Question about program prestige/rankings

[88literatureguy88]

I have recently discovered that PhD rankings in English are...surprising.  Especially when you compare US news rankings with NRC rankings.  Schools like Kentucky and UConn do well in NRC but are very low in US News.  Schools like Minnesota do very poorly in NRC, but do quite well in US News. Of course this comes down to the methodology behind each of the ranking publications.  If you have the time, I'd appreciate it if you give me your thoughts on the programs listed below.  I know it can be tough to rank schools because each department has different strengths, but please still try.  What's your general "impression" of the following schools?  How would you rank them? 

 

 

FSU

University of Florida

Minnesota

Kentucky

Syracuse

Missouri

Penn State

 

[tie]

What areas of study are you interested in?

[88literatureguy88]

What areas of study are you interested in?

 

I was interested in the perceived strength of the literature department as a whole.  Of course, every program has specific strengths and weaknesses, but I still think departments can be perceived as a whole -- ex. "Harvard has a great English program" vs "Backwoods U has a trashy English program"

[Datatape]

Rankings are obviously varied and only give an idea of the program's overall prestige.  These do not take into consideration strength in individual areas and can be misleading.  For example, one of the schools I've been accepted into, Nevada at Reno, is ranked #125 on the USN&WR.  Most people on this forum would recoil in horror at the thought of attending such a low-ranked school, but UNR is the #1 program in the entire country in ecocriticism, which is what I want to study.  Further, they have a phenomenal placement rate of over 85%, as in the fourth and fifth year, all PhD students go through a series of workshops designed to prepare them for the job market, such as how to respond to a job ad and how to approach an MLA interview.  UNR is a very, very low-ranked program, but its graduates are getting jobs, many of them tenure-track, in the first year on the market.

 

Now, to address your question.  I would, hesitantly, rank your individual schools from best overall impression to worst as follows:

Penn State

Syracuse

Florida

Missou

Kentucky

Minnesota

Florida State

 

Admittedly, I have only applied to two of these schools, so I haven't done a huge amount of research on the other five.  But as an outside observer, that is how I would look at the programs.  That could change dramatically based on what your primary research interest is.

[88literatureguy88]

Rankings are obviously varied and only give an idea of the program's overall prestige.  These do not take into consideration strength in individual areas and can be misleading.  For example, one of the schools I've been accepted into, Nevada at Reno, is ranked #125 on the USN&WR.  Most people on this forum would recoil in horror at the thought of attending such a low-ranked school, but UNR is the #1 program in the entire country in ecocriticism, which is what I want to study.  Further, they have a phenomenal placement rate of over 85%, as in the fourth and fifth year, all PhD students go through a series of workshops designed to prepare them for the job market, such as how to respond to a job ad and how to approach an MLA interview.  UNR is a very, very low-ranked program, but its graduates are getting jobs, many of them tenure-track, in the first year on the market.

 

Now, to address your question.  I would, hesitantly, rank your individual schools from best overall impression to worst as follows:

Penn State

Syracuse

Florida

Missou

Kentucky

Minnesota

Florida State

 

Admittedly, I have only applied to two of these schools, so I haven't done a huge amount of research on the other five.  But as an outside observer, that is how I would look at the programs.  That could change dramatically based on what your primary research interest is.

 

Hmmm, I feel like my impressions must be totally off the wall.  The US News rankings generally confirmed what I vaguely felt about departments, but your response and the NRC rankings completely undercut my (again) vague impressions.  I chose this list of schools because I though each was ranked wildly differently than I thought it should be. 

 

My Impressions:

 

Penn State/Minnesota (tie for the top)

Florida

Syracuse

Missouri/Kentucky/FSU (tie for the bottom)

 

I almost wish I never saw the NRC rankings!  Now I feel confused...and I was so sure about which departments had the most prestige before I saw them.  Guess it shows what I know

[Datatape]

Like I said, I've only applied to two of those schools (Florida and Kentucky), so my opinion may be off.  If you've looked into all those programs in detail, you should trust your own judgment much more than mine.

[88literatureguy88]

I'll just say it: the NRC rankings seem to be totally off the wall to me.  FSU is above UT Austin? UConn above Brown?  Arizona State above the University of Chicago?  This just seems completely nuts to me. Maybe I'm reading this report wrong -- I just stumbled on it and I have noticed that is different than the US news layout. 

Edited March 23, 2013 by 88literatureguy88

[88literatureguy88]

Like I said, I've only applied to two of those schools (Florida and Kentucky), so my opinion may be off.  If you've looked into all those programs in detail, you should trust your own judgment much more than mine.

 

Of course. And I do understand that.  I guess I'm just flabbergasted by the NRC rankings. 

[ComeBackZinc]

Look, here's the deal: people know rationally that rankings don't matter. But they want to feel validated and justified by those ratings even as they understand them to be bullshit. So they gravitate towards whatever ratings they feel support their own choices and their own path. 

 

I'll just say it: the NRC rankings seem to be totally off the wall to me.  FSU is above UT Austin? UConn above Brown?  Arizona State above the University of Chicago?  This just seems completely nuts to me. Maybe I'm reading this report wrong -- I just stumbled on it and I have noticed that is different than the US news layout. 

 

But why are they off the wall? Where does that opinion of yours come from? Yes, prestige matters. But actual prestige and perceived prestige for those outside of the current academy are very different things. People flip out about the NRC rankings because they aren't the usual "Berkeley plus the Ivy League" stuff that people gradually assume. I'm no expert, not close. But UConn being above Brown is the opposite of off the wall, if you actually look at the quality of the faculty, the recent publication history, and their ability to place students in jobs. Arizona State over University of Chicago? I'm on board, based on who is actually there now rather than on broad notions of school quality that are based on undergraduate exclusivity, which has precisely nothing to do with the quality of an English doctoral program. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that you're assuming that the quality of literature doctoral programs should more or less track with the assumed prestige of undergraduate institutions. And frankly, I think that is a profoundly mistaken perspective, and one that has resulted in an ossified notion of quality in English, to the detriment of people working in the field. It makes it impossible for vibrant programs of quality scholars to advance, thanks to the legacy of what a program once was decades ago.

 

So I guess the question is: on what basis do you justify assuming that UConn is necessarily a worse program than Brown?

[dazedandbemused]

I think it really depends on what you've chosen as the metric for the NRC rankings. There are five or six options (if you're using phds.org) that could drastically change the way the rankings look. For example, if you rank schools based on student outcomes, the Ivies disappear from the top of the list.

Edited March 23, 2013 by dazedandbemused

[88literatureguy88]

Look, here's the deal: people know rationally that rankings don't matter. But they want to feel validated and justified by those ratings even as they understand them to be bullshit. So they gravitate towards whatever ratings they feel support their own choices and their own path. 

 

 

But why are they off the wall? Where does that opinion of yours come from? Yes, prestige matters. But actual prestige and perceived prestige for those outside of the current academy are very different things. People flip out about the NRC rankings because they aren't the usual "Berkeley plus the Ivy League" stuff that people gradually assume. I'm no expert, not close. But UConn being above Brown is the opposite of off the wall, if you actually look at the quality of the faculty, the recent publication history, and their ability to place students in jobs. Arizona State over University of Chicago? I'm on board, based on who is actually there now rather than on broad notions of school quality that are based on undergraduate exclusivity, which has precisely nothing to do with the quality of an English doctoral program. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that you're assuming that the quality of literature doctoral programs should more or less track with the assumed prestige of undergraduate institutions. And frankly, I think that is a profoundly mistaken perspective, and one that has resulted in an ossified notion of quality in English, to the detriment of people working in the field. It makes it impossible for vibrant programs of quality scholars to advance, thanks to the legacy of what a program once was decades ago.

 

So I guess the question is: on what basis do you justify assuming that UConn is necessarily a worse program than Brown?

 

Good points.  And yes, I suppose you are right.  I am assuming that the Ivy League would be better than Uconn because, well, it's the ivy league.  I'm a lowly state school guy myself, so I'm not trying to denigrate programs here.  Still, it's quite a shock to see the NRC rankings.  Think on this I will. 

[Rupert Pupkin]

Since when are historicist and conservative synonyms?

[ComeBackZinc]

i'm usually pretty good about avoiding the internet when drunk

[Taco Superior]

i'm usually pretty good about avoiding the internet when drunk

 

Uh-oh. Troll Wars... commence!!!!!!!!

[champagne]

Of course this is all with the caveat that rankings are in reality useless except for the (unfair) leg-up "prestige" gives you in the job search process. With that said, I think most people on this forum would agree that the NRC rankings actually have much more agency in academia, and this assumption is largely based on the shortcomings of the methodologies of the U.S. News and World Report rankings. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I'm fairly certain that a large portion of the U.S. News and World Report Rankings is based on...

 

 

previous U.S. News and World Report Rankings.

[hashslinger]

I don't think anyone in the academy really looks to either set of rankings to decide on the viability of a certain candidate. Like, no one sits there with the NRC or USNWR rankings in their lap as they go over CVs.

 

Having said that, prestige matters for certain kinds of jobs. A lot. It's coded more as the "currency of your degree," and it is a chief concern of hiring committees. Your degree is as valuable as people think it is, and people still find a Brown PhD much more valuable than a UConn PhD. It's infuriating and tautological--Brown is good because it is Brown, and everyone knows it is good--but it's also the current reality that we all must deal with. A quick glance at the job placements for Brown and UConn bears this out.

 

I've seen my school vet and hire a lot of candidates over the years, and we really only ask people from certain schools to campus. We ask Brown and Yale to campus quite frequently, but I've yet to see us bring UConn, Kentucky, Arizona State, or UI-Chicago. In fact, I think it's safe to say that we would not be interested in a CV from UConn or Kentucky. Once in a while we might look at someone from a "peer institution," but we would not dip any lower than that.

 

I once asked a professor how she goes about reading applications for jobs. She said she looks at three things: 1. prestige of degree, 2. publications, 3. awards. One must have all three things to get anything but a glance.

 

I really don't think it's fair--in a way, I wish that state schools would perpetuating this nonsense, because really, it hurts their own graduates more than anything else--but I think it demonstrates the unfortunate importance of "perceived prestige" of the job market.

[bluecheese]

[asleepawake]

 

LOL Why did I just watch the entire thing

[dazedandbemused]

I wish I didn't know people who legitimately believe this stuff. Madonna's performance last year blew up my damn facebook feed.

[hashslinger]

Oh, I'm definitely trying to hate on Brown. Tellingly, I was accepted by UConn and rejected by Brown, which makes me think that Brown is the better program. (Because my experience is the ultimate decider, of course.)

[zielschmerz]

I have wondered about the placement stats. People above have mentioned the degree prestige issue in hiring. I had a professor who said "There is no point in applying to anything but the best programs," and so on. And then you have these NRC rankings that put Washington State over Princeton in job placement. ??? How can both of these realities be true? I want the snobby rankings fetishism to be bogus, but I worry that places just find sneaky ways to fudge their stats.

[Swagato]

And that's where the definition of "job" becomes, I think, a key issue. 

[Dark Matter]

I haven't posted in a while, but those who have read my posts before know the kind of advice I've given and from where. In any case, let me say that the NRC rankings are perceived within the business as crazy to worthless. The US News rankings are perceived as annoyingly stodgy but as bearing some closer relation to the truth. There is not a single possible world in which UConn is a better department than Brown or Arizona State than Chicago. Trust me. If you get into both, you would be making a mistake to take the first over the second, in every respect including especially job placement. The faculty at UConn and AZ State would almost certainly agree.

Edited March 24, 2013 by Dark Matter

[88literatureguy88]

I haven't posted in a while, but those who have read my posts before know the kind of advice I've given and from where. In any case, let me say that the NRC rankings are perceived within the business as crazy to worthless. The US News rankings are perceived as annoyingly stodgy but as bearing some closer relation to the truth. There is not a single possible world in which UConn is a better department than Brown or Arizona State than Chicago. Trust me. If you get into both, you would be making a mistake to take the first over the second, in every respect including especially job placement. The faculty at UConn and AZ State would almost certainly agree.

 

This sounds right to me.  I just can't see English faculty seriously considering the NRC rankings.   Anybody else want to rank the schools I listed in the first post?  I'm still curious. 

[Dark Matter]

Minnesota/Penn State

and then roughly

Missouri

Kentucky

Syracuse

University of Florida

FSU

In other words, I'd say there's a significant gap between the top two--Minnesota and Penn State--and the rest.

Edited March 24, 2013 by Dark Matter