Sociology Rankings

[2010international]

Hi,

I have seen a lot of posts in the sociology section and others talking about rankings and post-graduate school life. As an international student, the american universities that we most frequently hear about are the big names from the Ivies or places like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and so on. So when I was deciding which schools to apply to, I picked from among these that I thought had the best fit for my research intersts but which also had a recognizable name world-wide.

The discussion on rankings on this forum has confused me a little bit. The most ubiquitous rankings seem to be the US News and World Report, where some of the schools which I would think would rank highly often do not make the top 10 even. I have so far gotten into a lower Ivy (ie not HYP) and am interested in knowing how most of these would be ranked for their GSAS (esp in terms of sociology)? Any ideas on this?

Secondly, the poli sci forum has everal interesting posts on the importance of ranking esp for TT positions. At this point, academia is not a career I am seriously considering, rather I am looking more towards development organisations (ie mostly UN organisations and some national level research institutes and think tanks). Would a 'big name' be more important for this do you think?

thanks for your input!

[jacib]

The rankings of graduate programs are almost always completely different from the rankings of undergraduate universities. While some schools are consistently strong in a variety of fields (Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Princeton, etc.), some schools have a few top notch programs in random disciplines (University of Rochester is GREAT in Political Science, University of California--Santa Cruz has a really strong Queer Studies program). For list Then again, some schools fare surprisingly poorly in the rankings. There is not only the US News and World Report, but also the more well regarded (but dated) National Research Council report.

Let's compare three rankings to see what is consistent between them. Anyway, public schools are in italics, ivy league schools are underlined, other elite private schools have no formatting.

Sources: USNWR 2009, USNWR 2005, NRC 1995

(Sorry for the inconsistent naming--I really didn't feel like changing all the NRC rankings to fit.)

Edited February 22, 2010 by jacib

[jacib]

Okay, but I realize that didn't answer your question. Some universities are very well regarded in a variety of doctoral programs. These include not only the top private schools (The Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, NYU, Hopkins, Emory, Vanderbilt) but also a variety of public schools which are consistently strong in a variety of things (off the top of my head, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Berkeley, UCLA, UNC, Texas A & M, etc.) For a list of these generally highly ranked programs, see Top 13 based on USNWR figures and NRC Top Schools based on Research area (for this you probably care most about Social & Behavioral and Arts & Humanities). Perhaps the most useful would be the NRC overall rankings. Please note that all the above methodologies favor schools with large engineering and biomed programs. The "average non-zero score of NRC overall rankings" is probably the most useful measure for you.

But does a highly ranked program matter? If you want to do something truly international, will the person hiring you know the difference between "The University of Michigan" and "Michigan State University"? Hopefully, but there are no guarantees. My English roommate is applying to American law schools (he's got triple citizenship) and when he explains which ones he's applying to, the only one well-educated English people consistently know is Cornell (and maybe Berkeley). Often they'll say something like, "Ah, I hear that's a good school." My roommate mentally responds, "That's the lowest ranked school I'm applying to."

Let me put it a different way, what's the best French University? I bet at least half of you say the Sorbonne, a university that doesn't exist anymore, though four schools carry the name "Sorbonne" [Paris I, III, IV, V]. None of these schools are part of the "grandes Ecoles" which are the best regarded universities in France, and I think the Sorbonnes are generally considered pretty mediocre. Personally, before looking this up, I could name only one of the grandes Ecoles (the Sciences Po). I doubt most of you could do much better. There are two sets of world rankings: "Academic Rankings of World Universities" and "Times Higher Education World University Rankings". According to these, the top four French universities should be: Paris VI (Pierre and Marie Curie), Paris XI (Paris-Sud XI), École Normale Supérieur, École Polytechnique (Paris X). Ever heard of those? I think the only one of those that's strong outside the hard sciences is the Ecole Normale Superieur, but still. (The one French sociologist I can name currently working in the US went to the Sciences Po. Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu, Althusser and Sartre got their degrees from the Ecole Normale Superieur, Levi-Strauss and I think Baudrillard from the Sorbonne before it was broken up, and Lacan just went to med school somewhere.)

[meggowaffle]

While it is probably vaguely accurate, the methodology used to order the U.S. News & World Report list of sociology programs is flawed. Quoted from their own website:

These rankings are based solely on the ratings of academic experts.... To gather the peer opinion data, we asked deans, program directors, and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 ("marginal") to 5 ("outstanding").

So they don't take into account ANYTHING ELSE such as job placement, GRE scores, retention rates, average time to degree, etc. They just ask various people who has a good reputation. Maybe some of these people don't know about certain departments and answer anyway ('Oh, that's an Ivy, it must be good so I'll give it a 5.').

Your situation is different because a lot of the best schools might not be recognized in the international setting. But personally, I wouldn't sacrifice the quality of my education just so I can have a brand-name on my resume.

[jacib]

So what's my point? All the rankings are based entirely on academia. And even those are flawed. For example, University of California--San Francisco has a sociology department that only does Sociology of Health and Illness (it's attached to the medical school). How do you rank that? Yale's ranking is lower in Sociology than most other fields because during the 70's, Yale almost scrapped the department (Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Rochester got rid of their departments at about the same time). They had a lot of rebuilding to do, though if you look at the rankings they've been pretty consistent. I think they're too qualitative to get a higher ranking, right now, and to get a higher ranking they'd have to really rejigger their approach.

For people planning on going into academia, I would definitely trust the rankings lists above more than school reputation in general. After all, Wisconsin, Berkeley, and Michigan are consistently at the top of the list, with Chicago, Princeton or Harvard usually sometimes also considered in the "top four". Then there's probably the "top ten" tier, which I'd guess includes about fifteen schools (those six plus something like Stanford, UNC, Northwestern, UCLA, Indiana, Columbia, Penn, maybe Texas Duke Washington NYU). Then there is probably the "Top 25/30", which would probably include most of the schools on the rankings lists above, plus maybe an also-ran or two, like CUNY, Iowa, Rutgers, and maybe another UC or two. I bet I'm skipping a tier or two, but you get the idea. However it's not just school reputation, or department reputation that matters; adviser reputation matters a lot. If one middle ranked school has a very well known people in one subfield to advise, that would probably make a lot of difference. At least for academia.

Of course, for getting a job it is not just reputation of those you work with, but your own reputation. If you've presented interesting original research at conferences, if your dissertation is great and original, etc. that will probably do a lot for you. On the other hand, if you have a flimsy publication record and your thesis is in-depth but unoriginal, well who knows. For more on this, in the political science forum has good advice that seemed right across the social sciences and a lot of it seems like it would be applicable inside and outside of academia.

Finally getting back to the OP's question: for your purposes, it's not just reputation that matters, but reputation in a specific set of subfields. Any department strong in demography would probably help you. The USNWR has seven social subrankings: Historical Sociology, Sex and Gender, Social Psychology, Sociology of Culture, and the three that matter to you: Social Stratification, Sociology of Population, Economic Sociology (there are of course many more subfields than that). Notice that all the top programs in "Sociology of Population", which is probably the subfield where its easiest to get a job outside academia at a place like the UN, are at public universities except one [Just FYI in case this is confusing: the University of Pennsylvania ("Penn") is a private, Ivy-league school while Pennsylvania State University ("Penn State") is a public, state university].. Does that matter to employers? Or does a degree from Cornell or Brown matter more than that? Really, it's impossible to say and there probably isn't one general rule, but I would assume hope that those hiring for jobs requiring a PhD know the reputation of specific programs in their fields. But I'd say, ultimately, it depends a lot on the work you produce (or at least, I'd like to think so).

[jacib]

Lastly, I just want to put out that there are some ranking alternatives: this guy suggests rankings should be done by articles in the top journals (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review possibly plus Social Forces and Social Problems). This guy at Iowa actually does it, using the first three of those journals, and offers various possible controls (wow look at that, Iowa ends up on the top of his final rankings...). Part of this is to help smaller departments like Iowa and Vanderbilt be ranked accurately against huge departments like Michigan and North Carolina. It should be noted that rankings like this will always favor quantitative departments over qualitative ones because those top journals are very, very quantitative. A more recent set using the same three journals is available here. Notice how small departments like Iowa or heavily qualitative departments like Yale aren't even in the top 40 by this metric, though Yale is consistently about 20 in terms of respect and Iowa performs well when this metric is corrected for number of faculty.

Here is what I believe to be a more reputable rankings thing. It counts publications in all journals as well as books (in the social sciences, a book=three articles apparently). A citation is counted just as much as an article is. Books, journals citations in total are 60% of the ranking, grants are 30%, outside awards are 10%.

Unfortunately, only the top ten is publicly available I think. This is the simplest version, to see what's in every category, check out the report in the Chronicle of Higher Education. But notice how Michigan and Berkeley, for example, are not on here. It'd be interesting if we could see a whole top 30 for this. For really interesting commentary on this particularly chart, check out this.

Man, I posted a lot on this today... uh... yes I am currently underemployed, how did you know? But moreover, I just tried to give out as much data as I could on the topic, with a little rumor, intuition and personal speculation thrown in. There are many different metrics of quality. In the end, I'd say a school well known internationally might help you a little, but ultimately it's your own work that will matter. That said, ask individual schools about placing people in non-academic positions.

[myrrh]

I'm kind of wondering where is the OP from, and how "Americanized" the society there is. I'm from a country where most of the professors in good institutions have an American PHD, and the way they recognize the reputation of American sociology programs is just similar to the USNews ranking. So, since I'm planning to do build my life-long career in academia (and perhaps someday going back to the country I'm from), the sociology ranking matters more than the "big names" to me. And yes, the subfield ranking is even more important.

Of course, there are many other factors which can determine someone's career. The most important one could be doing good work. Also, I believe people will take who your boss is and what are you working on into consideration when you are looking for a job.

[focused]

Lastly, I just want to put out that there are some ranking alternatives: this guy suggests rankings should be done by articles in the top journals (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review possibly plus Social Forces and Social Problems). This guy at Iowa actually does it, using the first three of those journals, and offers various possible controls (wow look at that, Iowa ends up on the top of his final rankings...). Part of this is to help smaller departments like Iowa and Vanderbilt be ranked accurately against huge departments like Michigan and North Carolina. It should be noted that rankings like this will always favor quantitative departments over qualitative ones because those top journals are very, very quantitative. A more recent set using the same three journals is available here. Notice how small departments like Iowa or heavily qualitative departments like Yale aren't even in the top 40 by this metric, though Yale is consistently about 20 in terms of respect and Iowa performs well when this metric is corrected for number of faculty.

Here is what I believe to be a more reputable rankings thing. It counts publications in all journals as well as books (in the social sciences, a book=three articles apparently). A citation is counted just as much as an article is. Books, journals citations in total are 60% of the ranking, grants are 30%, outside awards are 10%.

Unfortunately, only the top ten is publicly available I think. This is the simplest version, to see what's in every category, check out the report in the Chronicle of Higher Education. But notice how Michigan and Berkeley, for example, are not on here. It'd be interesting if we could see a whole top 30 for this. For really interesting commentary on this particularly chart, check out this.

Man, I posted a lot on this today... uh... yes I am currently underemployed, how did you know? But moreover, I just tried to give out as much data as I could on the topic, with a little rumor, intuition and personal speculation thrown in. There are many different metrics of quality. In the end, I'd say a school well known internationally might help you a little, but ultimately it's your own work that will matter. That said, ask individual schools about placing people in non-academic positions.

Jacib - Thanks a lot for posting these stats. However, I don't know that relying exclusively on publications/citations accurately captures rankings either. I think most people would agree that Stanford is one of the top 5 or 10 programs--arguably number one in gender and social psych and up there in inequality, as well, yet it doesn't appear on the top 10 list that you provided. Duke, UNC, Johns Hopkins, and UWashington are, of course, great programs, but I don't really see how Stanford would rank below them. Granted, for any given individual, those other programs may be better fits. But when you're considering overall ranking, it seems that Stanford has them beat. I could make a similar argument for Berkeley, also missing from the list.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

[2010international]

Thanks, especially jacib, these posts have been very helpful. I need to go through the links you have provided in more detail to get a better grasp of the whole situation so far.

I am new to this, but I am assuming that 'OP' refers to me? I am not from a country that could be called 'Americanised', rather as a South Asian country and a former British colony it is definitely much more 'Anglicised'.

[jacib]

Jacib - Thanks a lot for posting these stats. However, I don't know that relying exclusively on publications/citations accurately captures rankings either. I think most people would agree that Stanford is one of the top 5 or 10 programs--arguably number one in gender and social psych and up there in inequality, as well, yet it doesn't appear on the top 10 list that you provided. Duke, UNC, Johns Hopkins, and UWashington are, of course, great programs, but I don't really see how Stanford would rank below them. Granted, for any given individual, those other programs may be better fits. But when you're considering overall ranking, it seems that Stanford has them beat. I could make a similar argument for Berkeley, also missing from the list.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I don't personal buy that publications thing as a accurate. I just put up because it was alternative ranking system and I think, taken in conjunction with the other things, it can be useful. The main problem with it is I don't even think the data was collected that well--for instance, according to the data that they put online for that, NO ONE at Chicago published a book (again this provides some commentary on it). That's pretty hard to buy. The other two major things it pointed out are : 1) Harvard has 55 sociologists listed, which is more than they have in the Sociology department and 2) "like all article counting methodologies", it benefits programs in medical sociology, like Penn and Hopkins, because of more publishing in that sector (or so one guys says). While I think their methodology might be sound and provide an interesting alternative ranking. One might even think, if the data were collected correctly, that it might have some predictive value for where the other rankings--after all, if a department is publishing and being cited today, they will probably be more respected tomorrow. I think if there were a full list of the top 30 we could make better judgements of it.

That said, since this basically a per capita ranking, it benefits smaller departments like Duke and Hopkins and Washington (which I think is small for a state school). And as for UNC, well two of the three reputation based rankings put UNC above Stanford so that's not such an anomaly.

[EdPolicy]

Thanks, especially jacib, these posts have been very helpful. I need to go through the links you have provided in more detail to get a better grasp of the whole situation so far.

I am new to this, but I am assuming that 'OP' refers to me? I am not from a country that could be called 'Americanised', rather as a South Asian country and a former British colony it is definitely much more 'Anglicised'.

Yes, "OP" = original poster, so that refers to you.

[cybe2001]

Then again, if you look at placement at top departments, you get this list, where the third column is the number of faculty graduated from that university's sociology department who currently teaches at a top department. The data are complied from 336 faculty member websites at the following universities: Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, Penn, Chicago, Wisconsin, Yale, UCLA. More could be added, but I doubt it changes the ranking.

1 Harvard 43 2 Chicago 36 3 Berkeley 34 4 Wisconsin 21 5 Columbia 20 6 UCLA 15 7 Penn 14 8 Princeton 13 9 Stanford 12 10 Yale 3 11 NYU 2

[socnerd]

All of the rankings are somewhat subjective and it depends on which list you look at, but we all know that people do look at them and they do matter for life outside of grad school. I've been wondering lately how much the different rankings matter if you're not going into academia. For instance, I am not planning on going into academia so I am considering going to a school that has a more prestigious overall name and reputation over another school that is ranked for sociology. I know the ranked school technically has a better program, but I figure my future employer will probably not be familiar with the specific sociology rankings and might be more impressed with the overall reputation of the other school. I haven't made any decisions yet but this is the logic I am leaning towards. It can get pretty confusing sometimes

[sooz]

this is interesting, and so is the article by Burris that it cites:

http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/sociology-faculty-in-leading-departments-analysis-by-daniel-schneider/#more-8775

(also just a really cool blog in general, for any orgs people here)

[myrrh]

Then again, if you look at placement at top departments, you get this list, where the third column is the number of faculty graduated from that university's sociology department who currently teaches at a top department. The data are complied from 336 faculty member websites at the following universities: Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, Penn, Chicago, Wisconsin, Yale, UCLA. More could be added, but I doubt it changes the ranking.

1 Harvard 43 2 Chicago 36 3 Berkeley 34 4 Wisconsin 21 5 Columbia 20 6 UCLA 15 7 Penn 14 8 Princeton 13 9 Stanford 12 10 Yale 3 11 NYU 2

Thanks for the stat. It's so interesting.

I'd like to, however, remind everyone here two things. First, ,methodologically, this data could not really be treated as some "ranking thing", as it's already assumed those 11 schools are the "top schools" in the very beginning. However, the trend of "self-reproduction" is very remarkable so this data is telling us a lot.

Second, if we are talking about the placement and we think it's a part of how good an institution is, we could take the grad student cohort size into consideration.

[cybe2001]

That's absolutely right. The approach I took rests on first identifying 'top universities.' That means it can be easily expanded to include more universities, but also that there is no non-arbitrary limit.

[hoobers]

You shouldn't have to pre-specify the top universities yourself. Since the placements take the form of a directed graph, finding the top universities can be analytically solved for using eigenvector centrality (though the cutoff will still be arbitrary). Think Google's PageRank algorithm: the top websites are those linked to by the most top websites.

[jacib]

Then again, if you look at placement at top departments, you get this list, where the third column is the number of faculty graduated from that university's sociology department who currently teaches at a top department. The data are complied from 336 faculty member websites at the following universities: Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, Penn, Chicago, Wisconsin, Yale, UCLA. More could be added, but I doubt it changes the ranking.

1 Harvard 43 2 Chicago 36 3 Berkeley 34 4 Wisconsin 21 5 Columbia 20 6 UCLA 15 7 Penn 14 8 Princeton 13 9 Stanford 12 10 Yale 3 11 NYU 2

Someone once pointed out to me that there is clear anecdotal evidence that often schools end up giving their PhDs to other similar schools. According to this thinking, Duke and UNC, for example, are more likely to get you a job in the South than the North. A PhD from Michigan or Wisconsin is more likely to end up in the Big 10 than a PhD from Columbia, Chicago or Penn. People from private universities are more likely to get jobs at private universities. I think including top public schools like Michigan, UNC and Indiana (all ranked higher than NYU on the last two USNWR surveys) would considerably alter the results (especially because those have such large departments) in a noticiable way, though likely the top 5 or so would stay pretty close. I mean, in fact, it would be surprising if anyone broke into the top 9 (though the top 9 themselves might shuffle slightly). If anyone gets really bored, they should add Michigan, UNC, Indiana, UT Austin, Duke and Northwestern to this provisional survey (that is, they should add all the schools that the USNWR ranked in the top 15 during both of its last two surveys, all of which also coincidentally ranked higher than NYU on the last NRC rankings). The truly ambitious ought to add Hopkins, Washington, Maryland, Penn State, Ohio State, Cornell, Yale, and Minnesota all of whom were on both of USNWR's top 25s and (with the exception of Cornell and Maryland) were on NRC's ancient top 25, indicating to me at least that these are consistently viewed as the top departments.

I think once all those data points are added, public programs will have much stronger showings, with one program (probably Michigan) perhaps even breaking into the top 9. Even with "all those data" points, of course, we'd still completely ignore what are generally considered the top liberal arts schools, who often also nab top PhDs from places like Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Columbia (I am going to Columbia next year--all of my probably adviser's recent graduate students have gone to either elite liberal arts colleges or foreign universities). That said, if the focus is on "best research" rather than "best training" then perhaps those liberal arts schools wouldn't add useful information.

[cybe2001]

Someone once pointed out to me that there is clear anecdotal evidence that often schools end up giving their PhDs to other similar schools. According to this thinking, Duke and UNC, for example, are more likely to get you a job in the South than the North. A PhD from Michigan or Wisconsin is more likely to end up in the Big 10 than a PhD from Columbia, Chicago or Penn. People from private universities are more likely to get jobs at private universities. I think including top public schools like Michigan, UNC and Indiana (all ranked higher than NYU on the last two USNWR surveys) would considerably alter the results (especially because those have such large departments) in a noticiable way, though likely the top 5 or so would stay pretty close. I mean, in fact, it would be surprising if anyone broke into the top 9 (though the top 9 themselves might shuffle slightly). If anyone gets really bored, they should add Michigan, UNC, Indiana, UT Austin, Duke and Northwestern to this provisional survey (that is, they should add all the schools that the USNWR ranked in the top 15 during both of its last two surveys, all of which also coincidentally ranked higher than NYU on the last NRC rankings). The truly ambitious ought to add Hopkins, Washington, Maryland, Penn State, Ohio State, Cornell, Yale, and Minnesota all of whom were on both of USNWR's top 25s and (with the exception of Cornell and Maryland) were on NRC's ancient top 25, indicating to me at least that these are consistently viewed as the top departments.

I think once all those data points are added, public programs will have much stronger showings, with one program (probably Michigan) perhaps even breaking into the top 9. Even with "all those data" points, of course, we'd still completely ignore what are generally considered the top liberal arts schools, who often also nab top PhDs from places like Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Columbia (I am going to Columbia next year--all of my probably adviser's recent graduate students have gone to either elite liberal arts colleges or foreign universities). That said, if the focus is on "best research" rather than "best training" then perhaps those liberal arts schools wouldn't add useful information.

Well, I am. Without something meaningful to do, that is. So, here's the stats:

If you look at the following universities (LIST1):

Berkeley Chapel Hill Chicago Columbia Cornell Duke Harvard Indiana Michigan Northwestern NYU UPenn Princeton Stanford UCLA Wisconsin Yale

And discern the following PhD-granting institutions (LIST2):

Arizona Austin Berkeley Boston Brandeis Brown Chapel Hill Chicago Columbia Cornell Duke Florida Harvard Indiana John Hopkins Michigan Minnesota Missouri MIT Northwestern NYU UPenn Penn State Princeton Purdue Rutgers Santa Barbara Stanford SUNY UCLA Washington Wisconsin Yale

The top institutes (LIST2) granting PhDs to top universities (LIST1) are:

1. Harvard 55

2. Chicago 51

3. Berkeley 49

4. Michigan 33

5. Wisconsin 32

6. Princeton 26

7. Columbia 21

8. UCLA 20

9. Stanford 18

10. UPenn 17

Using these data, we can rank universities by the % faculty with a top-three (LIST1) degree:

1. Northwestern 58%

2. Berkeley 48%

2. Chicago 48%

4. UPenn 46%

5. NYU 44%

6. Cornell 38%

7. Harvard 37%

8. Stanford 30%

9. Wisconsin 27%

10. Columbia 25%

Expanding this to top-five, we get:

1. Northwestern 65%

1. Berkeley 65%

3. UPenn 63%

4. Chicago 56%

4. Cornell 56%

4. Michigan 56%

7. Stanford 50%

8. NYU 47%

9. Columbia 42%

9. Harvard 42%

And, for top-10:

1. UPenn 88%

2. Stanford 80%

3. Michigan 77%

3. Northwestern 77%

5. Columbia 75%

6. Berkeley 74%

7. NYU 72%

7. Princeton 72%

9. Cornell 69%

10. Chicago 68%

Which, translates into an average-based overall top-10 of:

1. Northwestern

2. UPenn

3. Berkeley

4. Chicago

5. NYU

6. Cornell

6. Michigan

8. Stanford

9. Columbia

9. Harvard

Edited May 9, 2010 by cybe2001

[hgp]

Well, I am. Without something meaningful to do, that is. So, here's the stats:

If you look at the following universities (LIST1):

Berkeley Chapel Hill Chicago Columbia Cornell Duke Harvard Indiana Michigan Northwestern NYU UPenn Princeton Stanford UCLA Wisconsin Yale

And discern the following PhD-granting institutions (LIST2):

Arizona Austin Berkeley Boston Brandeis Brown Chapel Hill Chicago Columbia Cornell Duke Florida Harvard Indiana John Hopkins Michigan Minnesota Missouri MIT Northwestern NYU UPenn Penn State Princeton Purdue Rutgers Santa Barbara Stanford SUNY UCLA Washington Wisconsin Yale

The top institutes (LIST2) granting PhDs to top universities (LIST1) are:

1. Harvard 55

2. Chicago 51

3. Berkeley 49

4. Michigan 33

5. Wisconsin 32

6. Princeton 26

7. Columbia 21

8. UCLA 20

9. Stanford 18

10. UPenn 17

Using these data, we can rank universities by the % faculty with a top-three (LIST1) degree:

1. Northwestern 58%

2. Berkeley 48%

2. Chicago 48%

4. UPenn 46%

5. NYU 44%

6. Cornell 38%

7. Harvard 37%

8. Stanford 30%

9. Wisconsin 27%

10. Columbia 25%

Expanding this to top-five, we get:

1. Northwestern 65%

1. Berkeley 65%

3. UPenn 63%

4. Chicago 56%

4. Cornell 56%

4. Michigan 56%

7. Stanford 50%

8. NYU 47%

9. Columbia 42%

9. Harvard 42%

And, for top-10:

1. UPenn 88%

2. Stanford 80%

3. Michigan 77%

3. Northwestern 77%

5. Columbia 75%

6. Berkeley 74%

7. NYU 72%

7. Princeton 72%

9. Cornell 69%

10. Chicago 68%

Which, translates into an average-based overall top-10 of:

1. Northwestern

2. UPenn

3. Berkeley

4. Chicago

5. NYU

6. Cornell

6. Michigan

8. Stanford

9. Columbia

9. Harvard

Wow! Thanks for doing this!

[uselesstheory]

This is very interesting to me. Say Columbia and Indiana are tied at 12 (which they are, on USNews, at least): does the name/status of a certain institution and/or private versus public status play into job placement? I'm guessing yes, but if yes, how so? Are there substantive, explainable reasons, or are these phenomena limited to the strange subjective world of the prestige of the Ivy League, as opposed to the status of the public institution?

 

Basically: how do equally ranked public and private schools offer PhDs advantages or disadvantages, and are those advantages and disadvantages based on prestige and name alone (which comes with certain networking and recognition privileges) or are there actual mechanisms in place that determine these differences/outcomes?

[Zero Cool]

This is very interesting to me. Say Columbia and Indiana are tied at 12 (which they are, on USNews, at least): does the name/status of a certain institution and/or private versus public status play into job placement? I'm guessing yes, but if yes, how so? Are there substantive, explainable reasons, or are these phenomena limited to the strange subjective world of the prestige of the Ivy League, as opposed to the status of the public institution?

 

Basically: how do equally ranked public and private schools offer PhDs advantages or disadvantages, and are those advantages and disadvantages based on prestige and name alone (which comes with certain networking and recognition privileges) or are there actual mechanisms in place that determine these differences/outcomes?

Departments aren't the only ones involved in hiring decisions, so while departmental rank is important, it isn't the only factor considered. A dean of an arts & sciences college may prefer the status of Columbia over IU.