I see that UC Davis is touting that its ecology & evolutionary biology program was ranked #1 by US News and World Report. Check out the "Best Graduate Schools" online sampler at US News and World Report. I had a friend who narrowly chose Harvard over Davis for evolutionary ecology, so it doesn't surprise me that much. In ecology & evolutionary biology Berkeley & Harvard were #2 & #3 respectively.
Does this mean anything? I don't know, I don't really think so on the most basic of levels: do US News & World Report's graduate school rankings give you information you wouldn't have had??? Rather, to some extent I don't see this as much more than a variation on astrology, it is precise, but it isn't necessarily more accurate. I trust that US News & World Report isn't just pulling these numbers out of a hat, or going on gestalt discernment on the part of its editors. Rather, they've got some real algorithms which pop out precise rank orders. And that's the problem, they gotz themselves algorithms, it doesn't mean those algorithms map on to reality that much better than what you already knew! The contextual issues of the particular field in ecology & evolution that you have an interest in seem much more important than the arbitrary weights US News gives to its general parameters.
That doesn't mean that the rankings are inaccurate. Check them out and you'll see that they follow your general intuition of how the world works. Additionally, they also display enough counterintuitive results (like UC Davis) to "keep it interesting" (like any good story, keep it grounded but mix it up with surprises). And that's the key, these rankings appeal to our need for faux precision, which we assume will be more accurate than what we already know. I'm not one to deny the importance of quantitative metrics, but, as my posts on ancestry testing attest to one must interpret the numbers and be cautious about what they tell us and what they don't. That's why scientists rely on artificially agreed upon p-values to constrain their tendency to see "trends" in modest correlations.
The same principle of mostly convential wisdom + some curve balls applies to the proliferation of online quizzes for personality and intelligence. They can't be so wack that they are implausible, but it doesn't hurt if they offer an extra dollop of information, ergo, the perception of a more accurate model of your personal reality (who wouldn't want that?). For example, person x may know that their IQ is about 2 standard deviations above the norm, but when they take an IQ test which attempts to decompose their various "strengths" and "weaknesses," then it is adding some value. This is not to denigrate psychometrics, I am a "believer," but more on the populational level. A difference of 5 points here and there on the individual level might be swamped out by the noise of life (though this noise might cancel out on the populational level).
Anyway, it's all fun. I take online quizzes in part for personal entertainment, but also because it is a way to "socialize." As long as we don't look beyond that, then it's all good.
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As a completely unbiased observer who would never be influenced by the fact that my formative undergrad years were spent there, I can say unequivocally that UC Davis = totally awesome in absolutely everything they do.
Along the lines of what you discuss, imagine my shock a few years ago when I saw a citation impact analysis that placed UC Santa Barbara at the top or in the top-3 of quite a few lists, including a #1 in physics if I recall. Since I grew up with the common CA high schooler notion of UCSB as nothing more than a glorified party school, I was suprised.
UCSB has top quantum computing/solid state physics researchers. The propensity of a university's undergrads towards partying has little to do with the quality of its researchers and grad students.
UCSB has top quantum computing/solid state physics researchers
yeah, i've heard about the solid state stuff before.
Additionally, they also display enough counterintuitive results (like UC Davis)....
How is UC Davis being a top Ecol/Evol program counterintuitive? I know in the field of evolutionary genetics (popgen, molecular evolution, etc, which makes a up a fair bit of ecol & evol), Davis has one of the top departments in the nation.
UC Davis has long been considered one of the top ecology & evolution programs by scientists in that field (full disclosure... a friend of mine was just hired as a prof there). I don't think it is a surprise at all. Are they #1 or #4 is a different question...these rankings don't have that degree of accuracy.
Unlike the college rankings that US News publishes, I believe that the grad school rankings are based solely on a faculty survey and not on an algorithm that takes several factors into account. UC Davis is #1 because professors around the nation ranked it highly.
Davis also has a very large E&E faculty that covers most specific subject areas...certainly something that works in their favor. Contrast their faculty with Princeton's, for example. Several excellent people reside at Princeton, but their program is relatively small.
rpm, jm-s, you make good points. UC davis seems to be a case like UCSB, those in the field aren't surprised, those without are. so my contention that there isn't any value added isn't right it seems, but, the problem is that anyone interested in graduate school in said fields wouldn't need to look at US News to know the state of the field, so what are these rankings for???
The rankings could be for those looking at undergrad places -- how big could the market be for those applying to E&E grad schools? If you think you'd like to be a bio major, maybe you want to go where the grad program is great in some bio field -- the chances that you'll participate in such research may be dim, but then the parents of these kids are willing to shell out thousands of dollars to make up 30 vanity points on their SAT score...
Wowbagger -- that was only my highschool impression and now I know the truth. And the truth hits home even stronger now that I'm at U of Colorado. From what I can tell some of the most unimpressive undergrads anywhere with one of the best research profiles of the top public U's.
Agnostic makes a good point -- when I was choosing colleges I also took a cursory look at the rankings for my major (physics) because I intended to participate in research (although I must say I didn't learn anything from the rankings that I didn't already know). And if you're willing to work hard for no pay the chances of doing real cutting edge research aren't at all dim --- you just have to be persistent about approaching prospective advisors.
rpm, jm-s, you make good points. UC davis seems to be a case like UCSB, those in the field aren't surprised, those without are. so my contention that there isn't any value added isn't right it seems, but, the problem is that anyone interested in graduate school in said fields wouldn't need to look at US News to know the state of the field, so what are these rankings for???
The obvious way to quantify this is to make a rank-vs.-rank scatterplot of overall rankings (for undergrad) vs specific rankings (for graduate schools).
Points which are significantly off the trend line are surprising, but in general schools which are selective at the undergrad level tend to also have generally good graduate programs (e.g. Harvard, Stanford, & MIT). It is just a tendency as there are plenty of Ivies like Dartmouth or Brown whose graduate programs are nowhere near as pimp as, say, Berkeley's.
very bad