University Ph.D. programs awarded top rankings

The National Research Council billed the report, titled “An Assessment of Doctoral Programs in the United States,” as a new national resource on graduate education.

The assessment contained both survey-based ratings, which reflect the relative importance of various characteristics in a program to faculty in the field, and regression-based ratings, which compare the individual programs based on randomly selected faculty evaluators’ ratings of a sample of programs in each field.

Nationwide, 11 percent of programs received a regression rating between one and four. Meanwhile, 10 percent of programs nationwide received a survey rating between one and four.

Six of the University’s Ph.D. programs received both survey-based and regression-based ratings between one and four: applied and computational mathematics, psychology, electrical engineering, mathematics, computer science and the Wilson School.

Nine other programs received ratings between one and four on one form of rating but not on the other.

Astrophysical sciences, civil and environmental engineering, ecology and evolutionary biology, economics, English, history, philosophy and sociology received a rating between one and four on the survey-based system, but not in the regression. Meanwhile, the program in French and Italian received a top rating in the regression, but not in the survey-based rating.

The report is based on data collected from questionnaires during the 2005-06 academic year from over 5,000 doctoral programs at 212 research institutions. The data analyzed includes information on faculty publications, grants and awards, student GRE scores, financial aid, employment outcomes, program size, time taken to complete degree, faculty composition, and diversity of students and faculty.

Of these criteria, the University performed especially well in faculty publications, financial aid, time taken to complete a degree and the number of entering students that completed their degrees.

Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 said in an e-mail that the results of the NRC assessment were deliberately complex. “The NRC sought to avoid the false precision associated with ‘rankings’ and thus published ‘confidence bands’ instead,” he said. “As such, there are multiple programs that could, on the basis of the survey, plausibly claim to be ‘number one.’ ”

Dean of the Graduate School William Russel said in an e-mail that he “would very much like to mitigate” the perception that the University’s strength lies only in its undergraduate, rather than its graduate, education. Russel added, “The NRC report indicates quite strongly that Princeton is one of the very best places that a graduate student could attend!”

“Perhaps some undergraduates are unaware of the distinction enjoyed by Princeton’s doctoral programs, but rest assured that applicants for doctoral programs have been well aware of it,” Eisgruber said. He added that some of the University’s Ph.D. programs have higher yield rates than the undergraduate programs.

Wilson School Dean Christina Paxson said in an e-mail that the University’s high ratings reflect one of its top priorities: recruiting and cultivating the very best scholars. “The fact that we provide excellent financial aid to our graduate students is also an enormous asset,” she said.

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Russel added that the relatively small size of the Graduate School facilitates close advising, which allows a major fraction of its students to finish their degrees on time.

Eisgruber, though, cautioned the public not to put too much weight on the results of the report.

“One should be aware that the survey defined some fields and categories in idiosyncratic ways,” he said. He added that the Graduate School still has work to do in attracting graduate student cohorts that are “diverse as well as brilliant.”