|
Elsewhere in the Report I suggest that students consider
the overall resources and quality of universities they are considering
attending. Although philosophy is a specialized enough field that a strong
philosophy program is reason enough to attend a particular school, many
students may find it helpful to have some perspective on what schools have
to offer beyond philosophy. Accordingly, I include a general ranking of
leading research universities in the United States, as measured by the
breadth and depth of academic quality.
Because the 1995 National Research Council study
(based on 1992-93 surveys) is out-of-date, I rely exclusively on the most
current U.S. News academic reputation surveys (conducted between 1999 and
2001) for the major fields of professional and academic study (not to be
confused with the U.S. News rankings of professional schools, which weigh
a variety of irrelevant factors in addition to academic reputation). Those
core fields are: Law, Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology,
Applied and Theoretical Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Engineering, English,
History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology. For Philosophy,
obviously, the rankings relied upon were those in this Report. Medical
schools only counted if on the same campus as the research university (an
issue, e.g., for Cornell and Texas ).
The scores emphasize depth of quality over breadth ,
though breadth counts too. For each program in the top 5, a school received
four points; for each additional program in the top 10, a school received
three points; for each additional program in the top 15, a school received
two points; and for each additional program in the top 25, a school received
1 point.
Although the disciplines ranked are not comprehensive
(e.g., Astronomy, Classics and Anthropology were not ranked), it is surely
a safe assumption that schools that perform well based on the large number
of fields actually surveyed are generally strong research universities
across the boards. The resulting point total thus gives us a measure of
research universities by the breadth and depth of academic quality. The
raw score appears in parentheses, followed by the number of programs in
the top five, top ten, and top fifteen; as well as the total number of
fields in which the school had ranked programs.
| The Top 25 Research Universities
in the U.S., 2002-2003 based on the depth and breadth of academic
quality of programs |
| |
# of programs in |
| |
top 5 |
top 10 |
top 15 |
top 25 |
1. |
Stanford University (66) |
15 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
2. |
University of California ,
Berkeley (59) |
12 |
3 |
1 |
0 |
3. |
Harvard University (54) |
9 |
5 |
0 |
3 |
4. |
University of Michigan , Ann
Arbor (49) |
7 |
3 |
5 |
2 |
5. |
Princeton University (48) |
6 |
6 |
3 |
0 |
6. |
Massachussetts Institute of
Technology (43) |
9 |
1 |
2 |
0 |
7. |
Columbia University (40) |
3 |
5 |
6 |
1 |
8. |
Yale University (40) |
5 |
4 |
2 |
5 |
9. |
University of Chicago (39) |
5 |
4 |
2 |
3 |
10. |
Cornell University (38) |
0 |
8 |
6 |
2 |
11. |
University of California ,
Los Angeles (37) |
1 |
5 |
7 |
4 |
12. |
University of Wisconsin ,
Madison (34) |
1 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
13. |
California Institute of Technology
(33) |
6 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
14. |
University of Texas , Austin
(26) |
0 |
2 |
7 |
6 |
15. |
University of Illinois , Urbana-Champaign
(24) |
3 |
2 |
0 |
7 |
16. |
University of Pennsylvania
(23) |
0 |
4 |
2 |
6 |
17. |
Johns Hopkins University (22) |
2 |
2 |
2 |
4 |
18. |
Duke University (21) |
1 |
2 |
3 |
5 |
18. |
Northwestern University (21) |
0 |
2 |
5 |
5 |
20. |
University of Minnesota ,
Twin Cities (19) |
1 |
1 |
2 |
8 |
21. |
New York University (18) |
2 |
2 |
0 |
4 |
22. |
University of North Carolina
, Chapel Hill (17) |
1 |
0 |
4 |
5 |
23. |
University of California ,
San Diego (16) |
0 |
1 |
2 |
9 |
23. |
University of Washington ,
Seattle (16) |
0 |
2 |
1 |
8 |
25. |
Brown University (14) |
1 |
0 |
3 |
4 |
| |
| Runner-up: |
| |
Carnegie-Mellon University (13) |
1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
| Scores for
other schools studied (unranked): |
University of Maryland , College Park (10) |
Rutgers University , New Brunswick (9) |
University of Virginia (9) |
Washington University , St. Louis (9) |
Ohio State University (8) |
Indiana University , Bloomington (6) |
Pennsylvania State University (6) |
Purdue University (5) |
University of California , Santa Barbara (5) |
University of Rochester (5) |
Rice University (4) |
University of California , Davis (4) |
Emory University (3) |
University of California , Irvine (3) |
Georgetown University (2) |
University of Iowa (2) |
Vanderbilt University (2) |
|
|
