005? What if you go fully-funded to a place ranked, like, 45 by USN but have a rockstar who will "push" for you? Are you screwed because you didn't get your grad degree from an Ivy or equivalent? I'm confused, but curious about how it works for History in particular.

[TMP]

That is true. We are usually referring to USNEWS, whatever the year is. I don't recommend looking at NRC's because the data was collected in 2005 and obviously a lot has happened since.

It"s a complicated thing. Basically one should go to the best program that they can get in. However if one doesn't really feel any connection there or has little support for his or her research, it may be the person's best interest to accept an offer from a lower ranked program with a superstar, pending that the superstar's students do actually get jobs.

I am in such a situation and I have decided just to apply to all programs that are good fits and then see how the cards fall in the spring.

[Riotbeard]

Go to the best school you can get it into (this includes best fit and faculty in your subfeild into the computation along with ranking. While going to a top 20 gives you a leg up, you can get a tenure track job from schools outside of it. I am a non-top 20 program and our placement record is pretty solid. You don't need to stress out tooo much about ranking, but it goes with out saying go to the best place you get into. There is someone in my program who got into a couple top programs but decided to go where the fit was best.