The US News Rankings

Well the latest US News rankings for graduate schools have been published.

While parents and potential graduate students closely monitor these rankings. Many departments and academic groups decry the rankings as superficial and downright false.

In my opinion, what school is right for you is a subjective and personal matter. It would be just as ridiculous as trying to rank what house is better to live in. Some neighborhoods and building styles appeal to different people.

Some people enjoy the small faculty to student ratio offered by places like Cal Tech. While some students want the entire college experience offered by larger schools like UCLA.

In my own example, I was offered admission into the PhD programs of various departments. What I realized upon visiting these departments was that they had hundreds of graduate students. While this may be alluring to some, I began to question what sort of personalized attention I would be receiving in a department with over 300 graduate students. So while these universities outranked Rochester in many respects, my gut told me Rochester would be a more collaborative environment.

Rochester has been the correct choice. The people are very friendly and the department staff go out of there way to assist incoming graduate students. The campus and the city itself is a wonderful and cozy place. The low cost of living means my stipend goes farther than in other cities.

So I hope you too will not be swayed by the rankings. They are fun to look at and comical for bragging rights, but do not serve as an accurate measure of what you will take away from the graduate school experience.