How important is school prestige in psychology?

[Behavioral]

And this is why it's interesting to see the data from the paper I posted in the first page of this thread.

All else being equal (number and location of publications), a person from a "top" school will get hired over a person from a "non-top" school, and when modeled as a Fixed-Effect OLS regression, there is a ~1.5 publication disparity according to the fitted terms in that model (i.e., a person coming from a school categorized as "not top" needs 1.5 extra pubs than someone from a "top" school to be equitable/comparable).

Of course that model takes away from the actual qualia and nuances from admissions (the non-quantifiables), but given that the authors of the paper tried to account for confounds and still found these results is telling.

And like I said earlier, the paper is about the Marketing job market, but given that many of the top scholars in marketing/consumer behavior are Social Psychology PhDs, and that marketing is an available job market to them, being aware of these data is important when making informed decisions.

I'm not arguing whether or not there is a true correlation between quality x prestige, but perception can be reality as it is realized in that paper (and the Chronicle of Higher Education thread I linked to, too). Adcomms are made up of people who are like everyone else: they use simplifying heuristics to inform/guide their choices and this is influenced by things like salience, prestige, signaling, etc., which all play in favor towards schools that are prestigious and also have a reputation for churning out good students in the past.

[see_bella]

I was of the impression that the person who started the post was asking about hiring committees for jobs, not admissions committees for grad schools. I apologize. I was speaking based on my experience in grad school and working for the CDC and Department of Health where research experience and publications played the major role. That being said, look at the faculty at those prestigious schools...many of them DID NOT get their PhDs at prestigious universities but their quality of work (publications included) spoke for them. At the end of the day, the student would benefit more from a good one on one mentorship and quality of life in those PhD programs. I have seen posters on here wanting "to kill themselves" (according to their posts) because they are miserable in their programs. Make sure you love your cohort, advisor, and the research interests are aligned properly so the 5 yrs can be bearable (again speaking from experience).

[lewin]

I have to disagree about the correlation. Not highly correlated. Harvard and the like did not become prestigious out of number of publications. There are many non-prestigious schools with awesome faculty members who are top notch researchers in their respective fields and produce successful students. Prestige does not necessarily mean bright and productive. A lot of prestigious folks bs-ed their way to the top. ... I am not saying having Harvard or Princeton on your CV is not worth it but at the end of the day, hiring committees will want to see what you have done to bring to the table.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I never said that prestige was more important than publications or that one can't publish outside the Ivy leage. I only said that--all else equal--somebody will have an easier time getting publications at Harvard than at North Idaho Community College because they'll have more resources, etc. On average.

Not to be cheeky, but you know what correlation means, right? It doesn't mean that prestigious always means productive, or that non-prestigious always means less productive, only that there is an association. Here is one example. Dartmouth College has an fMRI in the basement of the psych building, exclusively for the use of its faculty and students. Compare this to a school with fewer resources who only gets scanner access between 1am and 7am at the hospital an hour away. Wouldn't it be easier to get research done at Dartmouth than at the other place?

Edited March 14, 2012 by lewin00

[see_bella]

I think you're misunderstanding me. I never said that prestige was more important than publications or that one can't publish outside the Ivy leage. I only said that--all else equal--somebody will have an easier time getting publications at Harvard than at North Idaho Community College because they'll have more resources, etc. On average.

Not to be cheeky, but you know what correlation means, right? It doesn't mean that prestigious always means productive, or that non-prestigious always means less productive, only that there is an association. Here is one example. Dartmouth College has an fMRI in the basement of the psych building, exclusively for the use of its faculty and students. Compare this to a school with fewer resources who only gets scanner access between 1am and 7am at the hospital an hour away. Wouldn't it be easier to get research done at Dartmouth than at the other place?

Yes I do know what correlation means. I have a masters degree in Statistics and I work as a researcher. Thank you for the clarification on what you meant on your earlier post.

[ClinPsy17]

Because I ended up not having a decision to make at all, I need to stop allowing the rankings to influence how I view myself as a person and, more importantly, how I view my new program. I keep having a pity party about my friend getting into a program ranked slightly higher than mine, even though I always believed she would "win" anyway. I also came very close to a top 30 program and was ultimately not accepted, so that is screwing with me. Stupid rankings. Stupid ego. Stupid me. Okay, I'll stop now.

This! I was only accepted to one Ph.D. program, and even though it's a good program and I loved it when I visited, I can't seem to get over the fact that it's not "elite." Whenever people say things like, "I got three offers from top schools," I can't help being jealous. My program is ranked #79 on U.S. News, and around #100 on the NRC rankings (but I hate how NRC combines clinical and experimental, because I think the clinical program at my school is better than the experimental program). I know I should be feeling lucky to even have gotten into a fully funded clinical psych ph.d. program, I just wish I could get over these stupid rankings!!!

[stereopticons]

The new NRC rankings separate some programs (clinical for one school may be higher than social at the same school). The rankings also seem more comprehensive and informative. I don't have the link right now but it was posted in a similar thread in this forum previously.

[ClinPsy17]

The new NRC rankings separate some programs (clinical for one school may be higher than social at the same school). The rankings also seem more comprehensive and informative. I don't have the link right now but it was posted in a similar thread in this forum previously.

I noticed that they separate them for some programs, but they don't for my program! It probably depends on how the program reported the data or something. How annoying. I like just looking at the one that lists clinical psych programs by publications and citations, because my program's listed pretty high on that one, haha .

[psychedout11]

The NRC rankings are here http://chronicle.com...erview-/124708/

Honesty, this is not like undergrad when it comes to rankings. Graduate school is a whole different ball game. You can go to a top ranked school and have a horrible advisor and it will do nothing for you. Converse...you can go to a lower tier school with a crazy awesome advisor and it will do wonders for you. If you want to go on to do research/academia as a career - your advisor is the most important piece of the puzzle. They can make or break you. For example, some schools are ranked high because of publications per faculty - but if those pubs are not with students, then it does you no good as a student to that faculty.

So get out of your head "elite" and listen more to how much you like your advisor because that is all the difference.