Top 10 programs in History

[TMP]

On 12/18/2017 at 4:29 AM, telkanuru said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the 'rank' of the school you attend has little relationship to your raw intelligence, as far as that's a concept that even makes sense. It will, however, have a massive impact on the work you produce, through the support (financial and intellectual) you have when producing it and the networks you develop which foster its impact.

A few things....

1) I don't like to respond to these kinds of posts because it demonstrates the real nativity of the OP to sensitivities and sensibilities that current graduate students have about their programs.  I'll be defensive about my program but I am also willing to be critical yet it doesn't always make me feel good when my program's strengths aren't acknowledged. I literally groaned when I saw this thread.

2) To follow up on @telkanuru, he's raised good points about connections.
(A) The importance of visiting guests and the program's budgets. My program operates quite similar to Brown's. However, I will point out something that programs can't control: the behavior of the graduate students and visiting scholars. Not all graduate students recognize the importance of making time to attend such functions unless, perhaps, the person was a real superstar (like David Blackbourn at Vanderbilt for German history.  Sometimes guests can be real mixed bags (I can name one or two who turned out to be airheads). Nonetheless, I was proactive to attend such functions and engaged with relevant guests over breakfast.
(B) @telkanuru's final conclusion is workable.  The finances to be able to connect students with outside scholars matter whether through invitation of solid people to give talks or sending students to conferences without needing to present a paper.  Most of my early contacts who contributed to the development of my dissertation project for the prospectus actually came from my department's financial support for my conference attendance.  I also learned that the intellectual quality of your network matter far more than quantity when it comes to producing fascinating research.  So The Professor Is In is right to look up senior scholars in your subfield at the conferences (I mean, don't stalk them, but just attend their panels when they're actually talking as respondents or giving papers, not chairing).  By the same token, attend sessions that interest you as you never know who the panelists know.

(C) I have a number of job market stories and, honestly, I am finding that prestige gets one only so far and the quality of advising matters.  Students who didn't get good advising at top programs have much of a chance of landing a job as someone from mid-tier even with a great project.

In short, the quality of advising and intellectual life within the subfield and resources of a program matter and whether the students are willing to drink the water.  Together these make most methods of ranking futile.