US News NEW ranking

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math.magician
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2022 2:24 pm

US News NEW ranking

Post by math.magician » Tue Mar 29, 2022 12:40 am

I know what y'all gonna say ... 'ranking's not everything' ... but just letting everyone know, they updated the ranking.

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-sc ... s-rankings

The ranking system is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy though, since almost everyone use is as one of the determining factors for applying to schools (don't lie to us saying you don't :D).

bigbang
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2022 5:12 am

Re: US News NEW ranking

Post by bigbang » Tue Mar 29, 2022 4:21 am

math.magician wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 12:40 am
I know what y'all gonna say ... 'ranking's not everything' ... but just letting everyone know, they updated the ranking.

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-sc ... s-rankings

The ranking system is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy though, since almost everyone use is as one of the determining factors for applying to schools (don't lie to us saying you don't :D).
Almost all of us rely on rankings. Personally, I relied more on QS Math rankings and I highly regret my decision. I am sure many others might also have d0ne something similar.

Sometimes, I wonder if at all ranking is "anything". I am not sure if math subject rankings give us any idea about the Ph.D. math program of the university concerned, I feel it better reflects how the UG and the MS-based system is at the university because it's only in those systems that placements, reputations, etc. matter. There are some unnecessary factors, for example, the number of undergraduate students, international students ratio, international faculty ratio, value for money of the tuition fee, faculty-student ratio, etc., which do NOT matter for Ph.D. and may bring down an otherwise great university. For a Ph.D., I think it's mostly between the candidate and her supervisor and no ranking can capture that. Obviously, most rankings involve "research output" as a parameter that is relevant to Ph.D. programs but based on my understanding and discussions with many current and former Ph.D. students, several other factors that contribute to rankings of the US News, QS, Shanghai, etc. simply do NOT matter for Ph.D. programs and putting weight on them often places a good-research program over an excellent-research program, or a program popular for undergrad math over a not-so-popular one with terrific research output (the latter may happen rarely but it happens).

Furthermore, the rankings of a given school may vary drastically from one set/system of rankings to another, even though there are just a few parameters (or ranking indicators) different from one ranking framework (say QS Math: https://www.topuniversities.com/univers ... athematics) to other (say Shanghai Math: https://www.shanghairanking.com/ranking ... 021/RS0101). But this definitely makes one wonder how actually should one perceive the prestige of the math programs, in particular, the Ph.D. program. For example, see the following rankings of six universities in US News, QS, and Shanghai Global ranking for the "mathematics" category.

(1) Duke: US News: 17, QS Math: 55, Shanghai Math: 100+
(2) HUJI: 224, 114, 24
(3) Rutgers: 26, 111, 21
(4) Boston College: 59, 450+, between 75-100
(5) TU Delft: N/A, 77, 200+, AND
(6) Stony Brook: 29, 150+, 19.

I am sure there are many more examples of such significant differences in the ranks. The point is, had the rankings been unbiased, accurate, and pertinent to Ph.D. programs, the variations would not have been such drastic. It is probably the consideration of ranking indicators irrelevant to Ph.D. programs that create such major differences in rankings. IMO, one should not rely at all, on any of them for Ph.D. programs. Please correct me if I am wrong or if I misinterpreted something.

pedrerol1
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2022 4:37 pm

Re: US News NEW ranking

Post by pedrerol1 » Tue Mar 29, 2022 11:14 am

Well, you also haven’t considered that the US News ranking is only locally, while the two others are global, that may give an idea of the kind of disparity you talked.



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