American Schools

[Biff]

Hello!

I am a Canadian student hoping to apply to both Canadian and American schools for cognitive and/or clinical psych this fall.

While I am familiar with the quality of Canadian Universities, I am at a bit of a loss about which American schools I should consider applying to. I know about the Ivy League schools, however I don't know about many of the other universities.

I have been looking at some of the other posts and there is a lot of talk about different "tiers" of schools...What does this signify, and how do you know what "tier" a given school belongs to? I know that the most important thing is that you have a good fit with your supervisor, but ultimately I would like to go to a decent school as well.

So far I have been looking up the universities that are involved in the publications I have been reading, but I was wondering if there is a more systematic way of doing things. Does anyone know of a comprehensive ranking or list of American schools, or better yet, schools with strong psych programs?

Any suggestions would be awesome! Also, thanks for humouring my ignorance...if you have any questions about Canadian schools I'd love to help!

[rogue]

US News & World Report is one of the more popular rankings. I'm not really sure how the tiers work for grad school; I think for undergrad tier one is like the top 20 or 25, tier two is down to 50, and then tiers three and four are unranked but just grouped as a tier.

Here's a link to the cognitive psych rankings:

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandr ... psychology

I'm in a different discipline, but I would think the APA would probably provide info on programs and their rankings as well.

The Carnegie Foundation has a classification system as well. It's not really the "tiers" people talk about it, but it groups schools by degree types granted, research activity, etc. So if you hear R1 or R2 (the old designations) or RU-VH, RU-H, etc., it's the Carnegie classification.

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/

[Biff]

Thanks a lot! That is really helpful