<p>What's up with all of this "tier 1", "tier 2", "tier 4" stuff? School tier, department tier, how does one even KNOW this stuff? OK, so it's easy to say that Harvard is a top-tier undergrad institution, but what makes a school second tier? Or fourth tier? How many tiers are there and how does know which tier one's school or department is in anyways? Is there some tier-ranking publication that I've missed?</p>
<p>It's like cake -- the top tier is the chocolate one with raspberry filling, the second tier is yellow with lemon filling, and the third tier is white with mocha buttercream.</p>
<p>...right? :D</p>
<p>The middle tier sounds way better than the top tier...</p>
<p>But seriously, ***?</p>
<p>The top 30 or so schools belong to Tier-1 the next 30 in tier-2 and so on. This is just a rough estimate.</p>
<p>Is this a joke? Well, if not US News is one publication that ranks colleges. Check out the post "2008 US News Rankings".</p>
<p>no, it's not a bloody joke! It's something that sprung from reading someone describe their institution as "fourth tier", and the fact that most of the ranking I've seen have been the top fifty, top 75, etc. schools. So by the description that a tier = 30 schools, many of the rankings don't even seem to get as far as a fourth tier. </p>
<p>It's also a thinly veiled attempt to get people to see how silly all this tier-talk is and maybe possibly consider more relevant issues in their grad school search such as professors whose work they admire, facilities, funding, and industry connections. Even if you do place some value on the idea of rankings (and I do believe they have their place, as a resource to start with if nothing else), does the idea that the second tier starts at school #31 really mean that school #32 is vastly lesser than school #29, just because one barely lands in tier 1 and the other in tier 2? Any uniform cutoff of tiers you choose to assign is arbitrary, so how can it really mean anything?</p>
<p>Actually, any ranking of graduate programs is a joke (sorry USNews, not that this will hurt your book sales any...)</p>
<p>If you buy into the USNews (or whoever) methodology, then, yes, you can establish arbitrary "tiers" by dividing your rank values into groups of 10, 25, or whatever number floats you boat (or fits your methodology).</p>
<p>IMHO, (and YMMV, as the kids say), no methodology that I am aware of is sufficiently "fine grained" to generate anything more than a vague idea of where a given person should "look first" for an idea of where s/he should apply. </p>
<p>The problem is, for graduate study, you have to look at what, specifically, your interests are. So, take me for example. I'm interested in Classical Archaeology, specifically, the relation of outlying cities (anything that's NOT Rome) and the Italian countryside. Now... if I just look at the rankings, I'll see Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, Michigan, Chicago, etc. at the top...</p>
<p>But guess what? right now, there are not many professors at those schools doing work in my area. So I look around and quiz my professors. and Hey! Cincinnati has just this year hired a guy (from Michigan) who is doing new excavation at Pompeii (and there's not very much of that going on!). And for non-invasive work, there's a guy at Virginia who's been graduating great people for years. So guess what schools are at the top of my list?</p>
<p>Moral of the story: forget rankings - your professors will give you MUCH better advice than some magazine.</p>
<p>Yep. When is it not expected to see Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, etc. at the top, firstly? If you are proficient in reading about these schools, and others in these forums, then you would also have a decent idea of the schools that follow those.</p>
<p>It really is pointless. The primary motivating factors to search for the right school should be where you would be happy, and your program match. Barring of course the insatiable desire to have any one of the top 5 on your resume.</p>
<p>If you realize that, realistically, you will not make into one of those schools, then you should almost by default completely eliminate all activity on those ranking sources. </p>
<p>Rant over.</p>
<p>I found the rankings helpful. I had looked into all of the well known schools for my major, and decided to check out the USNews rankings just to see what was on there, and saw a state school in the top 15 that I had not considered. I decided to check them out based on that and they turned out to have a program that suited me extremely well and I can actually afford to attend. I'll be starting there in the fall. Because of regional issues and a general bias towards a select few private schools in my industry, I never would have thought to consider this school without seeing those rankings. So I definitely think they have their place, as one of many resources that students can look to for ideas about what schools to look at. I just find the talk of "Can an I get into a tier 1 grad school if I went to a tier 2 undergrad?" to be tedious and frankly arbitrary. In any given field there may be two or ten programs that stand out far beyond the rest, or there may be forty that are each very good at their particular sub-specialty. Because of this variety of conditions, and the impreciseness of rankings (really, what exactly is the difference between being #10 and being #11? or between #30 and #31, or wherever you want to tier it at), the application of an arbitrary tier structure just seems overly limiting to me.</p>
<p>larationalist, </p>
<p>I agree completely with your assessment of the arbitrary nature of rankings. However, I personally despise USNWR. </p>
<p>Moreover, in my opinion, WilliamC has articulated the most sensible view of this situation.</p>
<p>But just to clarify, the "tier system" of ranking originated with the Carnegie Foundation, which classified colleges and universities into these tiers. The Carnegie Foundation is also responsible for the "Research 1," "Research 2," "Masters-granting," et al. classifications. They have since abandoned their old tier system AND the R1, R2 system in favor of a more complex classification system. (Found at carnegiefoundation dot org/classifications/index.asp?key=805 if you are interested.) But the tiers persist, and the Carnegie folks still issue reports on "tiers" within each descriptive class.</p>
<p>I agree with all of you. I despise USNWR as well. I go to a tier 4 grad school but my advisor and few of the professors are great in my opinion. I went to a tier 1 school for undergraduate and the professors I have now seem to care a lot more about my education. Anyhoo, I was simply answering larationalists question is there some tier-ranking publication that I've missed.</p>