Do rankings matter?

[acircleda]

I am a prospective Ph.D student interested in applied linguistics (second language acquisition, language learning, bilingualism, and technology). I have been looking at different programs and have found a few that share my interests. My top two choices are Indiana University-Bloomington (which actually has two different programs: http://education.indiana.edu/graduate/programs/literacy-culture-language/index.html and http://www.indiana.edu/~dsls/degrees/phdSLS.shtml) and the University of South Florida (Second Language Acquisition and Instructional Technology program - http://www.coedu.usf.edu/slait/).

 

IU has a high ranked education department (according to US News, #21) and they have some big names in their School of Education and in their linguistics department. USF, on the other hand has a much lower ranking. Their education department is #74, and their PhD program is ranked 45-50 by the NRC. I am not sure about their faculty.

 

My question is, how much do rankings and names matter when getting a job? Any input would be great!

 

Thanks

[this_is_a_wug]

I would absolutely say that prestige of your advisor is important when you are trying to get a job in academia. Employers look at your record, see where you went to school, who you worked with, and can (and will!) make a base judgement off that. There are, however, a lot of companies/non-profits that hire graduates in applied linguistics, so if you don't limit yourself to academia, then, IMO, you can go really go anywhere.

 

That being said, I don't think that the rankings really matter very much when it comes to linguistics. For example, two of the schools I applied to are in the middle/towards the bottom of the rankings for linguistics as a whole but, within my specialization, there are only very well-known professors. The only thing I would say is that a very low NRC ranking usually means less funding is available, but this isn't always the case. In general, it's best to choose a school based off who you want to work with rather than some arbitrary ranking.