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How to Weigh Overall and Specialty Rankings in the PGR in Choosing a Program

Brian Leiter

A prospective PhD student writes:

As April 15th approaches, I think it would be very helpful for many of us making final decisions on offers to have a thread on your blog that discusses whether it is a wise decision for applicants to turn down offers from programs that are much higher ranked overall in favor of a program that ranks much higher in their planned area of specialization (so, for example, turning down an offer from a top twenty program that emphasizes M&E for a top 40 program that ranks better in the history of German philosophy, for example). 

First, by the time you are choosing PhD programs, you will hopefully have a lot of additional information pertinent to your decision, that go well beyond the professional reputation of the faculty at the programs.   A lot of factors can, of course, trump the overall reputation of a program:  strength (or weakness) in your area of interest; financial support; the faculty's commitment to teaching and mentoring; and so on.   But let's assume those factors even out, and so the only differences that remain are strength in your areas of interest versus the overall reputation of the program.  Here I think a lot turns on (1) *what* your areas of interest are, and (2) how certain you are that these are your interests going forward.  (1) matters because it really isn't possible to pursue some specialties without faculty who are genuine specialists in the area (ancient philosophy is a good example, so too, in most instances, post-Kantian German philosophy).  (2) matters because, in point of fact, students often find that their interests change.  (I recall one student who came to grad school strongly interested in Heidegger, who ended up working on philosophy of language.)  So, ceteris paribus, someone strongly committed to working on the history of German philosophy ought to pick the 'top 40' program strong in that area over the top 20 program not strong in that area.  On the other hand, if the 'top 20' program does have some offerings in German philosophy, that might complicate the decision.  But then it would be good to know:  do any students ever write dissertations in that area?  Do they then get jobs?  and so on.  (There can be advantages to studying German philosophy in a department also strong in M&E–a lot of scholarship on post-Kantian German philosophy suffers from the fact that it's clear the scholars just aren't very good at or knowledgeable about philosophy generally.)

Thoughts from readers?  Signed comments will be strongly preferred, per usual.

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13 responses to “How to Weigh Overall and Specialty Rankings in the PGR in Choosing a Program”

  1. Carl

    Brian is exactly right here. Let me put his two points slightly differently. At a minimum, you need at least one, and preferably two or three, tenured faculty in the area in which you want to specialize. Tenured, because as a grad student it's likely you'll be at a school as long or longer than the 5-6 years of the tenure track, and thus you'll outlast anyone who fails to get tenure. Ideally you'll have at least two people on your committee who work in your area, and as you get to know faculty you might decide there's someone you don't want to work with, even thought they're prominent in your area, for whatever reason. So really the best situation is one where there are at least three people working in your area.

    This means that, for the risk-averse or those who are less certain about what area they want to work in, large departments are better than small, and those with good general-purpose reputations are better than ones that excel just in certain specialties. But a lot of people do change their fields midway through, and thus it is risky going to a school that is too much focused on a small number of areas. People who go to those programs are either forced to work in areas where faculty have particular strengths, or else should transfer out. It just doesn't pay to try to do a dissertation in an area where the faculty don't have the requisite focus. You'll learn a lot less, and you'll have a lot more trouble on the job market.

    Reply
  2. kurt

    one other factor to consider–and this can depend on how the department treats this issue–is that some towns have all sorts of faculty one can work with. so in chicago, for instance, one might have access to folks at northwestern or uic who complement one's own faculty. this may not be crucial, but should be another thing to consider.

    Reply
  3. Anon. Graduate Student

    As the comments on this thread start rolling in, I wonder if I might add an additional, related query. I am also in the process of weighing PhD programs and also must choose between an overall very well-ranked school, and a school with an excellent reputation in my field of interest. The latter has nearly a dozen scholars working at an institute dedicated to my area of study. The former has only one individual working in my area. Both schools are in the UK, and therefore have no (or very little) coursework requirements.

    My question, therefore, is whether Carl and Brian's advice about the value of larger and higher ranked departments holds when, as in the UK, students begin their dissertation work from day one and have little exposure to other specialties within the department?

    Reply
  4. John Schwenkler

    I've long told students that ranking per se shouldn't matter at all in choosing a program, though of course the factors that do matter will correspond to the rankings in certain respects. The quality of the program's placement rate is one such indicator, as are the status and quality of the faculty working not only in your prospective subfield, but also in a range of other areas you're going to end up exploring (and may end up focusing on). But beyond all this, the "feel" one gets when one visits the institution, the degree to which one finds that his or her personality and philosophical interests and methodological inclinations match up with the faculty and graduate students, is probably the most important factor of all. You won't be able to thrive as a student and do good philosophical work unless you're at a place where you're HAPPY, and a program's ranking, whether overall or in your prospective area of focus, is highly unlikely to correlate with that. As I think the PGR site itself says (though perhaps I'm misremembering here), rankings are more useful as a guide to where one should *apply* than as a way to determine which program one should choose to *attend*.

    BL COMMENT: The PGR is a measure of the status and quality of the faculty, that's what the ranking tries to measure, so unless you think your students shouldn't only take your opinion on the quality and status of the faculty, it doesn't make sense to tell them to ignore the ranking. Job placement, as I've noted ad nauseam, is a backward-looking measure, and tracks, with rare exceptions, the quality and status of the faculty: *vide* NYU and Rutgers which had high rankings based on faculty but before they had much job placement, but the job placement followed.

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  5. David

    When it comes to getting jobs in the long run, I have a follow-up question/thought:

    For those pursuing jobs at PhD-granting institutions — and most graduate students start out with the intention of being star researchers at top-tier PhD-granting institutions — I would guess that going to an excellent program in your AOS is more important than going to an excellent program overall, because the search committees will be aware of candidates' departments' strengths in the AOS.

    But as most graduate students who finish actually end up getting jobs at other kinds of institutions, I wonder whether such search committees — by virtue of being more focused on teaching, of being less engaged in high-end research, and of favoring candidates with more general training — may tend to value the general institutional pedigree more.

    Reply
  6. Eric Schwitzgebel

    I'm not sure I agree with Carl's comment at the beginning. If you are an independent-minded autodidact capable of forging connections outside your home department, there's a lot to be said for being at an elite institution where your advisors will stand aside to let you do your own thing while being generally supportive.

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  7. Marc Bobro

    Carl writes, "At a minimum, you need at least one, and preferably two or three, tenured faculty in the area in which you want to specialize." But, really, what percentage of entering grad students know the area in which they wish to specialize? In my time as a graduate at two universities, I think I met only one student who knew this, and he wound up transferring to a different department! Still, if you happen to dig the history of philosophy, don't apply to a department that under-emphasizes (and especially devalues) such study.

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  8. Michael Johnson

    It may be too late for this student, but in general I'd say the best way to choose between a department where there are a bunch of people in your area that's lower ranked and a higher ranked department with fewer people in your area, ceteris paribus, is to ask the graduate students who work in your area at each institution how their experience has been. It won't always help, but in many cases I'd imagine you could find decisive reasons for one choice rather than the other.

    Reply
  9. Gualtiero Piccinini

    I'm with Eric Schwitzgebel. If you are independent-minded, you are probably better off at the higher ranked school. The higher-ranked school is likely to give you a higher-quality education–which will develop your skills more–and to increase your chances of getting a decent job. For most areas of philosophy, you'll probably find some really smart faculty members who will support your project and help you develop it, even if they are not specialists in that area. And you can always look for specialists who can help you at a distance. (Although as Brian pointed out, some areas such as ancient philosophy do require the help of specialists.)

    Reply
  10. Jordan Taylor

    Replying to Anon. Graduate Student: if you're hitting the dissertation straight away, then there's good reason to be sure that your interests aren't going to change a heck of a lot. (Of course they'll mutate considerably, but if you start writing on German post-Kantianism, and that constitutes the bulk of your earlier research literature, then it's a safe bet that you'll maintain a research interest in that field.) I read BL's point (2) above as much more relevant in American graduate schools where there are two or three years of diverse coursework before candidacy comes into play.
    I think that perhaps the best option would be to carefully think about your project proposal, and discuss it with faculty members of either university. If they think it's feasible, and it's something about which they can get quite excited, then that should be a good indication that you're undertaking the right project in the right institution with the right people. And if the UK system works much like the Australian system of one primary supervisor and one or two associate/adjunct supervisors overlooking a student's thesis composition, then surely a stronger thesis (and complementary publications) from a top 40 will better EDUCATE the student than will a more mediocre thesis that gets the tick of approval from a top 20.
    So as far as the dissertation is concerned, I see the relationship (both in terms of research output and personality compatibility) as the most important element in thesis writing.

    Reply
  11. Christy Mag Uidhir

    It is worth noting that the vast majority of a grad student's day-to-day philosophically-oriented interactions and exchanges are with other graduate students. So, assuming that the greater the discrepancy in rank the greater the discrepancy in graduate student quality (or at least that highly ranked programs tend to have a preponderance of notably talented graduate students), considerations of peer quality can be a useful weighty factor for prospective graduate students faced with these sorts of tough choices.

    Reply
  12. Charles Pigden

    Here's a reason for going for the top school rather than the school which is tops in your proposed AOS. Generally speaking, the meta-ethicist who is just a meta-ethicist won't be much of a meta-ethicist, the metaphysician who is just a metaphysician won't be much of a metaphysician, the epistemologist who is just an epistemologist won't be much of an epistemologist and so throughout most of the subdisciplines that constitute philosophy. And though the historian of philosophy who is JUST a historian of philosophy may succeed in making a contribution to history, she is unlikely to amount to much as a philosopher if she knows nothing more than the great dead guys who constitute her field of expertise. Thus if you want to do good philosophical work, even in your preferred AOS, you are more likely to do it if you give yourself a broad philosophical education, indeed, a broad education generally. The best way to do this is to go to a place where there are lots of talented and ambitious philosophers so that you can learn from them by talking to them about their work. This will tend to mean the top school rather than the school which is only tops in your preferred sub-discipline. Out of pure dumb luck, I ended up in the early eighties as a graduate student at La Trobe in Melbourne, at that time the biggest and, I think, the best philosophy department in Australasia. There were no taught courses, but the knowledge that I gained from gossiping in the tea-room about all sorts of topics from logical theory to the finer points of anarchism has stood me in good stead for the rest of my life. It didn't just benefit me as a philosopher – it benefited me as a meta-ethicist (which is what I was officially supposed to be). I am not suggesting the sacrifice of depth to breadth – rather I think that as a philosopher, if you don't have breadth you are likely to have not depth but only the illusion of depth.

    That's the research side of the argument. But there's a teaching side to it too. Unless you wind up in a large department where people can afford to specialize, you are likely to have to do a fair bit of teaching that is outside your comfort zone. At Otago where I work the philosopher of biology teaches critical thinking, the meta-ethicist teaches logicism and the Tractatus, the metaphysician and the philosopher of time both teach ethics and the the ethicist teaches the philosophy of mind. And this sort of thing is not uncommon in small-to-middling departments. Thus if you want to make yourself saleable as a teacher you are probably better off going to a top school rather than a school which is tops in your speciality since you are more likely to pick up the expertise necessary to teach a wide array of courses. When it comes to undergraduate teaching, versatility is a decided plus and unless you are very lucky indeed the chances are that you will have to do a lot of undergraduate teaching.

    Of course if the specialists are sufficiently stellar, a top 40 school where the other staff are good might be for you than a top twenty school where they are all excellent. But if there is nobody outside your subdiscipline whose work looks interesting then I would be inclined to give it a miss

    Reply
  13. Another Anonymous Grad Student

    As many other comments have suggested, it may not be wise to put too much weight on your planned AoS, since this often changes over the course of a PhD. But it is definitely worth considering the overall philosophical orientation of the dept–as in how accommodating the faculty are of naturalistic/theistically-minded/feminist-influenced etc. philosophy.

    Anecdotally, at least, it seems to me that graduate students are less likely to change *how* they want to do philosophy than to change *what* they want to do in philosophy. (Yes, yes, we all know folks who've changed this orientation too, but they seem fewer than those who've changed their interests from, say, metaphysics to epistemology). Being at a school without expertise in your AoS can be miserable. But being at a school where the faculty look down their collective nose at scientistic/armchair/god-peddling philosophy, or however it is you approach philosophy, can be *really* miserable.

    This provides some reason, albeit a weak one, in favour of choosing a larger school, which is more likely to have a diversity of philosophical orientations among the faculty–ceteris paribus!

    Reply

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