so about these top 10 schools...

[twentysix]

People are always talking about the top 10s job placing rates, but no one ever provides a list of top 10. There are a lot of rankings out there and none that I have found explicitly address placement rates. Where is this top ten list, and does the list change according to discipline or specialization? For example I am interested in placement rates of colonial Mexican history PhDs. And I do expect some kind of source.

Edited April 10, 2015 by twentysix

[jujubea]

Lol, your wording sounded a little self-righteous or entitled!: "And I do expect some kind of source." 

 

Nonetheless, we like to help each other out here. 

 

I'm not fully clear what your question is, but I would recommend looking at the NRC rankings, which are a range of rankings for a given school or subject, and factors are included such as amount of publications, perceptions of professors from outside the school about the school, citation rates, student time-to-degree, and many more. 

 

Here is their list for history: http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-History/124736/ 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't find a list out there that specifically includes "Mexican History." 

 

I also have never seen a "job placement rates" ranked list of schools - though I'm sure they exist, I just haven't seen them. It seems like that is something more likely available for the physical sciences, engineering, or maybe med school, just a guess.

 

Also, I think the general belief is that, if you go to a so-called "top 10" school (by whichever institution's ranking), that your chances of getting a job are some proportion higher than lower-ranked schools. So perhaps when people talk about top 10 placement rankings, they're linked to the regular top 10 rankings out there.

 

That'd be my guess, in the absence of other info.

 

And congrats on the Nahuatl Program - pretty cool!

[dr. t]

This study was posted in another thread: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005

 

It basically says that institutional prestige is an absurdly large factor in hiring decisions, and that if you're not in a top 20 program, your chances of employment drop catastrophically.

 

For history, those 20 (determined my network centrality) are, in order:

 

Harvard University; Yale University; UC Berkeley; Princeton University; Stanford University; University of Chicago; Columbia University; Brandeis University; Johns Hopkins University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Michigan; UCLA; Northwestern University; Cornell University; Brown University; UC Davis; University of Rochester; New York University; UC San Diego

 

There may be some play in the numbers based on subfield, but it doesn't look like much

Edited April 10, 2015 by telkanuru

[navyblackmaroon]

I find the US News and World Report's rankings to be more useful because they have specialized rankings on Latin American History. They don't do a specific one on colonial Latin America, but at least that is a start.

 

The placement studies I have seen don't discriminate by field. Just from checking the forums, I have seen a couple. Here is one (posted by telkanuru, if I am correct) that compares USNW rankings and placements: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5p5Vo_V4WG_UWJwTld2bVF0dlU/view

 

There was another one, an academic study from before 2008, which largely confirmed that the universities that were in the top 15 in the US News and World Report's basically had the best placement rates. I will keep browsing around and post it if I can find it.

 

The problem with placement rankings for very specific subjects (colonial Mexico) is that their sample size is too small. What do I mean by that? It's fine to keep track of Berkeley or UCSD's general department placement for 20 years or so because they have many graduate students and a sizable faculty to examine. However, if you look at their colonial Mexico placements they will fluctuate wildly because they are tied to basically one faculty member. Once that academic retires (Taylor at Berkeley or Van Young as he will at UCSD quite soon), the placement rates collapse for some years until they are replaced or their replacements take their position. 

[dr. t]

The placement studies I have seen don't discriminate by field. Just from checking the forums, I have seen a couple. Here is one (posted by telkanuru, if I am correct) that compares USNW rankings and placements: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5p5Vo_V4WG_UWJwTld2bVF0dlU/view

 

Yes, these are the results from the study I mentioned. Note that "pi" is network centrality and thus "# u" represents "true" ranking based on placements.

[jujubea]

Yes, these are the results from the study I mentioned. Note that "pi" is network centrality and thus "# u" represents "true" ranking based on placements.

 

Are these history rankings, or overall rankings?

[dr. t]

Are these history rankings, or overall rankings?

 

History. The study looked at history, business, and computer science in turn, and found the same trend in all three.

[Sigaba]

Lol, your wording sounded a little self-righteous or entitled!: "And I do expect some kind of source." 

 

Nonetheless, we like to help each other out here. 

 

I'm not fully clear what your question is, but I would recommend looking at the NRC rankings, which are a range of rankings for a given school or subject, and factors are included such as amount of publications, perceptions of professors from outside the school about the school, citation rates, student time-to-degree, and many more. 

 

Here is their list for history: http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-History/124736/ 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't find a list out there that specifically includes "Mexican History." 

 

I also have never seen a "job placement rates" ranked list of schools - though I'm sure they exist, I just haven't seen them. It seems like that is something more likely available for the physical sciences, engineering, or maybe med school, just a guess.

 

Also, I think the general belief is that, if you go to a so-called "top 10" school (by whichever institution's ranking), that your chances of getting a job are some proportion higher than lower-ranked schools. So perhaps when people talk about top 10 placement rankings, they're linked to the regular top 10 rankings out there.

 

That'd be my guess, in the absence of other info.

 

And congrats on the Nahuatl Program - pretty cool!

 

@jujubea You have earned admission to the programs of your choice. That achievement makes you intellectually respectable. However, your elation over your very successful application season may be getting the better of you.  

 

If you're going to chastise others for being "self righteous or entitled" you should think twice before jumping into a conversation geared towards historians, especially if you're going to admit that your POV is centered around matters of opinion ("I think the general belief is..." "That'd be my guess, in the absence of other info.")

 

Your success and your time on this BB do not make you a SME on the processes used by professional academic historians to hire other professional academic historians.

[navyblackmaroon]

Now, from what I know about the (historical) perceived reputation of Mexican History programs: Mexican historians placed in good positions often come out from U Chicago, Yale, Berkeley, UCSD, UCLA, and Arizona. Of those, Chicago and Yale strike me more as places to do modern Mexico (especially Chicago). UCLA has a long tradition of doing excellent colonial Mexican history (especially related to the study of  indigenous sources, think  Kevin Terraciano, Restall, and James Lockhart). Berkeley had a monopoly on colonial Mexican religion for a while. Van Young at UCSD had a crop of very successful graduate students. I always associated Arizona with cultural history. 

 

Another way of thinking about it is who has landed the best colonial Mexican history job openings in the past few years. From the top of my head, Berkeley graduates landed the jobs at Northwestern and Princeton (Paul Ramirez and Vera Candiani), while a UCLA graduate landed the job at UCSD (Dana Velasco). 

 

If I were to do research on pre-Columbian or early colonial Mexico, UCLA would be the top target. Penn State is another possibility (because of Restall), but their placement is nowhere near as good as UCLA's.

[mvlchicago]

This is my basic gist on the situation based on experiences mostly at varying schools in the ivy+ realm (re: is my school top 10? What about my subfield? Will I get a job? etc.):

If you are attending an Ivy League+ School (so inclusive of Stanford, Duke, UChicago, WashU and Johns Hopkins), or a pretty well-reputed public/private school, (Wisconsin-Madison, Berkeley, NYU, UMich, Northwestern, etc.) you're probably fine, regardless of what your subfield is, so long as you're putting in the work that you need to do.

If you're not attending those schools, nor a school that is legendary for its subfields (so like Arizona for Reformation under Heiko Oberman, or UCLA for colonial Latin America over the past couple decades), you're probably "behind" so to speak of the pack leaders who are mostly at the programs listed above. Does this mean you won't be hired? No, because these things aren't set in stone. It just means you probably have an uphill battle in regards to demonstrating why you are just as qualified as a student coming out of UChicago for NELC, or UMich for the Ancient World, or Yale for religious studies. 

I don't mean to single this thread out, since a number of people have been asking "Well what does it mean to be here" or "Should I take the top tier masters or the second tier phd." I think, ultimately, a lot of these questions depend on your specific needs as an individual. I've had faculty at Chicago who started at colleges whose names I cannot even remember. The bottom line is I'd spend the time you are worrying about the name of the degree and develop your thesis, or build your networks and so on.

Also important is just because a school's name or pedigree is amazing does not mean it will be the right fit for you. If you fail out of a top 10 program, you'll be in less a position to get your dream job than if you did a steady, well-written dissertation at a lesser known school. This doesn't mean you were a worse student or any less able–maybe you hate the East Coast!

It's probably easier for me to say this on the other side of the chasm, but I've seen friends drive themselves insane over rankings for both undergrad and grad programs when I think it wasn't necessary. Compiling datasets that you want (placement records for a specific field from each program over 10 years) is basically impossible since not all schools are releasing their info publicly, and to start worrying about everything based on a non-set is time-consuming. Just stick to your guns and know what you're bringing to the table, and I think you'll find you'll be getting the offers you need to make your programs work.

[jujubea]

@jujubea You have earned admission to the programs of your choice. That achievement makes you intellectually respectable. However, your elation over your very successful application season may be getting the better of you.  

 

If you're going to chastise others for being "self righteous or entitled" you should think twice before jumping into a conversation geared towards historians, especially if you're going to admit that your POV is centered around matters of opinion ("I think the general belief is..." "That'd be my guess, in the absence of other info.")

 

Your success and your time on this BB do not make you a SME on the processes used by professional academic historians to hire other professional academic historians.

 

You've made a lot of assumptions about me.

 

Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to "chastise," just giving feedback about the way the statement was worded - but, point well-taken that my own word choice may have come off wrong, too.

 

I purposefully caveated my answer (as I often do on this forum), to indicate that these were mere opinions and basic understandings gleaned from the forum itself.

 

You leaped to me thinking I'm a "SME on the processes used by professional academic historians to hire other professional academic historians," which I do not, and again, I purposefully highlighted multiple times that what I was putting forward was just what I thought, or what I've understood others to believe, based on the forum members' collective knowledge.

 

The OP also specifically asked for sources, so I was being sensitive to that by making clear these were my own understandings, and that I was not putting them forward as somehow "expert."

 

The very next poster showed with an actual study, that it is indeed the case that "if you go to a so-called "top 10" school (by whichever institution's ranking), that your chances of getting a job are some proportion higher than lower-ranked schools," so, what I said had some validity.

 

That doesn't make me a SME, no, and I am not trying to be, but perhaps it makes me helpful, if only marginally, which was all I was trying to do.

[stillalivetui]

People are always talking about the top 10s job placing rates, but no one ever provides a list of top 10. There are a lot of rankings out there and none that I have found explicitly address placement rates. Where is this top ten list, and does the list change according to discipline or specialization? For example I am interested in placement rates of colonial Mexican history PhDs. And I do expect some kind of source.

 

 

Not answering your question, but IU is surprisingly strong in Latin American history. I would look into working with Dr. Peter Guardino if I were you. 

[Gambaosaka1]

 

This study was posted in another thread: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005

 

It basically says that institutional prestige is an absurdly large factor in hiring decisions, and that if you're not in a top 20 program, your chances of employment drop catastrophically.

 

For history, those 20 (determined my network centrality) are, in order:

 

Harvard University; Yale University; UC Berkeley; Princeton University; Stanford University; University of Chicago; Columbia University; Brandeis University; Johns Hopkins University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Michigan; UCLA; Northwestern University; Cornell University; Brown University; UC Davis; University of Rochester; New York University; UC San Diego

 

There may be some play in the numbers based on subfield, but it doesn't look like much

 

 

Sorry for being lazy and leaning on you for expertise but where does UNC-CH land?

[dr. t]

Sorry for being lazy and leaning on you for expertise but where does UNC-CH land?

 

The full list is in this thread, but 24th (USN/NRC 12/8)

Edited April 11, 2015 by telkanuru

[ashiepoo72]

1/4 of the 20 are in one particular state...just sayin

[dr. t]

1/4 of the 20 are in one particular state...just sayin

 

New York?

[ashiepoo72]

I'm glad to see the rumors about historians and math are true

[Gambaosaka1]

The full list is in this thread, but 24th (USN/NRC 12/8)

 

Sorry for being a lazy so and so...appreciate it! 

[dr. t]

I'm glad to see the rumors about historians and math are true

 

New Haven is pretty much New York. I mean, Connecticut really isn't a state so much as it is something one has to endure as one travels between NYC and Boston.

Edited April 11, 2015 by telkanuru

[twentysix]

Lol, your wording sounded a little self-righteous or entitled!: "And I do expect some kind of source." 

 

Nonetheless, we like to help each other out here. 

 

I'm not fully clear what your question is, but I would recommend looking at the NRC rankings, which are a range of rankings for a given school or subject, and factors are included such as amount of publications, perceptions of professors from outside the school about the school, citation rates, student time-to-degree, and many more. 

 

Here is their list for history: http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-History/124736/ 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't find a list out there that specifically includes "Mexican History." 

 

I also have never seen a "job placement rates" ranked list of schools - though I'm sure they exist, I just haven't seen them. It seems like that is something more likely available for the physical sciences, engineering, or maybe med school, just a guess.

 

Also, I think the general belief is that, if you go to a so-called "top 10" school (by whichever institution's ranking), that your chances of getting a job are some proportion higher than lower-ranked schools. So perhaps when people talk about top 10 placement rankings, they're linked to the regular top 10 rankings out there.

 

That'd be my guess, in the absence of other info.

 

And congrats on the Nahuatl Program - pretty cool!

 

Thanks. I figured if I didn't ask for a source I would get a few people posting whatever they had decided was the top 10.

[twentysix]

I find the US News and World Report's rankings to be more useful because they have specialized rankings on Latin American History. They don't do a specific one on colonial Latin America, but at least that is a start.

 

The placement studies I have seen don't discriminate by field. Just from checking the forums, I have seen a couple. Here is one (posted by telkanuru, if I am correct) that compares USNW rankings and placements: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5p5Vo_V4WG_UWJwTld2bVF0dlU/view

 

There was another one, an academic study from before 2008, which largely confirmed that the universities that were in the top 15 in the US News and World Report's basically had the best placement rates. I will keep browsing around and post it if I can find it.

 

The problem with placement rankings for very specific subjects (colonial Mexico) is that their sample size is too small. What do I mean by that? It's fine to keep track of Berkeley or UCSD's general department placement for 20 years or so because they have many graduate students and a sizable faculty to examine. However, if you look at their colonial Mexico placements they will fluctuate wildly because they are tied to basically one faculty member. Once that academic retires (Taylor at Berkeley or Van Young as he will at UCSD quite soon), the placement rates collapse for some years until they are replaced or their replacements take their position. 

 

Van Young is "retired" now. But he will still work on committees and I think he still teaches one class.