How do I Assess th Strength of a Department at colleges?

College Search & Selection
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Hi everyone,

I am interested in an art history major, and thus I want to attend a school with a good art history department. I want to attend a liberal arts college, but I am open to other college choices too. A problem that I’ve had during my college search is finding how reputable the art history program is and more information on it. The descriptions on their websites rarely give any details other than the list of courses, etc. In general, I’ve heard great things about the art history program at Williams, Oberlin, Kenyon, Vassar, Columbia, BU, etc, but I have no idea how to have a more in-depth look at their program. Should I ask the admissions office or contact the professors for more information? I am also planning on visiting many colleges this summer, but I would like to narrow the list down before actually visiting them. Right now, I college list has over 30 schools, because it is so hard to find individual information about them. I bought the Fiske guide, so hopefully that’ll help when it arrives on Monday. Thanks so much in advance.

2

Consider colleges with dedicated (free-standing) art museums. As an easily observable indicator of a college’s commitment to the visual arts, this is, quite literally, the most concrete one.

Irrespective of this consideration, some suggestions for schools covering a range of selectivity would be Wheaton (MA), Connecticut College, Hamilton and Williams.

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That’s great that you want to research departments, it’s a great way to determine if a school is a good fit, and a very important consideration (and one that in general prospective students/parents probably don’t do as much as they should).

I think first you should have some idea what level of school you can get into (and afford) – no sense researching top schools if you have basically no chance to attend. Your GPA and test scores (and financial situation) can give an idea of that.

Next, I suspect there’s a lot more information on department websites than you suggest. Just find a school’s website for the department of interest, and start poking around. One of the the key things you should look for is a faculty list – that’ll give you an idea of the size of the department. Often they’ll show things like what degrees the faculty have and from where, their publications and research interests, and other things they’re involved in. You might want to pay attention to the dates listed, to get an idea what people have been doing recently.

Also, if a department is some kind of combined department (e.g., at Williams it’s Art History and Studio Art), beware that it might list people not directly in your area of interest. And I’ve noticed that often these faculty lists are actually “faculty & staff” lists, so they include administrative and other positions, as well as Visiting and Emeritus positions (I suspect they do this to make them appear larger).

Besides these faculty pages, there might be other pages showing research and activities that the department, faculty, and students are involved in. You already mentioned courses – that can be helpful too, but pay attention to how frequently and how recently courses have been taught.

This will take a little bit of work, but it will be worth it.

This is a good general strategy for researching any kind of department. Another possibility is if you know someone in the field, you can get information and recommendations from them. And there are probably other sources of specific relevance to art history (or other departments).

Another question: How certain are you that you will major in art history? If there’s some chance you will switch (and many students do switch majors), you should not base your decision entirely on the strength of the one department.

4

See if your guidance counselor has a copy or access to Rugg’s Guide. It is a ranking of undergraduate programs based upon surveying the graduate school admissions people in their respective departments. Rugg’s then ranks undergraduate programs Tier I (top) through Tier III (third layer, but still well regarded). I would certainly stay away from AH programs that are unranked in Rugg’s.

Good luck!

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Thanks everyone! The Rugg’s Guide and seeing whether or not the school had a museum of its own was very helpful :slight_smile:

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Also you can look at the department’s page…How many professors are there? If there are 2 vs 20, that tells you something. How many courses are there for the major? How many people major in that major? (usually somewhere there is something on a college website that shows how many people graduate with a particular major).

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-professional activities by faculty members (publications-esp peer reviewed, presentations, etc)
-major grants from federal, state or even local (if NY, for example) organizations/agencies and/or other sources
-guest speaker series-who comes in to give talks
-number of students majoring in field
-honors/awards from field (to faculty members)
-size of dept
-stability of the dept
-ratings by those knowledgable (ie US News ratings of dept)
-if university number of graduates (and their outcomes)

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Not just number of faculty, but who’s both teaching and professionally active in the sub fields of art history that most interest you. When you look at courses in your main interest, see if the prof is a specialist in that or something else. And then look for research and internship opps.

Some lesser known colleges will surprise you.

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As a dissenting opinion, @ironsweater, I have not found Rugg’s to be a particularly consistent or accurate source.

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@merc81 …across the board, or in specific areas of study?

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@ColdinMinny : On the positive side, I’d say Rugg’s is potentially good for identifying a subset of schools which might be excellent for a particular major. Where it appears to be weak is in its tendency to under-regard colleges that are well balanced – and strong – across multiple academic disciplines. So in many cases, I’d say the guide generally under-serves its readers by suggesting that colleges with relative specialties are stronger in particular fields than colleges that have multiple academic strengths, when in such cases the opposite may be true.

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Do you have a specific program/major in mind, or a specific school that you feel is underrated?

I am not saying Rugg’s is end-all-be-all, but I have not heard anyone say their rankings are incorrect or off-base.

(I am not in any way affiliated in Rugg’s, by the way).

13

Well, where is Swarthmore ranked, for example, in computer science? For the 11-15 courses in CS that an undergraduate would typically take, are the Rugg’s schools in higher tiers both definably and uniformly better? My concern with Rugg’s is not with the schools it includes, but with the schools (particulary strong-across-the-board schools) it appears to overlook in some of its categories. Beyond that, “tiers” can be generally problematic, in that while they seem to meet a consumer demand they may also have arbitrary underpinnings. Though, I don’t have the guide in front of me, these same aspects may apply to art history programs as well.

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Swarthmore Tier I for CS as of the 2015 edition. I don’t have the 2016 edition, but can’t imagine it has changed.

So maybe they got one right? :slight_smile:

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@ColdinMinny : Point taken.

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However, some strong across-most-of-the-board schools may be relatively weak (though perhaps adequate for some) in some specific subjects.