Help ranking programs by competitiveness

[Pencilvester]

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to apply to communication phd programs this fall and I'm coming from a different field (sociology). I've put together a list of programs that I think I have good fit with based on my interests and faculty interests but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how competitive each program is, since that info doesn't seem very accessible online and I don't know faculty in the discipline who I can ask (my college didn't have a comm department). Would you all mind taking a look at this list and offering some thoughts about how competitive each program is? I want to make sure that I don't unwittingly apply to the hardest programs to gain admission to and get denied everywhere.

Here's the list:

-Cornell Communication

-Michigan Ann Arbor Communication Studies

-Ohio State Communication

-Penn Annenberg Communication

-University of Illinois Chicago Communication

-University of Washington Communication

-Wisconsin Madison Mass Communications

-Penn State Communication

-Kansas Communication

 

Thanks!!

[gradswag]

I am not sure if I can give you help without a little more information about your interests (communication is a very broad field, and these programs have vastly different strengths). What are you planning on studying (health, media, interpersonal, rhetoric, journalism etc)? Do you think you are a more qualitative/quantitative scholar? Do you have research experience? Additionally, some of these schools have two comm departments. Like Penn State, for example. We have the school of communication which is primarily media studies, and comm arts and sciences which houses rhetoric, health comm, interpersonal, and social influence folks. These schools rank differently/are more competitive depending on what you are planning on studying.

[Pencilvester]

Sorry, I'll clarify a bit.

My interests are in political communication and deliberative democracy, with a focus on online discussion. I have a good amount of research experience - a masters dissertation (sociology) and 1.5+ years leading a research project for an education nonprofit (and undergraduate research experience unrelated to my current topical/methodological interests). I lean more quantitative.

I want to continue researching the topic I wrote my masters dissertation about and, by looking at who publishes similar work, saw that most of the people who study it are in communication departments. That's how I came to be drawn to communication despite not being exposed to it as an undergrad. All the schools on the list above are ones that have more than one faculty member who study similar enough stuff that I can make a case for research fit.
 

[gradswag]

I am really unfamiliar with the area of political comm in general, so I don't want to give you bad information about the rankings for that specialty. In looking at your list more generally, you would be applying to many of the powerhouse programs in the field (UPenn, UW-Madision, Ohio State, Penn State) that are more competitive across specialties. I think that U-Penn and Cornell get a lot of applications because they are ivy league, and Michigan because it might as well be (though I am less familiar with their comm program). The other schools I don't know too much about, so I don't want to speculate on their competitiveness or ranking. 

So, with my disclaimer that I don't know all that much about political comm/deliberative democracy, I think your list is generally leaning towards the competitive end of the spectrum. I would say that you should reach out to faculty members you would like to work with/whose work you are familiar with, or the director of graduate studies in their department and ask them about their program. I am not sure how much you have delved into the comm field, but our flagship organization is NCA, and they have a doctoral program guide that you can find here. They breakdown programs by specialty, which might help you develop a more comprehensive, well-rounded list.

Hopefully someone can hop on here and give you more directed advice to poli comm.

[Pencilvester]

So if the competitiveness of a given program depends on one's subfield, is the general rule in comm admissions that applicants are primarily competing with each other among subfields? As in, for example, an adcomm would allot X number of slots to applicants interested in political communication and Y number to those interested in, say, health communication, etc, and each subgroup of applicants would only be evaluated for those specified slots against others claiming the same area of interest?

[gradswag]

It depends on a few factors and it varies from year to year, which is why I would recommend reaching out to faculty of interest to see if they would be taking new students. I know that Rutgers will fund one student per subfield per year in their comm department. That is not super common, and their department is a special case. Most often schools look for research fit, so do you do what people in the department do. So to answer your question, no they will not necessarily fill slots dedicated to certain specialties. Faculty tend to stick to their research area, so it is competitive in a subfield when only a few (prolific) people are researching in that area in a department and most applicants apply to work with those few professors. In any given year, they might be looking for a certain type of student who fills a need for them (last year they admitted x # of students in interpersonal, so this year they want to admit a few more health comm students, for example). The only way to really know if they are admitting students in that specialty is to reach out and talk to a faculty member/DGS in a department to see. The competition comes into play when you want to work with a person that every other applicant wants to work with, and that is usually subfield specific.

 

[DBear]

@Pencilvester I was brand new to the field when I applied last year so I don't know about rankings. Like @gradswag has stated, it really is specific to the subfield. The NCA rankings are quite old but still a useful place to start. The NCA also has a list of "hot" new publications, looking at where those authors teach may help. 

In terms of "slots" by subfield, there are some schools that do something like that (UW Madison, for example) but not all do. I know what it's like applying from another field and worrying about whether I was aiming waaaaay too high or not high enough etc. But I'd still say it's best to really look at which schools best fit your research interests and talking with potential advisors/ DGS. Communications is a pretty Midwest heavy discipline so you may miss out on really good programs if you focus only on schools that are generally "good schools."

[odyssey]

On 7/27/2017 at 3:58 AM, DBear said:

@Pencilvester I was brand new to the field when I applied last year so I don't know about rankings. Like @gradswag has stated, it really is specific to the subfield. The NCA rankings are quite old but still a useful place to start. The NCA also has a list of "hot" new publications, looking at where those authors teach may help. 

I agree that the NCA rankings are outdated, but there's a lot of more recent rankings based on different sets of criteria.

• 2010 NRC rankings, but uses 2006-2007 data: http://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124717/ Here's an explanation of the method: http://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Elaborate-Ranking-of/124633
• This one's my favorite ranking.  Also published in 2010, this study used network analysis to examine doctoral program reputation based on faculty-hiring patterns: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01487.x/full
• 2012 ranking based on citation: http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/022/1/022122.html
• 2017 CWUR ranking based on citation: http://cwur.org/2017/subjects.php#Communication

 Hope these help!

[michellelaura92]

Also, I see that you're looking at University of Illinois Chicago. Just a quick heads up: the state of Illinois hasn't had a budget in YEARS. I just spent the last 6 years going to school (undergrad and grad) in Illinois and I cannot tell you how many times our funding was threatened. At one point last year, public universities were closing and tenured faculty members were losing their jobs. Since then, we have a facade of a budget, but nothing is guaranteed. 

I just got my M.A. at Western Illinois University and things got so tight with budgetary constraints that they stopped stocking bathrooms with toilet paper, printing in my department was halted, and I was told multiple times that I may not get my stipend the following month because the university simply didn't have the money to pay their teaching assistants. 

This isn't to say that the University of Illinois Chicago program is amazing or competitive. I honestly don't know much about it. I just want to warn people that the state of public education in Illinois is dire and worrisome. You have a great list of schools to consider. The best advice I could give would be to be very careful when considering public universities in Illinois until the state government gets its act together. Best of luck to you though! 

[CommPhD20]

From what I know and a little bit of education guessing, I'd rank these programs by difficulty of admission like this:

-Penn Annenberg Communication

[big gap]

The following are all fairly similar and not put in any particular order, but all very selective:

-Cornell Communication

-Michigan Ann Arbor Communication Studies

-University of Washington Communication

-Ohio State Communication

-Wisconsin Madison Mass Communications

 

My impression is that Penn State is less selective than the above, but it is not uncommon for PSU admits to visit us at Ohio State and I know on at least a couple occasions they went to PSU.

-Penn State Communication

 

And then these two programs are not super selective, but not bad programs either. I agree with above poster to be wary of Illinois budget problems. I don't know what's up with Kansas's college funding, but I do know they can't pay their elementary school teachers.

-Kansas Communication

-University of Illinois Chicago Communication

[CommPhD20]

As for rankings, here's another: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2B25MzQ1IcJNTc3YWNRV3dGRGc/view?usp=sharing

And just to give you insight into the program I know best, Ohio State, it's certainly a place where a quantitative political communication-oriented person can feel at home. We recruit outside communication quite a bit, so coming from sociology is no sweat. I graduated from a non-quantitative political science undergrad and got in. More of my cohort studied something other than communication prior to coming to OSU than did communication.

We also have at least one faculty member who specializes in political discussion and deliberation and one other who focuses on online political communication. There are of course others whose research is related. With that said, it's quantitative or bust here...so if you just "lean" and want to do other methodological approaches, those other approaches may be less supported. I do have a focus group study in the publication pipeline, though, so it's not unheard of to do non-quant work.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

Hola!

I'm actually looking at many of the same schools (U Penn, Penn State, and Madison, now that I've reduced my list) because I am intending to conduct research in the same general area (online political communication). I'm also coming from a social science background and have reached out to several of these Comm programs about goodness of fit given my different background. I made sure to explicitly state my research interests and my concerns given my different background when reaching out. All the schools who have responded so far (4 comm programs at the moment) have responded positively and given me additional information to help me judge my fit to the program. Although some schools are going to be more competitive due to the number of applications they receive (some receive 100 applications while other will receive 400 for a given cycle) the ultimate deciding factor is how well you seem to fit in the program and how well you come across as a competent researcher/asset to the department. 

Is there a reason you are worried about competitiveness other than coming from a different background? Many Comm programs are interdisciplinary in nature and actually specifically mention wanting people from social science backgrounds (Washington State, for instance, does not require additional coursework from those with a degree in social science).

 

For reference, the schools that have gotten back to me so far aren't on your current list, but they are Washington State, University of Oregon, Boston University, and Temple. Penn State sent me a robo-email letting me know they got my question and to allow a couple weeks for a response and I know UW Madison hasn't started yet so I'm being patient on that front (also, one of my friends, whom I met through this forum, goes there).  The only other comm program I'm waiting to hear back from is NYU, but at this point I've got time.  

[Pencilvester]

@GreenEyedTrombonist (I don't know how to tag people on this) I think my program search is mirroring yours in its progression - I've been reaching out to POIs at these programs with a very similar email, stating my interests and asking about fit given my background in another discipline. I've gotten some responses back and have slimmed down the list at the top of the post as I dug more deeply into faculty research at these programs (got rid of penn state and cornell).

I recognize that fit is one of the most important factors in admissions so I'm trying to be very careful about which programs I apply to. That being said, I have this existential fear of being rejected from every program despite not having any significant blemishes in my profile, so I want to apply widely to hedge my bets and increase the chance of admission.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Pencilvester

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

I completely understand that @Pencilvester (you were close, but have to click on the name when it starts auto-filling).

Right now I have a list of anthropology and comm programs and am really being strict with myself about where to apply. I'm at 13 schools right now. I'd be curious to learn why you got rid of Penn State and Cornell.  

[Pencilvester]

@GreenEyedTrombonist (Nice I got it) I just looked more closely at the CVs of the professors I identified as possible research matches and realized that I couldn't make as good a case for fit as I initially thought. My criterion has been to apply to programs where two or more faculty members study similar enough stuff and at both programs there was less than 1 who did (as in, even the one person in each department who studied similar stuff would've been a bit of a stretch).

How have you been going about your search?/How did you pare down your list?

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

@Pencilvester   Since I've been looking at anthro and comm I've decided that I need at least 3 potential faculty with decent to great fit. I'm in the middle of reading articles and books from the anthro faculty to email them directly and have emailed the comm programs (general department or DGS email) to ask about goodness of fit (regarding my background, research interests, and department and campus culture). Once I email the anthro POIs I'll move on to reading comm articles and emailing comm POIs. I also just finished my MA and my third committee member is in comm, so I plan to email her next week asking for an LoR and her thoughts on programs.

[CommPhD20]

Here's another resource, as the Shanghai Rankings now rank universities in Communication (as a social science): http://www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings/communication.html

Note that this ranking is based primarily on number of journal articles published by faculty at the university, number of citations earned by those publications, and number of publications in the field's top journals. That means it is not so useful for evaluating departments that are more humanities-focused and/or privilege book publishing (which is unusual for the social science side of communication).

[galosh]

Hi,

I'd like to get into a good graduate program in communication and media studies research - my interest is in the public discourse on climate change and how opinions are shaped by the media. Another totally tangential option is to go into a documentary arts research program, given my work experience. I know at least one good option for this option. But for the first - communication research - could you suggest places that might consider someone with my profile (described below) with some likelihood of getting funding?

People I've spoken to have all given me different answers and online research doesn't really tell you a lot because each university is trying to sell their program as best they can - I've looked at Mizzou, USC, Texas A&M, Temple, U texas at Austin.

I've completed my BA in English Literature and my MA in Mass Communication both from universities in India (so that would be equivalent to an US bachelor's degree.) For the last 3 years I've worked both independently in video production as well as in the development sector. My MA GPA is not that great as I understand it (6.86 on the 10-point scale and BA is even less.) My GRE is 163 on verbal and 165 on quant.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

@galosh It can be difficult to answer so broad a request. My advice would be to reach out to the DGS at each of the programs you're considering and ask them your questions. Yes, schools like to sell themselves, but the programs I've contacted have been quite honest about goodness of fit.

For instance, the anthro programs I contacted all basically said "have you thought about comm/media studies?" As a result, I'm applying to 7 comm programs and no anthro. 

Ultimately, there are subtleties in what each of us is looking to study (and how) that may lead to our advice on which schools to check out to be incomplete. One of the things I did was pull up the NCA list of Comm programs and systematically go through each one, looking for what the profs are doing (both in terms of what is being researched and how) and decided to only apply to programs that were strong fits for my own interests. I did get recs from friends of where else to check out, but only after I had done this research and could tell them, in decent detail, exactly what I planned to study and the different methodologies I was considering. Furthermore, these friends were only able to give realistic recs for the schools they were currently attending or had visited and researched in depth as part of their own application season. 

 

[galosh]

@GreenEyedTrombonist Thank you. The NCA list definitely seems like a good resource.

The reason I want to do an MA/MS first is because I am not sure about pursuing a PhD. So very specifically demarcated areas of research may/may not be required of me.

But will get in touch with faculty whose area of research are similar to my own interests. That might be the best and only way to go about it.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

@galosh Yeah, even if you do an MA first its best to think about the field (and subfield and specific topics) you want to get into and make sure you apply to programs that will help get you there. Even doing an MA, your advisor needs to be on board with your intended project. And the rest of your committee

[jltomato]

On 7/26/2017 at 2:58 PM, DBear said:

@Pencilvester I was brand new to the field when I applied last year so I don't know about rankings. Like @gradswag has stated, it really is specific to the subfield. The NCA rankings are quite old but still a useful place to start. The NCA also has a list of "hot" new publications, looking at where those authors teach may help. 

In terms of "slots" by subfield, there are some schools that do something like that (UW Madison, for example) but not all do. I know what it's like applying from another field and worrying about whether I was aiming waaaaay too high or not high enough etc. But I'd still say it's best to really look at which schools best fit your research interests and talking with potential advisors/ DGS. Communications is a pretty Midwest heavy discipline so you may miss out on really good programs if you focus only on schools that are generally "good schools."

Just a heads up, UW-Madison Comm Arts designates by slots, but UW-Madison SJMC does not  A majority of our recent cohorts have been Pol Comm oriented (at least, within the past three years), specifically in the deliberative democracy/contentious politics/cmc area. 

Edited November 29, 2017 by jltomato