How to research graduate school

[KingGheedora]

How do you go about researching grad schools? What websites do you use for research?

How important are rankings, and how reliable are they? What information is more important than rankings? Is there any info you try to find but can't right now, or is hard to find because it exists scattered about the web (or offline)?


I've looked at US News & World Report, that seems to be the main ranking entity, but there are other rankings, like from The Princeton Review, as well as others. There is a website called unigo.com too, i haven't visited it in over a year. Is that site useful at all? I don't remember if they were ugrad only though. It seems more geared towards undergraduate stuff.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

What field are you interested in going to grad school for? Answers to your questions vary wildly between fields.

 

[tatteredpotato]

I divided my choices up into 3 sections:

1) Top Schools - Best schools/hardest to get into
2) Public, yet well known - Bigger state schools that aren't as prestigious as group 1, but still very well known/respected.
3) Backups - Local last resorts

I also sent applications the the schools that offered waived application fees.

 

[zinfamous]

What field are you interested in going to grad school for? Answers to your questions vary wildly between fields.

yup. first you figure out which field you want. then which areas in that field/type of research. You look for the top people in that field. you find those people. You go to where they are.

The name of the school is more or less meaningless when it comes to grad school.

 

[PsiStar]

In lieu of actually knowing anyone, or knowing with certainty that you know the right someones .... US News & Wold Report Graduate College Rankings. Maybe that will add some credence to what/who you know.

 

[DrPizza]

I saw an interesting article recently that pointed out that (and this may not apply to you) many people are far better off going to a lower ranking school & being a top student there, rather than going to a top tier school and just being an average student. i.e. graduating summa cum laude from an average school > "just" graduating from an ivy league school. (According to the stats in the article.) That article may have been specific to particular fields; I had only skimmed through it.)