ZiggyPhil Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 I took a long break from GradCafe over the summer and early part of this semester, but now that I'm back I thought I'd share some data I collected that I think could help other people make a decision. I used department websites to get these numbers. The APA collects some similar data but it is self-reported and incomplete, and I haven't seen any chart like this that can be used to compare different programs. I've got data for the entire PGR top 50, as well as a few unranked schools I was interested in. The first column (FTF) indicates how many full-time, Tenure or TT professors are in the department (so, this doesn't count lecturers, adjuncts, visiting professors, or affiliated professors in other departments). The second column (GS) indicates how many grad students are in the department (both M.A. and Ph.D. students, for deprtments that offer both). The third column is simply column 2 divided by column 1. How might this be useful? It seems to me that everyone should care about column 3, which indicates how many grad students there are for each professor. A high number here may cause concern that students will find it difficult to get the kind of intensive, one-on-one interaction with professors that is highly beneficial for graduate studies. I think we can expect that, on average, professors in departments with a high number in column 3 will be less available to students than professors in a department with a low number. As can be seen, there is quite a lot of variance in the student-teacher ratio at various programs - more than I expected. It also seems useful to know the absolute size of departments, not just the student teacher ratio. There are advantages and disadvantages to both small and large departments. It's probably easier to feel a sense of community in small departments , while large departments probably offer more variety in courses and choice of dissertation advisors. I would encourage applicants to consider what kind of department they would like to spend their time in - going to a huge department like CUNY is bound to be a very different experience than going to a small department like MIT, despite the fact that they have similar student/teacher ratios. (please forgive the wonky formatting - copy/pasting from excel doesn't work very well) Name FTF GS GS/FTF NYU 27 42 1.6 Rutgers 29 42 1.5 Princeton 22 54 2.5 Michigan 30 39 1.3 Harvard 22 50 2.3 Pittsburgh 19 47 2.5 MIT 11 29 2.6 Yale 25 39 1.6 Stanford 27 58 2.1 North Carolina 25 33 1.3 Columbia 23 71 3.1 UCLA 17 50 2.9 USC 23 34 1.5 CUNY 40 95 2.4 Cornell 19 46 2.4 Arizona 26 30 1.2 UC Berkeley 24 49 2 Notre Dame 42 66 1.6 Brown 16 31 1.9 Chicago 23 57 2.5 Texas 33 56 1.7 UC San Diego 23 38 1.7 Wisconsin 22 43 2 Duke 16 29 1.8 IU 14 38 2.7 Ohio State 20 40 2 Colorado 25 43 1.7 Umass 14 48 3.4 UC Irvine 10 25 2.5 Penn 14 40 2.9 Northwestern 19 38 2 UC Riverside 17 36 2.1 Maryland 20 32 1.6 Miami 14 27 1.9 WUSTL 20 30 1.5 Georgetown 29 38 1.3 Johns Hopkins 12 34 2.8 Syracuse 20 41 2.1 Virginia 17 33 1.9 Carnegie-Mellon 17 35 2.1 UC Santa Barbara 11 28 2.5 Illinois @ Chicago 16 32 2 Washington 18 34 1.9 Boston 22 47 2.1 Florida State 15 48 3.2 Rice 12 22 1.8 UC Davis 13 23 1.8 Minnesota 14 25 1.8 Rochester 15 21 1.4 Connecticut 19 31 1.6 Missouri 16 29 1.8 Purdue 20 47 2.4 Illinois @ U-C 13 30 2.3 Iowa 13 22 1.7 gughok, frege-bombs, The Pedanticist and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattDest Posted October 20, 2014 Share Posted October 20, 2014 Very cool, thanks for sharing this. As someone in a program, one thing to think about is how many faculty/grad students are in your area of interest. I imagine that most programs are pretty good about keeping these ratios relatively even, but it's worth thinking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZiggyPhil Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 Very cool, thanks for sharing this. As someone in a program, one thing to think about is how many faculty/grad students are in your area of interest. I imagine that most programs are pretty good about keeping these ratios relatively even, but it's worth thinking about. Oh, I certainly agree, but a lot of programs don't list grad student interests, so for many schools it would be difficult to get this kind of information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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