For each category, you are asked to selected up to four categories you think are "important" and then the two you think are most important. I will italicize the two I selected as most important, but restrain myself from more discussion. Assessing graduate program quality is a matter about which I have many wheelbarrows full of thoughts, but I have way too much to do so I don't even want to get into that here.
Regarding the quality of the program's faculty:Anyway, I'd be interested in how you would have answered these questions (or, if you're also faculty and have done the survey, how you did answer them). One of the things I kept thinking about as I did the survey is how I would have answered the questions if I'd done this survey as a graduate student vs. how I answered them now.
a. Number of publications (books, articles, etc.) per faculty member
b. Number of citations per faculty member
c. Receipt of extramural grants for research
d. Involvement in interdisciplinary work
e. Racial/ethnic diversity of the program faculty
f. Gender diversity of the program faculty
g. Reception by peers of a faculty member's work as measured by honors and awards
Regarding the quality of the program's students:
a. Median GRE scores of entering students
b. Percentage of students receiving full financial support
c. Percentage of students with portable fellowships
d. Number of student publications and presentations
e. Racial/ethnic diversity of the student population
f. Gender diversity of the student population
g. A high percentage of international students
Regarding the program:
a. Average number of Ph.D.s granted over the last five years
b. Percentage of entering students who complete a doctoral degree
c. Time to degree
d. Placement of students after graduation
e. Percentage of students with individual work space
f. Percentage of health insurance premiums covered by the institution or program
g. Number of student support activities provided at either the institutional or program level
BTW, I was surprised by the absence of faculty size as a criterion. I feel like small departments must have won some political/rhetorical battle for that to be something not even available as an alternative someone doing the ratings could choose.
BTW-BTW, if NRC conducted a survey of graduate student satisfaction/happiness, I would have selected this as a criterion that should be used. I have thought that ASA should organize an online survey on that as a service to the future of the profession. My experience is that when sociology faculty see unhappy graduate students in their midst, their response is first to remove their sociology thinking caps and then to say "there are unhappy graduate students everywhere," a statement that is no doubt true but doesn't really note the relevant and important possibility that the proportion of unhappy students may vary from place to place and perhaps some of this variation has to do with details of their program.
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