<p>
</p>
<p>I want this on a T shirt</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Your sample is just far too small to be talking about “correlations.” And these things come and go. In my class at Michigan, if I recall correctly, there were 10 people in my Honors intro to philosophy seminar. Of those, 2 went on to the philosophy PhD program at Princeton and 1 to the philosophy PhD program at Harvard; thats a pretty fair batting average. Easily half of the rest ended up doing other undergrad majors. I believe those 3 were the only philosophy majors who elected to pursue PhDs in philosophy; the others did something else. Law was pretty hot at the time, the academic job market in the humanities was pretty bleak, and other choices were sensible for most, except those who got into the very top programs. </p></li>
<li><p>The academic job market is similar now to what it was in my day, only worse, especially in the humanities. A lot of sensible humanities faculty are cautioning their top undergrads that pursuit of a humanities PhD is an extremely high-risk and for most likely to be a low-reward career path these days, even at the top programs. So which random schools end up with 1 or 2 students in a particular humanities PhD program may tell us nothing, except possibly who got the worst career advice, or who elected to ignore the career advice they got.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, no; youre just feeding on erroneous stereotypes here. Look, the top students at Michigan come in as part of the Honors program, where average stats (test scores & GPAs) are actually higher than the average at schools like Chicago, Duke, and Rice. (By the way, Michigans LS&A Honors Program was recently ranked the #1 public Honors program in the country in a new book, A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs). You take small Honors intro courses with peers the caliber of those youd find at any of the very best schools in the world, taught by said heavy-hitting faculty, and then you quickly move into advanced undergrad and graduate-level courses, continuing to study under the same heavy-hitting faculty, so that by your junior and senior years most of your classmates are graduate students in the #4-ranked graduate program in the country. No shortage of smart and motivated students, and no shortage of academic resources there. Its a deluxe model. I never had a philosophy class at Michigan larger than about 20 students, and the bigger ones were some of the more popular graduate courses. I never had a TA in a philosophy class, though some of my classmates in graduate-level courses were TA-ing in non-Honors intro classes (though it looks like theyve subsequently revamped their non-Honors curriculum, so instead of a few big introductory lecture classes there are now a much larger number of small entry-level classes, some topical, some historical, some focusing on particular subdisciplines, all taught by faculty, not TAs). I was later a TA myself at a fancy Ivy, where some of the undergrad philosophy courses were twice the size of any philosophy class I ever took at Michigan, a professor lectured, and the discussions were led by TAs. I think I have a pretty good basis for making the comparison.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, no, frankly, #20 as opposed to #25 is not much of a distinction in my book, not these days, and not in the humanities. One of my daughters is an undergrad in a humanities discipline (not philosophy), just starting to think about what comes next, and one of several options she entertains is pursuing a PhD. My advice to her is pretty much what my philosophy professors at Michigan told me: it’s a career gamble, there won’t be a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, and there may well not even be a good tenure-track job. Do it for the love of learning if you must, and think of grad school itself as a low-paying job (they’ll support you) doing what you most love doing for a few years; hey, it beats being a barista at Starbucks. Maybe you’ll get lucky, or maybe you’ll just be really, really good and land a tenure-track job at a decent school, but don’t count on it, because a lot of other really smart and talented people have busted their butts to earn PhDs and found an absolutely brutal job market awaits them at the other end. But if you’re determined to go for it, go for one of the top handful of programs, ideally top 5, maybe top 10-12 at a stretch. Beyond that, I’m not sure I’d bother.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m quite sure USNWR and all the other publications which rank schools do so b/c they can make a mint off all those Asian parents/students.</p>
<p>Can we get back to predicting the rankings please!</p>
<p>^ Lol, seriously</p>
<p>Harvard - 1
Yale - 1
Princeton - 3
Penn - 10
Columbia - 5
NYU - 28
Georgetown - 27
Boston College - 30
UVA - 21
UChicago - 5
Stanford - 4
JHU - 9</p>
<p>^^^^^ nyu’s going to jump 6 places??</p>
<p>I hope my school can jump up a few places :P</p>
<p>I mean, Mercer University? Come on now! And I totally think we’re better and more unique than Loyola New Orleans. I mean, there’s like 4 schools with “Loyola” in the name! How many schools have “Appalachian” in their name!</p>
<p>What? 3? Oh, nevermind them. </p>
<p>Fun fact though, App is 2nd the best public university in the Regional Universities - South category, ranked only behind The Citadel (which I figured would be in National, but whatever)</p>
<p>I just think rankings are fun. I put absolutely no stock in them.</p>
<p>@thenatural
It’s possible. NYU has become more high profile in the past year.</p>
<p>UCLA will fall out of the top 25 and USC will tie with Cal and Georgetown over CM.</p>
<p>^ the indoctrination is strong in this one :rolleyes:</p>
<p>When does USNWR 2013 come out, anyway?</p>
<p>September i believe.</p>
<p>All I know is that USNews favors private schools.</p>
<p>The rankings don’t matter too much, really. The top schools are established and have their reputations firmly in place.</p>
<p>RML, I agree, but why is that a bad thing? Private schools have more resources to hire better (and more) faculty, provide more variety and availability of classes, etc… In a private, you’re not going to be at risk of graduating late because you couldn’t get the required classes. The rankings favor private universities because the very nature of public vs. private favors private universities. I don’t think anyone, given the choice between a public and private school of equal reputation and cost, would choose the public.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that people shouldn’t choose public schools, of course. But IMO, the only people who should attend public schools are in-state students whose drastically lowered tuition fees offset the negatives.</p>
<p>Rain, I agree they don’t really matter, but it’s always fun watching the obsessive fanboys come out and fight with each other. ;)</p>
<p>“I don’t think anyone, given the choice between a public and private school of equal reputation and cost, would choose the public.”</p>
<p>Happens all the time.</p>
<p>“Private schools have more resources to hire better (and more) faculty, provide more variety and availability of classes, etc.”</p>
<p>Michigan. a public institution, has a 7.8 billion dollar endowment. More than only a handful of schools in this country. It provides more variety of high quality classes than just about any school in this country. So much for silly generalized statements.</p>
<p>rjk, notice how I specified the two schools must have “equal reputation and cost.” People who choose publics are most likely choosing it for the cost, or the fact that they didn’t get into an equal-caliber private. Yeah, I realize that may not be an entirely realistic situation, but think about it. Would you rather attend a public Stanford or a private Stanford?</p>
<p>Yes, Michigan is unique in that it’s a public school that has one of the largest endowment funds. Are you really using that as an example that public schools are more well-funded than private ones? Do you really believe public schools are generally better than private ones? Maybe once you go down the list far enough, there’s a point where publics >= privates. But not at the level of, say, top 30 private schools vs. top 30 public schools.</p>
<p>And Michigan’s large endowment is somewhat misleading, too, considering it has more than double the amount of students of private schools with similar sized endowments.</p>
<p>The goal of a public school is to educate as many people as possible. That’s a perfectly fine goal, and there are many public schools that are excellent. But private schools can focus on being the best, without any external pressure to admit 20,000 in-state students because that’s what they were created for. It doesn’t seem very wrong for the top schools to be overwhelmingly private, if you ask me.</p>
<p>Also, I have to laugh at you calling my generalization “silly” right after you generalize public schools as being as well funded as private ones based on ONE public school’s placing in the top 10 of largest endowments (I’m not counting “systemwide” figures). Please, take a look at this link and tell me how many schools on this list are public:</p>
<p>[List</a> of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment]List”>List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>^ Fickle, you’re forgetting that public universities do get significant (albeit recently shrinking) funding from the state. Not all revenue is generated by endowment returns.</p>
<p>BTW, this topic is about USNWR rankings, which do not utilize endowment size as a factor in their rankings.</p>