The PGR editors, Professors Kar and Pynes, tell me the plan is to do a new set of PGR surveys in fall 2027 (the last report was for 2024-25). I’ve been tracking faculty moves since then (see this post and follow the links therein).

I know from email correspondence that students are very interested in a new set of rankings. For students applying PhD programs this fall, this is the advice I give to students I work with about how to think about the relative “overall” strength of PhD programs. I always tell students not to obsess too much about the ordinal ranking; to that end, I’d look at the hierarchy of strength of programs this coming year in terms of “clusters” of peer programs, i.e., , choose among them based on your interests, financial aid, and personal considerations. It can also make good sense to choose a program that is in the next peer cluster below if that program is a particularly good fit for your specialized interests. And in certain very specialized areas (like logic, philosophy of science, or scholarship in the post-Kantian Continental traditions) it can make sense to choose a program in a much lower cluster if you are sure about your interests.

I’ll update this with some additional thoughts on the “specialty” rankings since 2024.

So taking account of the faculty moves and retirements (plus the 2024 PGR survey results, including the fact that HPS was wrongly omitted from the Indiana faculty in 2024, plus–at the margins–the quality of job placement), here is my best guesstimate for the broad “peer” groupings in 2026-27:

Group 1 (1-11)                                                          

Harvard University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

New York University

Princeton University

Rutgers University, New Brunswick

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Los Angeles

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

University of Pittsburgh (Philosophy & HPS)

University of Southern California

Yale University

Group 2 (12-22)

City University of New York Graduate Center

Columbia University

Cornell University

Johns Hopkins University

Stanford University

University of California, Irvine (Philosophy & LPS)

University of California, San Diego

University of Chicago

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

University of Notre Dame

University of Texas, Austin

Group 3 (23-36)

Brown University

Duke University

Indiana University, Bloomington (Philosophy & HPS)

Northwestern University

Ohio State University

University of Arizona

University of California, Riverside

University of Colorado, Boulder

University of Maryland, College Park

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

University of Pennsylvania

University of Virginia

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Washington University, St. Louis

Group 4 (37-51)

Boston University

Carnegie-Mellon University

Florida State University

Georgetown University

Purdue University

Rice University

Syracuse University

University of California, Davis

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of Connecticut, Storrs

University of Illinois, Chicago

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

University of Miami

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

University of Rochester

Outside the U.S.

Group 1:  Oxford University, University of Toronto

Group 2:  Australian National University, Cambridge University

Group 3:  King’s College, London, London School of Economics, University College London, University of Bristol, University of British Columbia, University of Edinburgh, University of Leeds, University of St Andrews/University of Stirling Joint Program, University of Sydney, University of Warwick.

Group 4:  McGill University; Monash University; National University of Singapore; University of Birmingham; University of Durham; University of Glasgow; University of Melbourne; University of Sheffield; University of Western Ontario; University of York; York University, Toronto.