<p>What are the USNWR “Best College” academic field rankings? I’ve never seen them. What are they based on? There are periodic surveys about graduate programs (the last one is about ten years old, although supposedly a new one will be out soon), and those can be somewhat helpful in determining areas of specific strength and weakness. But the translation between strong graduate programs and strong undergraduate programs isn’t perfect – a graduate program can get hurt by factors that don’t affect undergraduates, and undergraduates can have a great experience in places that are less-than-cutting-edge at the graduate level.</p>
<p>In any event, there is NO such thing as a statistics-based set of departmental qualaity rankings, anywhere, unless the statistics include a huge chunk of subjective survey information. (Well, not entirely true. Some people do citation counts as a measure of faculty reputation, and things like that. )</p>
<p>All of that said . . . Some of the areas where Yale is generally regarded as strong, other than History and Poli Sci: </p>
<p>English/Literary Studies. A generation ago, Yale was the dominant university in the world in this area. That’s not so true anymore, but it’s still among the top-echelon places.</p>
<p>Linguistics. Very hot program, from what I’m told. Not really a traditional area of strength for Yale, and it almost killed the whole program a while ago, but it’s been on a roll for the past decade or so.</p>
<p>Psychology. Traditionally a strong area, not certain about current status.</p>
<p>Economics. Generally, it’s very crowded at the top of the Economics totem pole, with really minimal differences in faculty and grad student quality among the top 8-10 programs, which certainly include Yale. Would it outrank Harvard or Chicago? No. Does it matter? No.</p>
<p>Classics. Always a strength.</p>
<p>This list is non-exclusive; it’s based on things I know something about. I don’t know that much about hard sciences, so I can’t address them. I know Yale let its engineering program slip over the last half of the 20th century, and has been spending a ton of money to build it back up again, but it wouldn’t be ranked anywhere near the top.</p>
<p>Three final thoughts:</p>
<p>(1) Student quality is very important. Yale accepts and enrolls great students, and provides a wonderful social and academic context for them. That’s a huge part of its success.</p>
<p>(2) Very, very few undergraduates can tell the difference between a #1 ranked department and a #10 ranked department, because a single undergraduate in four years (only about 1/3 of which are spent on courses in a major) can’t even begin to exhaust the riches of a #10 ranked department (maybe unless it’s a field where there are only 10 departments in the country).</p>
<p>(3) Most students change their minds about what they want to study between their senior year of high school and their junior year of college. So it can be a serious mistake to focus on this particular major or that one. Statistically, it’s likely you are going to wind up somewhere else. No college is #1, or even top 5, in every discipline. What makes the elite universities elite is that they are top 5 in lots of things and top 20 in almost everything they offer. That’s waaaay good enough.</p>