How important is a program's ranking?

[turbodream]

What's the deal with grad school rankings? Is it really a very accurate measure of a programs strength? I've always looked at the US News rankings (probably because it is the first thing to come up on Google). What other resources do you use to gauge the strengths of programs? 

 

Thanks for your advice and insights.

[Boba felt]

I would treat it as a decision making tool, but only in broad terms and just 1 resource to help you get organized.  In general, their top 10 programs are better than the next 10, etc but with much overlap.  A #56 school is far down, but may be better in specialized sub-areas, so if you discount it off the bat you're missing out.  One of the schools I applied to was below the #50 rank, but had tons of funding and special resources for my niche area of study.  But I don't think name-brand or ivy recognition is super valuable in my specific field, for what I want out of my degree.  For some it could be very important.

 

For me, it gave a place to start to develop a list of schools with engineering programs.  So I took the top 60 schools from the US News list.  I did a quick 3 minutes on each schools webpage to see if they even had my specialization area, and only about 20 did.  From there I took the time to research those top 20 schools to narrow down the list.  This was based on my sense of how well the academic program matched my interests, professor's research, city school was located in, other resources, student awards while studying there, etc.  That got me down to only 8 schools.  Due to budget and time constraints I only applied to my favorite 2 out of those.

[Darth.Vegan]

Ranking is definitely important, but I would look at job placement of prospective programs as well. You might be surprised by how well some lower ranking programs place in comparison to higher ranked programs. 

[mormlib]

A lot depends on what you want to do after. The general consensus I've heard from professors is if you want an appointment at a university after you graduate, you need to consider that you won't get a job somewhere better than where you went to school. If you aren't looking to be a professor at a top name research university, it might not matter that much.

 

But, similar to what "Boba felt' said, the specialty areas are different. Yale doesn't have one of the highest rankings in total, but is one of the best cultural sociology programs. So, make sure you consider the specialty rankings

[JustineE]

I have been told you have two options as far as job placement and publication possibilities: 1) top ranking school, or a school with a big name. 2) go to a place where there is a prof that you want to work with. I have applied to programs of many different rankings by looking at their specializations and falculty that are publishing with grad students that specialize in my area. Also it depends what you want in a program. For me I applied to many "lower" ranked schools due in part to the publications coming out of them in my area. I guess if you study something rather specific it's easier to decide.

[jacib]

You should really read "The Academic Caste System" by Val Burris.  Ungated PDF.  It shows you what goes into academic rankings (most important things: past rankings; department size) and, though it's necessarily the entire focus of the paper, how they matter in terms of job placement (hint: there's a lot of social closure at the top).  He rethinks of "prestige" as social capital, and argues that it matters a lot in network terms.  And his argument is based only on overall prestige, not more meritocratic subfield prestige.  Worth reading and thinking about.

 

If you want, Neal Caren wrote a blog post over in Scatterplot that looks at this issue again and it's a little shorter, but it's obviously not a replacement for the real article.  The two links in the first line of Caren's post are also worth reading.  But it's really true on top: I'm at a top-ten-ish department, and I think we've hired for 3 new positions in the past four years or something, and the like dozen or so candidates have only come from like six different schools, all ranked higher than us on all the charts.

 

Again, though, this is only about placement at the top.  If two people from a cohort got jobs at in the top ten, two got jobs at community college, and four couldn't find jobs, only the first two would show up in this data and the school would look excellent.  That said, from my experience, it looks like schools that place better on top also place better for all their candidates down the line (the ones that go into the academic job market, at least--people who drop out or people who decide not to get university jobs, who knows).  The only real caveat I can give is that, from looking unsystematically, some big state schools seem to place a lot of people in regional colleges and universities; I remember especially looking at the soc departments of smaller, unprestigious Midwestern schools seeing a surprising number of Wisconsin and Michigan grads.  However, I assume this is more an effect of the preferences of individuals (and their partners) to stay in the area than anything to do with prestige and the job market more broadly.  Like, I'd wager if you looked at all the colleges in CUNY, you'd find a disproportional number of NYU and Columbia PhDs with jobs there, and in the South, I'd guess you'd find more Duke, UNC, and maybe even UT grads--this could also be explained through networks, too, but I would guess has more to do with candidate preference, especially based on the fact I've heard professor at one smaller, top-50 or so program say, "Our people could get better placement than they do, but half of them don't want to leave [our metro area]!"

 

Also look at the I wrote two comments about rankings on there, one with links to a going back to 1995 (the Burris article shows a variety of top ten rankings going back to 1925 and makes a point that the schools in the original ranking are all still more or less top ten departments).

Edited February 7, 2014 by jacib

[turbodream]

Thanks for all the comments. Yes jacib... the "schools on the rise" thread is also very insightful. 

[gilbertrollins]

Scholars are time constrained and barely get to read 5% of the things they want to.  Scholarly judgments get made on status signals in order to economize on time and reasoning costs.  The rich get richer.  Go to a top program so that your work gets read, emails get opened, and job market package looked at.  Beyond that, you have to perform, and being surrounded by a lot of other smart people will help you do that.  People who think that status hierarchies are purely vapid Mathew Effects are lying to themselves.

[Maleficent999]

Okay, hypothetical question for you guys...

 

Would you say it is more beneficial to be a top-performer at a mid-ranking program or an average performer at a top-ranking program? This is something I've been wondering about job placement in regard to the OP's question. Will a top-performer from a well-known but not as highly-ranked program still have good job prospects compared to an average-performer from a school with a good name? Does name carry more weight than the quality of work? Some people who get into these really high-ranking programs aren't going to do as well as they are expected to based on whatever formula schools use to grant admission; it's been discussed in these and other forums before.

Edited February 10, 2014 by Maleficent999

[mbrown0315]

Would you say it is more beneficial to be a top-performer at a mid-ranking program or an average performer at a top-ranking program?

 

Depends on how you're measuring performance, but I think it's probably better to be a top performer at a mid-ranking program. If you leave a mid-ranking program with three publications in top journals, a book contract, and a smattering of awards, you're set.

Edited February 10, 2014 by mbrown0315

[amlobo]

Okay, hypothetical question for you guys...

 

Would you say it is more beneficial to be a top-performer at a mid-ranking program or an average performer at a top-ranking program? This is something I've been wondering about job placement in regard to the OP's question. Will a top-performer from a well-known but not as highly-ranked program still have good job prospects compared to an average-performer from a school with a good name? Does name carry more weight than the quality of work? Some people who get into these really high-ranking programs aren't going to do as well as they are expected to based on whatever formula schools use to grant admission; it's been discussed in these and other forums before.

 

I think that if you are doing good work, you are doing good work - regardless of where you are (though you might have to be a bit more impressive to stay on a short-list when you aren't from a top school).  One of our hires last year was from a non-top 20 program, but he had fantastic pubs and was doing very good work.  I'm sure he got the job over people from tippy-top programs.  I do think there is "some" benefit to being a star of a department, in the sense that you may get better recommendations from faculty members and have more opportunities in your program to pad the CV a bit.

 

I think something to consider in thinking about job prospects is your particular advisor at each school.  If you are at a top school with an advisor that doesn't particularly foster their students' development and doesn't have a good placement record, compare that to being at a bit lower-ranked school with an advisor that really pays attention to helping their students build a good CV and places their students perhaps better than the program does in general.  Something I would stress, in visiting and corresponding with departments, talk to your potential advisor's current students.  They are the ones that will be able to tell you about what it is like to work with *your* advisor; other students can only speak to their own experience, which may be nothing like how your advisor operates.  

 

I always tell people - you have to pick the program that is right *for you* - and the same program can be very different for different students due to the individual nature of your interests/advisor/opportunities.  The idea that you might be able to "accomplish more" at a bit of a lower-ranked school might be something that appeals to you, and then that's something to take into account.

[Darth.Vegan]

Here's the concern I would have, better ranked programs tend to have faculty members that regularly publish in the top 3 journals. That increases your likelihood of getting a co-author pub in a top journal. I would look at whether or not faculty members at prospective programs are publishing in top journals, and whether they are including their grad students as co-authors on a semi-regular basis. While you may get into a top journal on your own merit as a single author, it is much less likely than doing so as a co-author. I certainly wouldn't count on a single author publication in a top journal while you are a grad student. It's not impossible, we've had a few happen within our department, including a recent one in social forces, but it's very unlikely. 

Edited February 10, 2014 by xdarthveganx

[vaiseys]

I've been trying not to post here (don't want to throw off the grad student vibe) but I've got to jump in on this one. There is NO DOUBT that it's better to be the top person at (almost) any school than a middling student at any other school. The amount of heterogeneity within departments is MUCH larger than the amount between departments. The reliance on means and best-case scenarios really obscures that fact.

 

I could also list many examples of people who got jobs "above" where they got their PhDs (myself included). I don't want to call attention to any of my friends or colleagues but there are lots of examples out there.

 

Last rant item: don't confuse selection effects with treatment effects. If top departments get their first choice of students at admissions time, it's no wonder they they go on to have the best "placements." We'd expect the same thing even if there was no effect at all of going to the program. An analogy: if two or three NFL teams got the first draft picks every single year, we wouldn't be surprised if they went on to win a lot of games. Don't confuse draft pick priority with coaching ability.

[Darth.Vegan]

My biggest concern would be the adjunct trap. If you don't mind being adjunct or you intend to work part-time, you don't need to worry about it. Otherwise, it's something prospective applicants should seriously consider. That said, ranking isn't anything. I know of programs ranked in the 50's and 60's and do a solid job placing students into tenure track jobs. Many departments work in a particular niche, and place students in jobs because of it, that isn't reflected in the overall ranking. 

[ohgoodness]

A way of understanding placement into your dream school would be to google the school and add "new faculty" to the search.  Find the new hires and then google scholar their publications.    You'll see what matters. 

 

If you want to understand how you get stuck in the postdoc-situation - google post docs and look at the difference between someone moving into associate professorship and post docs..  

[Darth.Vegan]

That should say: "Ranking isn't everything." ugh, darn typos!