A new system for ranking graduate schools has appeared as a response to the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings. The system debuted last week on the Web site PhDs.org.
Compiled by Geoff Davis, a former mathematics professor at Dartmouth, the new system allows graduate school applicants to access a ranking of various programs through an online database, as opposed to the U.S. News & World Report system which must be purchased to receive more in-depth information.
According to Davis, the initiative to create this database started as a small approach about a decade ago in response to those who felt the U.S. News & World Report system is dominated by subjective criteria such as reputation.
"For the first time ever we can look at [rankings based on] how graduate students were funded, what kind of jobs they got ... the number of foreign students and student to faculty ratio," Davis said.
Robert J. Morse, director of data research at U.S. News & World Report, however, argued that his system has more accurate data than PhDs.org.
"The data we use is current and generally from the recent school year from surveys a few months ago," he said. "It is much more up-to-date and more universally accepted."
The newer system uses federal data complied more than 10 years ago, but both systems can be useful if students understand how each one compiles its statistics, Morse said.
Prof. Frederick Damon, director of graduate studies in anthropology at the University, said although ranking systems provide valuable information, there are many other intangibles that students must look into that any ranking system cannot account for.
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