<p>I have checked many rankings of PhD programs in English in the US, and one thing that I specially noticed was that Princeton generally ranked below my expectations, given the overall reputation of the university. For instance, although rankings of universities as a whole normally put Princeton above Johns Hopkins, the latter appears consistently above Princeton in rankings of PhD programs in English.</p>
<p>Do you think that might be owing to Princeton's traditional emphasis on undergraduation programs? And do you think its reputation for the PhD in English might improve in the future?</p>
<p>I've never heard that JHU is known for english at all. I would go with Princeton, it is good in everything. Of course, Harvard, Yale, or Stanford would be the best probably.</p>
<p>Princeton has a top ten English department for sure, but it is not at the very top. Harvard, Berkeley, and Yale are in general your best choices here. However, if not one of those three, Princeton's program is as good as any other. I'd recommend trying to match your specific research interests with the scholarly strengths of the department, though, rather than simply picking based on reputation.</p>
<p>Here are two rankings that are illustrative of what I meant. Of course they may be questioned for one reason or another, but the relative position of Princeton is what I want to call attention to:</p>
<p>No doubt, there is much more involved than reputation, and I will certainly consider all that: the match between my research project and faculty interests, the resources on campus, the amount of funding, that elusive quality which is appeal (Princeton certainly scores very high on that one).</p>
<p>Even then, reputation per se is one of the factors, and everything being equal it might tip the balance. For instance, should Notre Dame and Yale offer me very similar conditions, I would go for Yale based on reputation.</p>
<p>In that first one, the difference is basically negligible. Plus, it said that those were based on preferences you had set, correct? I would say that the first ranking should make no difference.</p>
<p>Yes, in the first ranking you choose a set of criteria which you consider relevant to sort out universities. In that case, my criteria were Educational Efficiency and Faculty Quality, which are the ones most related to what we call "reputation". Other criteria, such as funding, time to degree and number of students are less relevant for reputation, but you may add them. I have prepared many different rankings through that site in different phases of my application, when other criteria mattered to me more than they do now. And Princeton never made the top ten; its position is mostly between 13-15.</p>
<p>Now, as a counterweigh to what I said above, I have just been told that in the newest USNews ranking Princeton is ranked 4, together with Stanford.</p>
<p>Bear in mind, Maioli, that the NRC rankings (which are also used as the dataset for PhDs.org) are from 1994. The department has improved since then.</p>