what is considered a top program?

[GraduateSchoolNut]

I know this sounds like a strnage program, but I hear people talk about "top PhD programs" all the time, but what is this? Top 10? Top 5? Top 20?

What do you think it is?

[belowthree]

In my mind, anything top 10 in a field can go ahead and claim to be a top program, things just in the top 20 are stretching it but will claim that anyways.

[cardnav]

Like with undergraduate institutions, grad schools search through reviews of programs and use the quotations that suit their programs the best. Also, like undergrad, programs are ranked through various third-parties - such as US News and World Report http://www.usnews.com/sections/education. Note: Make sure you look at grad schools/programs in your area because a great institution may have a sub-par program.

Your best bet is to do some outside research. If you are currently an undergrad, talk with your professors/advisors in the field about what you want to study and see what they reccommend. (Keep in mind they may be partial to their alma matas)

[rising_star]

A top program is the one that has the best faculty in your research area and other faculty that you can collaborate with. No published ranking scheme can tell you that.

[fortiesgirl]

A top program is the one that has the best faculty in your research area and other faculty that you can collaborate with. No published ranking scheme can tell you that.

Nicely put. I mentioned this to someone else on a different post, but the rankings on US News are actually two-fold in the way in which programs are assessed. There's an article published by USNews itself explaining the entire process if you want to read it. They hire one third party survey company, and the other scores are calculated by peer reviews. So, while there are undoubtedly excellent programs at the "top" of that scale because they have excellent faculty and resources, this doesn't mean other "lower tier" or non-ranked programs aren't excellent and won't offer you superb training if they fit the bill in terms of your needs. You might want to check this out for argument's sake, but some of the non-ranked or lower ranked program actually have faculty who earned their degrees at the same institutions who teach at the top tiered schools.

[belowthree]

A top program is the one that has the best faculty in your research area and other faculty that you can collaborate with. No published ranking scheme can tell you that.

Uhm... this seems to be an excellent definition of how people should pick out a top choice for themselves. It is not however, a very good definition of what people mean when they say top program.

Unclear which the OP was asking for, but the term top program generally refers to the reputation of the place, not the fit with the individual researcher.

I agree with you that it's stupid to evaluate a program based on it's reputation, but that doesn't make your post a whole lot more responsive to the original question if the OP was actually asking about how people see different programs and their reputations.

(And no, a top program is not based on rankings alone, especially not the USNews rankings. It's based on the rankings prevalent in people's minds in the field, which is a bit tricky to put down on paper, though a lot of ranking systems tend to make a good stab at capturing it. If you want to search just based on research quality go to the top publication venue in your sub-field and see which institutions are publishing there.)

[rising_star]

What's so unhelpful about it? The OP didn't specify a field and cutting off "top programs" at 5, 10, or 20 is pretty arbitrary. After all, maybe "top 20" is great in English but, in a discipline like mine that only has about 50 PhD programs in the US, "top 20" takes an entirely different meaning.

The question "What is considered a top program?" from the title of the post is the one I answered. Rankings, publication stats, etc. don't matter if you're applying to a program that doesn't have faculty in your area of interest. Going to a "top 5" program is meaningless if you aren't going to have the support and atmosphere you need to work in. There are countless factors, hence the general answer I gave.

Would you care to set the cutoff point for the OP, belowthree?

[belowthree]

Would you care to set the cutoff point for the OP, belowthree?

Nope, I agree completely that the cutoff is field specific and even perspective specific, each person has their own idea on where the line is. (Often biased on drawing it just slightly below their own program conveniently!) But this is not my point.

(Though I will point out that the OP and I do actually share the same field, so it's not like I was telling someone in a completely different field the my own ideas about how things work in my own field must magically apply to them.)

Rankings, publication stats, etc. don't matter if you're applying to a program that doesn't have faculty in your area of interest. Going to a "top 5" program is meaningless if you aren't going to have the support and atmosphere you need to work in. There are countless factors, hence the general answer I gave.

Right, all of these factors are incredibly relevant when an applicant decides which program is right for them, but if the OP is truly wondering what defines a top program in terms of reputation then that determination is independent of these factors. There are plenty of reasons to chose a program that isn't a top program because it's right and better for you, but that doesn't mean suddenly the program gets to call itself a top program or that people will think of it as such.

Again, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that whether or a not a program is a top program should necessarily matter in the least. I'm simply saying that if we want to define what a top program is then these factors aren't included in the equation, despite the fact that they're all excellent factors that an applicant should use to select a program for themselves.

The OP asked "what is considered a top program" not "how would I find out which program is right for me?" The latter question is dealt with on these forums so much that it can be very easy to run off and provide the answer to the one we see all the time instead of realizing that the question here is different.

However in the end this may also be a case of the OP simply asking the wrong question and you answering the question he *should* have asked. (Unclear, given what I've seen from the OP in the past it seems he knew what he was asking and was actually asking about the reputation of a school and then will factor that into his decision with the types of things you talked about and go from there.)

[rising_star]

There are plenty of reasons to chose a program that isn't a top program because it's right and better for you, but that doesn't mean suddenly the program gets to call itself a top program or that people will think of it as such.

Another important thing is that "top program" varies by subfield even within disciplines. My department wouldn't be a top program if your interest is biogeomorphology. But if you want social theory, we're one of the best programs in the country. So I think that's why I think the entire question of what makes a top program is silly.

[GraduateSchoolNut]

Silly? I've heard people make comments about "top programs" enough to want to understand how it is defined.

I rather think your answer is silly .

[belowthree]

Another important thing is that "top program" varies by subfield even within disciplines. My department wouldn't be a top program if your interest is biogeomorphology. But if you want social theory, we're one of the best programs in the country. So I think that's why I think the entire question of what makes a top program is silly.

I can think of no schools that people would really think of as top schools in CS which don't have strong clusters in most of the sub-field areas. The broad strength that allows them to be good in so many areas at once is part of what defines a top program in CS. There certainly are schools with specific strong areas and strong people in certain sub-fields, but they aren't top programs, they're just schools where it wouldn't be entirely idiotic for someone to turn down a top program to go there instead.

Your field may work differently, but in ours there is a certain set of schools everyone is referring to when they use the term "top schools" or "top programs." It is fairly well defined.

I think part of the issue might be in CS our departments can actually get big enough where you do have departments that can have some top people in every sub-field within one department. The department I'm in now hires in clusters and tries to hire three top people for every sub-field within computer science and that's just how they build research groups. If they only have two next recruitment time they're looking for a third. One of the departments in our field has 126 professors. That's enough to cover most sub-fields and that's a top program.

I agree with you that the distinction can be silly, but you're really not getting that in this case the definition is not silly for the reasons you think it is. In some fields there are departments that you just rely that most of the research that comes out of them is going to be pretty reasonable. Which isn't to say it's going to always be the best or that other schools can't beat it (they can and do) but just that at the very least you can look at some institutions and assume that the work which comes out is going to be reasonable.

Anyways... I think I'm just getting redundant at this point.

[graciado]

When we sent out submission solicitations for a journal I manage, we used The Times Higher Education ranking tables and USNews in order to weed out the 'top' programs to contact first. We eventually contacted around 20 US schools, 6 UK schools, and another 6 Canadian schools (this is for a medieval studies journal, by the way). We used the tables heavily, but also did our own research on professors and general student reputation to judge the 'best' schools. It's pretty subjective; I know quite a few people who only apply to programs if they have a very specific person they want to work with, and so don't subscribe to the 'just apply everywhere that's good' approach. They're probably more likely to be happy with their choice in the long run.

[IRdreams]

As far as top programs, I generally look to placement rankings as a sign of this within my field. I don't know how much research on placement has been for other fields, but these rankings were a good way to determine a top program. For example, the percentage of those placed within a predetermined short time period fell off dramatically after around 15. While I think having an advisor you can work with is very important, I know that placement options are bleak at many institutions who had advisors with interests more closely aligned to mine. Unfortunately, I will not be working with them because grad school does have a component of "who you know" and "whose acolyte are you" that affects the politics of publication and hiring. These effects strongly support going to a "top program" however that be defined by discipline and subfield.