Updated NRC Rankings

[HKK]

For students deciding on graduate schools this fall, I thought I'd provide some additional information on recent rankings by the National Research Council. From the NRC, "the data, collected for the 2005-2006 academic year from more than 5,000 doctoral programs at 212 universities, cover such characteristics as faculty publications, grants, and awards; student GRE scores, financial support, and employment outcomes; and program size, time to degree, and faculty composition. Measures of faculty and student diversity are also included."

Here is the link to the full report (free, just requires an email address): http://www.nap.edu/rdp/

Here are the rankings for the top 20 universities using the 5th percentile S ranking. The methodology goes into detail about the difference between the 5th and 95th percentile rankings, but the 5th percentile rankings are what is generally reported. The rankings are pretty different from the US News and World Report Rankings, but the excel file for the report is nice, because you can sort on things that are important to you, such as program size, diversity, time to degree, etc. etc. Also note that some really specific sociology programs (i.e. social policy, demography) are listed, but you can also filter those out in the excel file if you choose.

1 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Social Policy

1 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Sociology

3 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Sociology

3 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Sociology

3 PENN STATE UNIVERSITY Sociology

4 DUKE UNIVERSITY Sociology

5 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Population and Family Health Sciences

5 UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI Sociology

5 PENN STATE UNIVERSITY Demography

6 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR Sociology

6 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA - LINCOLN Sociology

6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN FRAN Sociology

7 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN Sociology

8 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN NEW YORK Sociology

8 U OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL Sociology

10 STANFORD UNIVERSITY Sociology

11 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS Sociology

13 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Sociology

14 UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE Sociology

15 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Human & Community Development

15 BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY Sociology

16 BROWN UNIVERSITY Sociology

16 CORNELL UNIVERSITY Sociology

16 PENN STATE UNIVERSITY Rural Sociology

18 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Sociology

18 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Health, Behavior and Society

19 UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA Sociology

20 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON Sociology

20 INDIANA UNIVERSITY-BLOOMINGTON Sociology

Hope this is helpful!

[hoobers]

These ratings are really, really bad. As far as I can tell, this was a fairly unanimous appraisal of them, including by their authors (who recommended that they be taken with a grain of salt at the point of their release). A combination of low-quality data and poor research methodology has created results that so badly fail at face validity that they are pretty much a laughing stock. See more details here: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Critic-Sees-Deep-Problems-in/124725/ .

Coincidentally, some good folks over at orgtheory have just launched a new rating system today. You can study--nay, contribute--to these rankings via the links here: http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/crowdsourcing-sociology-department-rankings/.

[Roll Right]

Hmm, while this pairing system is interesting...I don't think it's going to give you a real measurement. This is opinion based, which eliminates the possibility for a standardized ranking system. Your not getting usable data here. I still think the US News and World Report are the best rankings. This ranking system is too subjective.

[Happy to be here]

Agreed, I really don't think that places like Nebraska-Lincoln and UC-San Francisco are really ranked higher than Chicago, Wisconsin, Indiana, and others. Maybe there's some specialty or something I'm missing, but I'm pretty doubtful about this list.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Happy to be here

[barilicious]

I believe UC-SanFran has a strong medical sociology department, but I'm rather wary of these rankings as well.

Agreed, I really don't think that places like Nebraska-Lincoln and UC-San Francisco are really ranked higher than Chicago, Wisconsin, Indiana, and others. Maybe there's some specialty or something I'm missing, but I'm pretty doubtful about this list.

[JohnBom]

There is a new fun ranking out there..

http://www.allourideas.org/socrankings

[hoobers]

Hmm, while this pairing system is interesting...I don't think it's going to give you a real measurement. This is opinion based, which eliminates the possibility for a standardized ranking system. Your not getting usable data here. I still think the US News and World Report are the best rankings. This ranking system is too subjective.

I think I would take the US N&W rankings over the All Our Ideas (AOI) rankings as well, but I think the two are pretty complimentary. US N&W rankings are equally subjective: they just field a survey that asks 2 faculty in each program (dean and DGS, I think) to rank all the other programs. There are no "objective" criteria used in US N&W rankings--it's just the opinions of senior faculty. (NRC rankings were supposed to incorporate such criteria, but it is clear that they failed.) So the biggest difference between US N&W rankings and the are based on the opinions of a very small number of senior scholars, while the AOI rankings are based on the opinions of a large but haphazard group of interested people (presumably, heavy on grad students and junior faculty, but also featuring a smattering of undergrads and totally random people who like to click on things). This definitely makes it much harder to describe what exactly the AOI rankings *mean*, which is why I find US N&W more trustworthy--but I wouldn't say this makes AOI rankings useless. Senior faculty may be less likely to be in touch with which departments are up and coming, and the far smaller number of respondents makes US N&W much easier to "game" strategically. But all these considerations aside, if you compare the two lists, they are so damn close to each other (at least near the top) that I am not sure it makes sense to spend too long dwelling on which is better--they seem more or less interchangeable. Presumably, AOI is more up to date--but then again, it might just echo the results of US N&W.