Rankings

[blogstarphd]

We can all agree that rankings matter for Jon placement in the academy. I have a few questions, though. How low is too low, though?

What are the advantages to going to a top 5 program versus top 15? What about top 20 versus top 30? What are the disadvantages? Do subfield rankings even matter when it comes to overall rankings?

[Quantum Buckyball]

We can all agree that rankings matter for Jon placement in the academy. I have a few questions, though. How low is too low, though?

What are the advantages to going to a top 5 program versus top 15? What about top 20 versus top 30? What are the disadvantages? Do subfield rankings even matter when it comes to overall rankings?

Your productivity (# of first-author papers, fellowships, research grants, invited talks) > Programs' ranking

[Darth.Vegan]

I think it also depends what kind of job placement you're hoping for. If you hope to work at a top 30 school, you should probably go to one. 

[uromastyx]

Your productivity (# of first-author papers, fellowships, research grants, invited talks) > Programs' ranking

And thus many great PhD candidates at good (and not great) schools are able to really shine in their department.

[Usmivka]

We can all agree that rankings matter for Jon placement in the academy. I have a few questions, though. How low is too low, though?

What are the advantages to going to a top 5 program versus top 15? What about top 20 versus top 30? What are the disadvantages? Do subfield rankings even matter when it comes to overall rankings?

Actually I disagree with this premise. Rankings are arbitrary and subjective, rarely have any meaning for the specific subfield you will apply to, and have much less to do with the quality of doctoral students that come out than your advisor relationship and the factors QB identified above (this has been discussed ad nauseum in the forums, the magazines doing the rankings are running rackets with abysmal methodologies). Unless you work in a singularly tiny field, there is no real difference in the "top" 30 programs. And who is this Jon character anyway?

Edited January 30, 2013 by Usmivka

[blogstarphd]

I meant job placement. That was this phone's autocorrect.

[fuzzylogician]

Name recognition helps if you're looking for jobs in industry. If you are interested in an academic job there are going to be many factors that matter more than ranking, as has been pointed out above. This is all assuming that by rankings you mean a program's reputation and success within your field and not e.g. US News rankings, since those do not correspond to how well a particular graduate program trains and places its students. Moreover, not one can give you a formula of the sort you are asking for (rank #5 --> 3 first-authored papers, rank #20 --> 7 first author papers; numbers are made up and to be ignored). The important factors in choosing a school include fit, relation with advisor, resources, funding -- official rankings are a low priority. 

[FertMigMort]

We can all agree that rankings matter for Jon placement in the academy. I have a few questions, though. How low is too low, though?

What are the advantages to going to a top 5 program versus top 15? What about top 20 versus top 30? What are the disadvantages? Do subfield rankings even matter when it comes to overall rankings?

You might find this blog post helpful: http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/sociology-faculty-in-leading-departments-analysis-by-daniel-schneider/

He also cites Val Burris's article, which is quite dated now, but found that prestige mattered in hiring.

My personal understanding is that rankings do matter somewhat in hiring (I've been a student representative on a hiring committee) and that YMMV when it comes to subfield rankings.

[jacib]

I think for a lot of things, subfield rankings matter relatively little.  Your adviser is what matters.  Subfield rankings are just proxies for that.

 

The general rule of thumb is: almostevery one moves down in their first placement, and if you're a bright shining star, you move laterally, but you generally don't move up.  And I mean "up" in overall rankings, not subfield rankings.  There are some phenomenal people who have worked their way up (Jose Casanova, Javier Auyero) but it is rare. 

 

Your productivity (# of first-author papers, fellowships, research grants, invited talks) > Programs' ranking

Is probably truer for some other fields (unless you somehow start getting big research grants as a graduate student).  I think quality of papers matters before #.  And quality in sociology is stupidly narrow, meaning to many people "ASR/AJS".  If you have an ASR/AJS... you're pretty set (more and more I realize how many professors, even qualitative ones, have an ASR/AJS...).  # matters after that.  And then what program you went to.  Your adviser fits in there somewhere.  I know people who have almost no publications, but have a shot at most good post docs because their well-known adviser is willing to go to bat for them (so it's two things: how much social capital/recognition does your adviser have in the discipline, and how much of it are they willing to use on you).

 

That said, we hired a great ethnographer a few years ago with one random publications.  He was from a top school, his first chapter was good, his adviser said he was good, and when he was invited for an interview, he gave a job talk that blew people out of the water.  As a certain type of ethnographer, his productivity didn't matter. The quality of his work mattered independent over all other factors.

 

Actually I disagree with this premise. Rankings are arbitrary and subjective, rarely have any meaning for the specific subfield you will apply to, and have much less to do with the quality of doctoral students that come out than your advisor relationship and the factors QB identified above (this has been discussed ad nauseum in the forums, the magazines doing the rankings are running rackets with abysmal methodologies). Unless you work in a singularly tiny field, there is no real difference in the "top" 30 programs. And who is this Jon character anyway?

For academic jobs, this sadly isn't really case.  And almost all sociology jobs are academic jobs.  If you want to work anywhere else, this isn't the case (or if you want to work in a non-sociology department).  The "abysmal methodologies" are asking the people at the universities you want to work at which the best departments are.  These are also coincidentally the people who decide whether to interview you for a job or not...  It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but there's a high correlation between rankings (at least in terms of top 5 vs. top 25) and where people get jobs.  But rankings certainly aren't destiny, especially in the sense of it's not like "Berkeley=good TT job" or anything like that.

Edited January 31, 2013 by jacib

[RefurbedScientist]

Jacib has hit the nail on the head.

I would only add this qualification to the "correlation between rankings and where people get jobs" piece: It's not just that reputation and social capital determine job placement, although that's a big part of why rankings matters. Another big factor is the accumulated advantage that higher ranked programs enjoy. You might actually do better work at a top program than a lower program IF you are more personally financially secure, research and travel funding is better, you have access to top faculty in other departments and research centers, have the name-recognition clout you need to land outside grants and big research interviews, and are surrounded by great peers (who also have secure funding, etc.). So these are sort of the "third/omitted variable" factors that might be at play behind the rankings=>job placement association.

In that sense, I would say that you might fair better on the job market if you go to a lower ranked program that is willing to shell out for a solid funding package, a sweet fellowship at a research center, and a lot of advisor support than if you went to a top ranked program where you had less support, because in the former you'll be working in conditions conducive to quality productivity. I turned down such a program last year for a higher ranked one where I feel less "special", and have really noticed the difference. (not that I'm regretting- my ultimate decision was geographically prescribed)

That being said, I think the basic point that rankings matter a lot (after only publication quality, I agree) is accurate, even if because the better ranked programs possess all those things (good funding, good outside opportunities, etc.) that conduce to quality publications.

Edited February 1, 2013 by SocialGroovements

[wmnshlthsoc]

This may sound slightly silly of me but I was told by someone (with a PhD) that it doesn't matter where you go or even what your degree is in... As long as you get into a program and get your PhD, you will always have that doctoral education. I think the rank of your school is more important based on what you want to do with your doctorate.

 

For me I didn't apply only based on ranking but by location and specialties. So I applied to some lower ranked schools but I'm just trying to get in -- anywhere! It's not like college where I was accepted to every school we apply to. I've already been rejected by PhD programs last year, I'm just trying to make it this year.

[RefurbedScientist]

This may sound slightly silly of me but I was told by someone (with a PhD) that it doesn't matter where you go or even what your degree is in... As long as you get into a program and get your PhD, you will always have that doctoral education. I think the rank of your school is more important based on what you want to do with your doctorate.

 

For me I didn't apply only based on ranking but by location and specialties. So I applied to some lower ranked schools but I'm just trying to get in -- anywhere! It's not like college where I was accepted to every school we apply to. I've already been rejected by PhD programs last year, I'm just trying to make it this year.

 

Sure, that's a good point. It definitely depends on what you want to do with the degree. I think we were mostly speaking to full time teaching & research, probably at a research university. However, it's possible to take a PhD into a great many professions. Whether you need a PhD to do those jobs is another question. But, doing a funded PhD and writing a dissertation on policy analysis can be a lot (financially) cheaper than doing a two year MPP, for example. 

[Salsero22]

I've been told by faculty that a general rule of thumb is that you tend to end up at institutions one tier below your program (unless you went to Harvard, Berkley, UChicago, etc. those tend to cycle within each other.)  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't still try to have a great CV, because there are exceptions.

[blogstarphd]

What are tiers by ranking? Top 5/10/20/25/30? Or is it Top 10/20/30?

[jacib]

I'm thinking back to the job talks I've seen at my top ten school, and I think every single one of the junior scholars who's given a job talk was from another top ten program. The senior scholars we've tried to woo have also generally been working at a top ten program, but not exclusively. (This is of course using standard sociological counting where there are about fifteen in the top ten).

[mbrown0315]

Following up on FertMigMort's post about Schneider's orgtheory post (http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/sociology-faculty-in-leading-departments-analysis-by-daniel-schneider/), I'll just highlight the main finding:

 

As of 2009, there were 985 regular and affiliated sociology faculty members in the 26 [top US News-ranked] departments I examined. Of these, about 80% received their PhDs from another one of the same 26 departments, 55% from one of ten departments, and 9% from Chicago alone. Just 15% received their degree from a university outside of these 26 departments and 5% from a foreign university.

 

Those ten departments are basically the ten listed in the above link. UCLA is strange in that it ranks at 12 for all hires and 3 for hires who got their PhDs in 2000 or later. (Does someone know what happened to that department to make its graduates so much more desirable? I don't think the cohorts got much bigger, and I don't think UCLA is known for hiring its own PhDs, at least not in the same way that Stanford is.)

 

Of course, Schneider's findings are a bit arbitrary. I would be very pleased to be a full professor at University of Southern California, Rutgers, Notre Dame, or any other of the many great schools that were not ranked in the top 26 sociology departments by US News in 2009, but at the same time he does not disaggregate this group of 26 into more competitive (Princeton? Berkeley?) and less competitive (Minnesota? Penn State?). If you quickly inspect the rosters at those ten departments, you'll find that the representation climbs to well above 55%.

 

In short, rank matters.

 

...ceteris paribus

Edited February 6, 2013 by mbrown0315

[mbrown0315]

Forgot to mention something. We shouldn't just focus on sociology department hiring.

 

Public policy, business, social work, education, and other departments recruit pretty heavily from sociology departments. It would be really neat to see if the hierarchy holds for these kinds of departments.

[magicunicorn]

@jacob lol on the fact that "top 10" in sociology really includes 15 schools.

 

@mbrown: something to keep in mind is that in midsize-large programs, you have almost 100 phDs in a program at a given time... with 7-12 per school hitting the job market every year... so all the "placement analyses" that we see on sociology blogs comparing the placement of Berkeley vs Chicago vs Princeton vs Harvard - is very much skewed by factors that we might not be able to measure and explain, because its movement is very influenced by slight shifts among a small group of people.  Perhaps one year, an admissions committee did really well and wooed the top sociology admits to a program leading to a stellar placement one year.  Perhaps UCLA wound up just having some really star sociology students and placed really well the last few years, as opposed to "something happening to the department" (it also helps that they do have cohorts closer to 20 people - so the chances of superstar students are higher than in a program which has 3-5 per cohort).  

 

I think to sum up things - rankings and advisors matter.  To what degree is up for debate.  Does not going to a top program preclude you from getting a great job?  Not necessarily, but it won't make things easier, that's for sure.  And there are plenty of grads from top-10 programs who struggle in graduate school and don't get a job after either.  

 

Would I stress about going to #11 instead of #5.. no.  Would I think twice about going to #45 instead of #3?  Yes.  But in the end you should decide whats best for you.  Would I think that only having #55 as an option, and going there would be a waste of time?  absolutely not!  You should follow your passions, study sociology, and work hard.  

[mbrown0315]

@mbrown: something to keep in mind is that in midsize-large programs, you have almost 100 phDs in a program at a given time... with 7-12 per school hitting the job market every year... so all the "placement analyses" that we see on sociology blogs comparing the placement of Berkeley vs Chicago vs Princeton vs Harvard - is very much skewed by factors that we might not be able to measure and explain, because its movement is very influenced by slight shifts among a small group of people.

 

I agree. A few months ago I asked Schneider for his full analysis, which takes cohort size into account, though he uses faculty size as a (reasonable) proxy for cohort size. He asked me to not circulate his report, so I can't share the data, but I will say that the hierarchy holds when you divide the number of recent top 26 hires from a department by the faculty size of that department in 2009.

[Darth.Vegan]

So this is something I have been discussing with my partner as I mull over my only acceptance thus far. While I have yet to hear from a few of my other top choices, I have been thinking about whether or not the current offer on the table is one that I want to accept. I actually love the sociology program at Oregon and if I wasn't willing to truly consider attending, I would not have applied there. There are a number of faculty that would be amazing to work with and that are very well known in the field. I also know and love the area and wouldn't mind spending 5-7 years there. However, I am concerned about two things, my chances for TT job placement, and the ability to live off the funding that is currently being offered. With these considerations off the table, Oregon would probably be my #3 choice of programs to attend, without question. My partner made a good point about subfields the other day, and I think it's a worthwhile consideration. While I agree with the posters here that subfield rankings probably matter very little in terms of job placement, they do matter in that I have very few programs to even apply to. I am of the opinion, that rankings wise, things seem to go like this, top 10, top 20, top 30 and then 40-60, most things seem equal. With my subfield being environmental sociology, there are actually very few programs for me to even consider applying to. I personally think it is a growing subfield, and will be a strong specialty area down the line, but the reality remains, even if I were to say, strengthen my quant score and go get an MA somewhere, my chances for better placement would be limited by the fact that my subfield is a speciality at only a handful of schools, all of which could easily reject me the next round just based on the number of applicants vs available spots. 

 

 

Programs I could apply to include: 

Wisconsin

Cornell (Dev Soc) 

Brown

UCSD ( they don't do environmental soc per say, but have folks that focus on agro-food systems and agrarian politics) 

Washington State

NC State

Boulder

Oregon

Santa Cruz

 

There are more, both those programs have folks working in areas I'm interested. Also, as you can see, I applied to most of them already, and the rest were on my list before I had to whittle it down to 15. 

 

http://envirosoc.org/gradprograms.php

[RefurbedScientist]

@darthvegan,

 

The tricky thing about topical areas like environmental soc is that they're not popular enough yet to really constitute a "subfield" that a program might list on its website or have comprehensive exams in. I think you've realized that and correctly pointed out that this is changing. However, I wouldn't underestimate the latitude you have in grad school to pursue whatever topic you want, even if it's not explicitly represented as a "subfield" or speciality area by the program. 

 

For example, my program doesn't list any particular enviro soc speciality area, but there are faculty in urban soc who are increasingly looking at the natural vs. built environment, climate politics, environmental movements, etc. I know plenty of social movement scholars who study the environmental movement. They all define themselves as social movement people, but are plenty knowledgeable about environmentalism. Also, any faculty doing spatial analysis would probably be amenable to an enviro focus. These people might fit themselves into urban soc, social movements, political economy, stratification, or whatever, because those are ready-made speciality areas, but they would probably all sit on a committee of someone doing something enviro-soc related. (In fact, I saw like three or four dissertation proposals last semester about climate politics, renewable energy, urban planning and environmentalism. I've also seen a handful of projects on urban farming at other schools). 

 

By way of analogy, historical-comparative sociologists all gang up together, even though some study post-war Europe and others study early-modern China and others study recent South America. 

 

The take-away is that you need a least one or two faculty members who will think "OK, that's a cool idea. I could advise a person like that." On your end, it means tailoring you SOP to say, "I want to study the spatial dynamics of urban inequality, especially with concern for climate justice issues." or "I'm interested in studying public opinion and policy making, focusing especially on carbon reduction policies." or "I'm interested in the political economy of American de-industrialization and agro-business, especially with an eye for the environmental dimensions." In others words, start broad to rope in an urban sociologist, political sociologist, political economist, whatever, then hit 'em with the environmentalism stuff.

 

Also, most schools have environmental science programs from where you can pull committee members to complement.

Sorry for hijacking the thread somewhat. On Oregon and rankings-- I would say look up the kinds of schools you see yourself working at to see if any semi-recently hired faculty (i.e. last 10 years) came from Oregon specifically or from similarly-ranked programs. When it comes to the lower-ranked programs, there's also a regional effect. That is, your advisor, program, and you will be better known in the Northwest because of network effects than on the East Coast. I ended up picking medium-ranked program because it places well in the Northeast, which I felt compensated for it's lower ranking relative to my other option.  

 

Edit* Also, you listed like 9 programs, and they were well dispersed in the rankings. I think that's about as good a strategy as you can have. I applied to 7 well dispersed programs and got accepted to 4, also well dispersed across ranking. 

 

This is also my 200th post. Ding!

Edited February 6, 2013 by SocialGroovements

[blogstarphd]

@SocialGroovements,

What do you think of job opportunities for the 25-40 schools like Irvine, USC, Emory, etc. versus a top 20 school? What's the treshhold that says the ranking may be too low?

[1848ce]

I imagine the most appropriate answer is "it depends", but paint in broad strokes if you can:

Do schools ever consider the rankings of related departments alongside sociology when a graduate did not directly work with that department?

I'm thinking of the influence of public policy programs on social policy graduates: cross-listed faculty, interdisciplinary research centers, etc.

[RefurbedScientist]

@SocialGroovements,

What do you think of job opportunities for the 25-40 schools like Irvine, USC, Emory, etc. versus a top 20 school? What's the treshhold that says the ranking may be too low?

 

I've heard it said around here that 50 is the cut-off for people who want to work in academia. When you get into the 25-40 range, I think that sub-field reputation actually starts to matter more. I think that's because the value of network effects and advisor reputation and letters of recommendation really kick in when ranking means less. That is, you'll have to rely on those factors more than pure name recognition. I study social movements, so when I think of UC Irvine (27?) or Notre Dame (40ish?) or Pittsburgh (45?), I only think of the top-top social movement scholars there. If I meet a grad student from UC Irvine studying social movements, I can usually count on their work being as high quality as a student at a top-5 program. That's because the movements faculty at UCI are the best in the country. Now, if I meet a grad student studying social movements at, say, Princeton, I'll think "Really? With who?". Thats not to say the UCI grad will beat out the Princeton grad on the job market, but it does illustrate the special circumstance when sub-field strength can really compensate for ranking. I've had a faculty member say the same thing to me. Once you get familiar with the profession and all the big players, this becomes pretty intuitive. 

 

So if you find yourself choosing between a school ranked around 20 and one ranked around 30, go with the one where your interests fit best with a stellar faculty member. The good work you'll be doing with a big name will easily compensate for the drop in rankings. In fact, I know someone who chose a school ranked around 25-30 over a top 5. I chose a school ranked around 15 rather than a top 5. Happens all the time. However, if you're choosing between a top 20 and one closer to 40, then I would go with rankings over fit (if your career goal is R1 TT professorship). 

The other thing worth keeping in mind is position vs. directionality. I think schools like UCI, ND, USC, Rice are all on the up-and-up. So they may be stuck in the rankings, but their faculty and students are making waves.