How We Calculate the Graduate School Rankings

Department of Communicative Disorders, Jackson State

Dr. Zenobia Bagli, former professor and Chair, retired in August, 2008 from the Department of Communicative Disorders, Jackson State University. Excellence remains our goal for professional training in speech-language pathology. In addition, it is my hope that students will continue to evaluate their experiences in the program as excellent.

So they "ranked" their own school!?!

Current grad student of one of the top ten. Not good. Actually worse experience of academic life to date. Not treated like faculty wants you there: students are, after all, in the way of research. Quantity of material is emphasized over any quality : instructors vie for who can assign the biggest pile of reading. Typical: per class, per week, approx. 1500-2000 pages of dense material. There are no "lectures": instead, the classes meet just for taking tests. You of course have "memorized" all 2100 pages, without a list of objectives. It's self-study; the instructors say that some kind of magic happened in between undergrad and grad school, allowing us to now read the minds of instructors, and to detect in that mind-reading what it is they would consider priorities in learning, so we can try to learn those concepts on our own, in order to pass a test.

Why do nurses eat their young? Because they were taught to do so. And, so it continues, in grad school.

Also: don't ask how many pass the boards - that could be a function of high selectivity for entrance, i.e., better students. Instead, ask how many started the program and then left it. That will give us a glimpse of what the actual students may be thinking about the program.

Nursing program rankings

Yes, PLEASE DO consider what percentage passed state boards on their first try when ranking nursing schools. I can't even begin to imagine why you would ask the program chair or dean what their opinion is about their own program instead of using objective data that speaks to how successful that school is at teaching the information that will be needed in order to pursue a nursing career and obtain licensure. We would like facts please, not opinion.

Rankings Influenced by School's National Name Power?

Rankings are VERY biased--I'm sure some professors US NEWS utilizes as judges are ranking unaccredited, poor performing programs much too highly. The truth: Some well-known institution's programs have in reality little rigor/substance, but ranked positively because of brand power popularity that reasonates with the generally non-academic, sports-minded public.

I went to a Texas MPA program that has year after year won numerous national conference paper awards from academic peers and ASPA--its accrediting body--but failed to be ranked by this magazine.

Graduate Schools

Times have changed, and we are all facing a financial crunch. This is no different for college students, who have to deal with student housing (on or off campus), cost of living (food, gas, basic needs), materials required for classes, books, tuition, extra fees, etc. I think it is time that your rankings go beyond what professors think about their classes. True, that is important. But I hardly paid a thought to that information as I compared the cost of moving to a different city, and all the expenses involved. If I cannot get student housing, I can't include it in my student loan. If I don't drive a car or take a bus or train, transportation will be plenty cheaper if I can ride my bicycle to/from classes, especially if I live on campus. These are things that are REALLY important to me and I had to slash some preferred colleges and universities in my own state and select some from other states because overall, it will be cheaper for me to afford it. Not to mention that I have a family and I will be going to that university by myself, and therefore will have to consider two households to maintain. My wife's salary is hardly enough to make it happen. So I will really need everything I can get from student loans and/or grants, which are harder and harder to get. Please get realistic and make next year's selections all about MONEY.

Pharmacy Program Rankings

I suggest that you also consider objective date such as average professional board scores and/or % passing board exams on their first try in ranking the program quality.

R. Louis-Ferdinand

EMBA RAnkings

I would like to be contacted regarding EMBA RAnking Survey Participation.

Tax Law Rankings

While I am proud of the fact that I graduated from UCLA School of Law, I find it puzzling that the law school still ranks in tax law because of the elimination of their taxation LL.M. program. All of the other schools still offer an LL.M. specializing in tax while UCLA School of Law does not.

Flawed Analysis

My major disagreement with the law school rankings is the .25 weight given to peer assessment. This is significantly higher than the weight given to the evaluations by practicing attorneys and judges. To me, that is backwards, because the primary role of a law school is to produce good practitioners. And, who better to evaluate practitioners than the attorneys and judges who interact with those practitioners? Until this is changed, I tend to see the law school rankings as being seriously flawed.

Flawed Reporting of School Ranks?

One reader wrote:

"In other words, since the scores U.S. News and World Report are means (averages), the scores they report mean absolutely nothing in the first place simply because of flawed statistical analysis."

I think I disagree. The mean rank has a very precise mathematical meaning. It is the sum of the rank scores divided by the number of summed rank scores. Thus, the mean rank is no less meaningful that the median rank.