tier three universities

[viket]

.

[elz]

Okay Viket I am going to try to explain this to you and hope that you can follow this rather complicated explanation. The "tiers" represent a university ranking system. However, I recommend that prospective students use caution when working with these rankings. Hands down, the most widely followed ranking of US colleges and universities is US News and World Report. However, before you head off to immerse yourself into this, there are a few factors that you need to know:

First in terms of graduate school, the reputation of the particular department is much more critical than the "name brand" of the school. What graduate students need to work is determining how strong a school is within the desired field of study.

Next, we need to look at the rankings themselves. What are these rankings based on? In social sciences, the rankings are based only on peer assessment. In other words, department heads and directors of graduate studies in schools that had granted more than 5 PhDs from 1998 to 2002 were sent surveys.

in the last five years were sent surveys to evaluate schools.

Each of these departments received two surveys and were asked to rank the quality of the programs of the listed schools. As you can see, this is not a "fool proof" system, although participants are requested to mark, "I don't know" for the schools that participants are not famiar with. This may not be an ideal system, but it is a starting place. Even US News and World Report states, that it's important that you use the rankings to supplement -- not replace -- careful thought and your own inquiries

However, the system ultimately breaks the schools/departments down into "Tiers". After all of this data has been processed, it is organized into "tiers". Thus, according to US News and World Report the top tier represents what the magazine would consider to be best. The second tier next, the third tier, qand so on. However, I would caution you not to breakdown the institutions in terms of deciding where to apply. It is important that you explore the various departments in different schools and begin to select schools that you wish to apply to based on a wider variety of factors, not only on the rankings.

In other words, a third tier school, is ranked lower through this system than a second or first tier school, but a serious graduate student will examine the program within the department, this issues are also complicated for undergraduate students. Also programs can change very quickly, especially within a grad department. For example, if a department in a lower tier suddenly receives a large endowment - you are going to see that program make great leaps forward. University of Utah is a case in point. This school has made a journey up through these rankings in a relatively short span of time and just had a professor that won a nobel prize.

One thing to think very seriously about would be the importance of professors to a program.

I tend to believe that the professors really make the program - that the professors are key.

Now we live in an age where we have something akin to a surplus of professors. There are a great many professors teaching at these so called third tier schools that could actually be at a first tier school, but the first tier school is already packed. Thus, you must look at the department, the professors, the publications coming out of that department, the conferences and activities that the department is engaged in, etc. These are the factors that make a program great, not the yearly surveys that hit the newstands every year at this time.

Wow! Are you confused now or what?

Elz

Hope this helps,

Elz

[viket]

Thank you very much. There is so much information and we have no one to ask but you.

Viket