Feedback on Boston University's History Program

[Notker the Stammerer]

BU is one of my top picks based on the research interests of its faculty, but I noticed this page at phds.org, which shows their program is pretty badly rated:

http://graduate-school.phds.org/university/bu/program/ranking/history/7146

I know that these rankings aren't necessarily valuable (especially since most of the information is several years old), but BU is an outlier compared to the other schools I'm looking at. Besides the terrible ranking, the 11% doctoral completion rate after 8 years also caught my attention.

So, if anyone has any experience there, is this information truly reflective of their history program?

[TMP]

Yes, you should be concerned about that. You might want to find out how the department is responding to the intense pressure by the administration (university and federal) and AHA to graduate PhDs and get them jobs. Ask about their placement record.

Also, most graduate students take longer to finish for a variety of reasons. The fact that BU is right in Boston makes it easy for ABDs to get jobs to support themselves (and slowly neglecting their dissertations). You might want to ask about the department's successes in obtaining external funding.

[Simple Twist of Fate]

First of all, that website has quite a lot of idiosyncrasies, so I wouldn't trust their data implicitly. I'm not saying it's wrong, but nosing around there for a few minutes shows quite a lot of data that doesn't smell right to me.

I applied to BU and was accepted last cycle. In fact, I almost went there because the POI there for my field is excellent. Most of the reasons I didn't go there had to do with my current school being a better fit, but there were some issues with BU as well, mainly relating to money, unfortunately. My understanding is that they graduate school limits the packages they can offer to 3 years (though they kept hinting that this might be increased to four). Their department is usually running low on money, and is prone to offering admission without funding. I was lucky enough to be offered their strongest funding package, but even that wasn't really competitive with other offers. It's not hard to see how this funding problem could lead to low or slow completion rates (especially, as tmp points out, being in Boston)

That all being said, there are some wonderful historians in their department. And it's in Boston, which is a great place to live (and, depending on your interests, do research). If there's a good fit for you, I would apply and leave my options open. I'm certainly glad I applied there.