last (pre-) grad school post

[nibot]

I found another graduate school ranker. It's based on a survey distributed to current grad students.

It says I should go to Rochester. Just ranking over "overall satisfaction," Rochester comes in second, after UC Santa Cruz and tied with Cornell. UNC is lumped in the third quartile. CMU did not respond.

I suspect this survey has a huge amount of self-selective bias in it, though. We should all sign up to take part in next year's incarnation. (There were 32 responses for Rochester and 28 for UNC — far more than for most departments, so the results should be statistically significant. Rochester has 135 physics PhD students, and UNC has 64.)

But I liked UNC so much!

Comments

[ephermata.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much I'd trust these sorts of rankings. What matters is how you'll like it there, and these surveys may not predict that well. Of course, if a place is WAY down there or WAY up there, that may be a sign. So I'd put this as a positive mark for Rochester, but wouldn't worry about UNC.