Linguistics = weak at Michigan

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
1

<p>In looking at the 1995 NRC rankings for linguistics (yeah, I know they're old), I saw Michigan was placed rather low:</p>

<p>1 MIT 4.79
2 Stanford 4.59
3 UCLA 4.56
4 Massachusetts 4.44
5 Penn 4.16
6 Chicago 3.97
7 Cal Berkeley 3.97
8 Ohio State 3.80
9 Cornell 3.78
10 Cal Santa Cruz 3.66
...
31 Michigan 2.37</p>

<p>Yet, in the (slightly more recent) Gourman undergrad rankings, Michigan is placed much higher:</p>

<p>UCLA
U Chicago
UC Berkeley
U Penn
Cornell
UC San Diego
Yale
U Illinois Urbana Champaign
Stanford
MIT
U Michigan Ann Arbor</p>

<p>Yes, I know grad and undergrad aren't the same, but there shouldn't be such a wide gap in quality. And although the ranking is from two different sources, there usually isn't such a large difference; the NRC ranking and the newer US News grad rankings, for example, tend to be very similar. I don't think the slight difference in time matters much either, as schools tend to change very slowly. So I'm wondering: what made Michigan place so high in one ranking, yet so low in another, for linguistics?</p>

<p>I'm wondering whether Gourman placed Michigan so high because of a personal bias, though I dunno.</p>

<p>Thoughts/insights/opinions on Michigan's ling program?</p>

2

<p>Nothing whatsoever? Come on, you guys...</p>

3

<p>i'm getting the feeling that michigan's pretty good at everything</p>

4

<p>don't judge a school based on one of their departments.</p>

<p>i think department rankings are worthless anyway. just go to the best overall school you possibly can.</p>

5

<p>Oh, I'm not judging Michigan overall, just its linguistics departments (or at least I'm pondering how to judge it).</p>

<p>I don't think department rankings are useless when it comes to certain areas, though. Psychology, for example, will generally be a good department no matter where you go. But linguistics is one of those that it isn't so easy to say. At some universities, very little resources are given for linguistics, the course selection is limited, etc.</p>

<p>I don't see any blatantly obvious flaw in Michigan's linguistics department, so I'm wondering what others think about it. Anyone with experience in the department?</p>

1 Like
6

<p>i took a linguistics course last semester and hated it.
and that's all i can say about that.. haha :]</p>

7

<p>have you bothered looking at who the professors are? these rankings aren't completely a black box. learn the names in the field and do a literature search on them and find out how they stand in their field.</p>