<p>What is the best overall graduate school which includes engineering, law, medicine, business?</p>
<p>Since MIT has no law school and Berkeley has no medical school both aren't as good as a Stanford or a Columbia. UCLA on the other hand seems to have a wide variety of graduate schools that are all decently good.</p>
<p>Stanford is the best overall academic institution which includes undergrad, graduate programs, and professional programs. Harvard has weak engineering, Berkeley has a relatively weak undergrad and no medical school, Princeton has no professional schools, and MIT has no law and medicine and weak liberal arts (except for a few quantitative ones like economics and political science).</p>
<p>Michigan is great in all of those fields, johnny</p>
<p>Dang,</p>
<p>Take this utterly useless thread back to the undergrad side...
Really... overall grad school rankings are utterly, pathetically useless...
All that matters is the ranking of your specific discipline.</p>
<p>For example, in my field of astrophysics...
The top 5 are: Caltech, Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, Chicago
The rest of the top 15 are (no particular order): Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Hawaii, Santa Cruz, MIT, Cornell, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Yale.
Do you see all those great public universities?
Stanford is not even in the top 20.
I loved Stanford and would have considered it... but it really, really sucks in my field.</p>
<p>And that's the way it goes for grad school... it is incredibly specialized...
and believe that professors in a given field know EXACTLY which schools are highly ranked and which are not... I've known people who have turned down Stanford for a professorship at U Colorado, and turned down Yale to be a professor at UC Irvine...</p>
<p>UMrunner08, what school that isn't a research university can possibly make this list?</p>
<p>As for Stanford being above Berkeley, just no. It's close, but overall, Berkeley is slightly better. Not that one should worry if one is at either institution, or many on the lists for many of their programs.</p>
<p>im_blue, MIT's philosophy is amazing.</p>
<p>Well I always thought the Univ. of Illinois UC had far better grad programs than UW Madison (on that list Madison is above it)</p>
<p>Drab, well, the way that UMrunner08 is defining things (as in, including the professional schools), Stanford probably is better. Let's face it, the Stanford professional schools are better than the Berkeley professional schools. </p>
<p>However, I agree with harvard<em>and</em>Berkeley when he says that it may be a fun discussion, but ultimately irrelevant. Nobody is going to turn down the chance to go to MIT for graduate engineering just because it doesn't have a graduate English program.</p>
<p>Look at the link...it tells all.</p>
<p>Don't forget to scroll down..thnx</p>
<p>that's a good link for PhD's. unfortunately, if you throw in PhD "equivalents," such as the JD or MD, then berkeley wouldn't be AS good, although it would still be one of the top overall graduate/professional schools out there.</p>
<p>I agree with Harvard_Berkeley. The best overall graduate schools makes little sense since all that matters is each individual's program. I mean, Cal, Cornell and Yale all have better overall graduate schools than Northwestern and Penn...but would somebody interested in getting an MBA really pick Haas, Johnson or Yale MBA over Kellogg or Wharton? </p>
<p>But overall, the best graduate schools are the following:</p>
<p>PROFESSIONAL (Business, Dentistry, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Public Affairs):</p>
<h1>1 Harvard University</h1>
<h1>2 Stanford University</h1>
<h1>3 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>
<h1>4 University of Pennsylvania</h1>
<h1>5 Unibersity of California-Berkeley</h1>
<h1>6 Columbia University</h1>
<h1>7 Cornell University</h1>
<h1>8 Northwestern University</h1>
<h1>9 Duke University</h1>
<h1>10 UCLA</h1>
<p>SOCIAL SCIENCES (Anthropology, Economics, International Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology):</p>
<h1>1 Harvard University</h1>
<h1>2 Stanford University</h1>
<h1>3 University of Chicago</h1>
<h1>4 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>
<h1>5 University of California-Berkeley</h1>
<h1>6 Yale University</h1>
<h1>7 Princeton University</h1>
<h1>8 University of Wisconsin-Madison</h1>
<h1>9 Columbia University</h1>
<h1>10 University of California-Los Angeles</h1>
<p>HUMANITIES (Classics, English, History, Languages, Philosophy):</p>
<h1>1 Yale University</h1>
<h1>2 Harvard University</h1>
<h1>3 University of California-Berkeley</h1>
<h1>4 Princeton University</h1>
<h1>5 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>
<h1>6 Cornell University</h1>
<h1>7 Stanford University</h1>
<h1>8 University of Pennsylvania</h1>
<h1>9 University of Chicago</h1>
<h1>10 Columbia University</h1>
<p>SCIENCES (Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Mathematics, Physics):</p>
<h1>1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology</h1>
<h1>2 University of California-Berkeley</h1>
<h1>3 Harvard University</h1>
<h1>4 California Institute of Technology</h1>
<h1>5 Stanford University</h1>
<h1>6 Princeton University</h1>
<h1>7 Cornell University</h1>
<h1>8 University of Chicago</h1>
<h1>9 Yale University</h1>
<h1>10 Columbia University</h1>
<p>OVERALL:</p>
<h1>1 Harvard University</h1>
<h1>2 University of California-Berkeley</h1>
<h1>3 Stanford University</h1>
<h1>4 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>
<h1>5 Princeton University</h1>
<h1>6 Columbia University</h1>
<h1>7 Cornell University</h1>
<h1>8 Yale University</h1>
<h1>9 University of Pennsylvania</h1>
<h1>10 University of Chicago</h1>
<p>It seems stupid to make a list of best overall grad school - unlike undergrad, you know more or less <em>exactly</em> what you're going to be doing in grad school, so you should clearly go for the best university in your area of expertise.</p>
<p>won't some people still go for the name-recognition?</p>
<p>for example, cornell's graduate school of education is ranked #45 by US News, so let's assume it's not a top program. on the other hand, university of oregon is ranked #13, so it probably has a respectable program. </p>
<p>would applicants be more likely to go for oregon than cornell in this situation? also, wouldn't cornell's general name-recognition make up for its low ranking?</p>
<p>
[quote]
would applicants be more likely to go for oregon than cornell in this situation? also, wouldn't cornell's general name-recognition make up for its low ranking?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think for certain graduate schools, most notably business schools, it's probably true that people will go just for the brand name of the overall university. For example, I'm sure that a lot of the reason why people go to, say, the Yale School of Management or the Oxford Said Business School really is just for the name "Yale" or "Oxford". </p>
<p>However, for other schools, especially doctoral programs, I doubt that this happens. If you're going for a doctorate, you need to be worried about impressing other academics, and they will know what the good programs are.</p>
<p>so it seems that it is okay to go for the lower-ranked program that has a prestigious name attached to it if you're going to work, but to stick to the best programs available if you're planning to stay in academia...</p>
<p>harvard engineering anyone? hehe</p>
<p>This touches a larger point in that at ANY name-brand school, there are some people who are there just for the name. Harvard College, Harvard Law, Harvard Med, and Harvard Business Schools are verifiably excellent schools, but let's face it, those schools (especially HBS) have plenty of students who are there just for the name. The same thing is true at MIT, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and every other name-brand school. The public schools are not immune to this by any means. A lot of people who are at Berkeley are there just for the name 'Berkeley'. </p>
<p>Nor is this irrational. This is a perfectly logical and reasonable response to the world we live in. The fact is, brand-names act as market signals to indicate general levels of quality. Let's face it. If you're going for a high-end job in business or politics or law, it's useful to have the name 'Harvard' or 'Yale' or 'Princeton' or 'Stanford' backing you up. If you're going for a job in technology, it's useful to have the name 'MIT' backing you up. One might say that a Harvard degree in engineering will only fool employers who are stupid, but the fact is, there are a LOT of stupid employers out there. Whether you agree with it or not, those brand-names look good on a resume and hence do open doors.</p>
<p>This thread is absolutely a waste of time if you plan on going into research or tenure-track academia.</p>
<p>Yeah, but what if you don't? The truth is, even plenty of PhD's don't want to become academics. Look at all the newly-minted PHD's that run off to consulting companies like McKinsey.</p>
<p>In that case, it's still best to go on a department by department basis and see where they send their grads to. If it just happens that in the past 5 years University of Where the Hell Am I is sending their PhDs to Price Waterhouse Cooper, then you should go there. </p>
<p>However, I agree that for those looking to work in the private sector, it might pay to look at name brand.</p>