<p>I keep seeing people post the department rankings for different subjects like History, Chemistry, Economics, Political Science, etc. but I never see my schoo listed in any of these rankings. I figured it would be up there in many rankings because it is ranked pretty high overall. What exactly does this mean? How much does education vary at one of the top schools for Chemistry/History/etc. to one not ranked so high (or not at all). Thanks!</p>
<p>there are no such thing as undergraduate department rankings.</p>
<p>What college will you attend? Winston-Salem State? The Gourman Report and Rugg's Recommendations provide department rankings for undergraduate. US News has department rankings for undergrad business and engineering. US News thinks their graduate department rankings provide an indication of undergraduate program quality.</p>
<p>uh....no....Wake Forest.....</p>
<p>Wake Forest is named in Rugg's for history but not chem. Wake Forest history grads are 6% of total grads (61). WF grads are 4% (36) of total grads in physical sciences (chem+physics+geology).</p>
<p>Seems like even when departments are ranked for undergrad quality, a big part of their reputations and rankings are based on research (which would usually be a better indication of graduate school quality). So the the smallish universities that are more undergrad-oriented and don't have faculties that churn out tons of research often get underrated. I think places like Wake Forest, Boston College, and Lehigh would fall into this category. You seldom see departments from any of these ranked highly, but you can still get a wonderful education at them. Actually, they might be the best sort of place to go for undergrad, because the profs actually do research, but they still have a lot of time to devote to undergrads and teaching, because they don't have a huge number of grad students to take care of.</p>
<p>in my field (clinical psychology), there are many schools with phenomenal phd programs, despite that their undergrad schools are very low ranking. likewise, many of the top ranked undergrad schools have very weak and/or unaccredited grad programs.</p>