Stanford, boom! It crushes the competition. How does
it do that?
2007-2011 PhDs in Top 20 departments
(66 posts) (1 voice)-
Posted 10 months ago #
-
Not from a UC dept but it is common to see that UCLA is usually above UCB in many regards. Maybe a student from UCSD would like to jump into this discussion, but I hope they understand they were, are, and will be 3rd not only in political science but practically in everything. So going back to the discussion, why is it that UCLA continues to be "officially" under-ranked compared to UCB? Is it funding? Is it history? Looking at total university costs and resources, UCLA is indeed much bigger than UCB.... well, it just caught my attention.......
Posted 10 months ago # -
Oh no, UCLA boosters.
Posted 10 months ago # -
I have no connection to UCLA but I have to admit that their numbers are pretty impressive, particularly when you consider that their students get way less funding than students at the top privates.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Sorry, but don't try to put Princeton in the same group as Harvard. There are two tiers within the CHYMPS. In terms of grad placement, the grad students at Stanford and Harvard place better than anywhere else. The rest of the CHYMPS (Michigan, Princeton, Yale, Berkeley) have grad students that do not place as well as Stanford and Harvard.
Nice try, though, Princeton boosters.
Posted 10 months ago # -
^Good catch. I hadn't noticed that some Princeton troll was trying to imply that Princeton = Harvard. It's definitely not.
Posted 10 months ago # -
wow, sounds like some awfully insecure Harvard grad students.
Posted 10 months ago # -
^Oh please. I'll bet many of you posting on this thread are just resentful of the fact that you didn't get into Harvard and are instead just grad students at <insert 2nd-tier grad school here>.
Posted 10 months ago # -
UCLA's strong placement is due to their uber-Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest atmosphere. The people who survive have outlasted tens if not hundreds of their colleagues to make it to the top of the heap. This process makes them, in my experience, not just world-class scholars, but world-class embittered a$$holes as well.
Posted 10 months ago # -
UCLA's strong placement is due to their uber-Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest atmosphere.
How is that different from any top-ranking programs?
Posted 10 months ago # -
What would be interesting is to go back a decade and see where those top 20 placements rank now in terms of prominence in their fields. Placement doesn't equal productivity, contribution, reputation. Or does it?
Posted 10 months ago # -
^again a nice project for someone! Although I have the feeling that your institution was way much better a decade ago than now. hopefully you still get some reputation value out of it!
Posted 10 months ago # -
THe people I know from UCLA are all very nice.
Posted 10 months ago # -
ucla is known to produce quite impressive outliers, much more than probably any other university. it is not surprising that they do much better than ucb. but the real question is how are the non-outliers doing? i bet ucb is better than ucla on average, as well as many other top depts.
Posted 10 months ago # -
If my memory is correct---UCLA manages to place people at Stanford but Berkeley has never done that in the last 10 years?
Posted 10 months ago # -
Ross, Zaller, Sears, Lewis, and Geddes have solid open placement pipelines all over the place
Posted 10 months ago # -
Word. The bigger question is why isn't UCSD placing as well as UCLA? The two departments look to be pretty similar on faculty quality. Smaller cohorts?
Posted 10 months ago # -
Look at the MEDIAN UCLA placement, and things look considerably less impressive
Posted 10 months ago # -
UCLA has no guaranteed funding. You have to fight for every dime you get. That's how it's different from a CHYMPS.
Posted 10 months ago # -
^^ Wow you guys are brilliant. So you're saying that the "MEDIAN UCLA placement" is less impressive than the top UCLA placements? I would never have guessed. What a counterintuitive finding! Congrats.
Posted 10 months ago # -
^ I think the point is that the median placement of UCLA is less impressive relative to other schools' median placements than UCLA's top placements to their top placements.
^^UCLA does have guaranteed funding, it's just not offered to every applicant. When I visited, I think the large majority of students had five years of funding.
When I did recruitment visits, I went to UCLA as well as a bunch of other schools in the top 15. The biggest difference I noticed between UCLA and CHYMPS departments was the degree of variance amongst the students, and the size of the average cohort (about twice the size of one CHYMPS department), which is the intuitive result of admitting 20% of applicants instead of 5-10%. UCLA had some great students, but a lot of terrible students as well. CHYMPS departments tended to have a relatively high baseline quality of student. In general, I thought the result of this was that the presumption of professors at CHYMPS departments was that you were a good student, while at UCLA there was more of a sense that you'd need to prove yourself, but the resources would be there for you if you did. I also got the sense that your experience at UCLA would be pretty heavily dependent on your advisor (a lot of profs didn't come into the office regularly, so there was less of a cohesive departmental culture). UCLA seems to work well for some people, although I went a different direction.
Posted 10 months ago # -
There is some truth to the above, but most posters miss one thing about both UCLA and Columbia (and to a lesser degree NYU and USC) that most people fail to recognize. LA and NYC remain the two truly global, truly major American cities. I love many other cities in the US, but really there is NYLA and everyone else. For me, when applying to grad schools I only considered NY or LA. Ditto now that I have a job. I admit its a preference and perhaps a silly one, but one that I certainly am not alone in possessing. Hence, universities in both NY and LA enjoy certain recruitment advantages that no other schools can replicate and hence will draw students and faculty who may be able to get placements at higher ranked institutions, but prefer to live in America's two truly global cities. When I was a student (at one of the above four institutions), quite a few of my classmates came to the institution because of its location, often turning down opportunities at institutions ranked slightly higher. I could be wrong, but I don't know many people who would choose New Haven, New Jersey, Boston, Ann Arbor, or Palo Alto over NY or LA. Thus, despite Columbia, UCLA, NYU and USC possessing fewer resources than their competitors, they still attract far more applications (for faculty, grad and undergrad positions) than their rankings might suggest.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Not true for Boston and Palo Alto...
Posted 10 months ago # -
Most people would agree that SF>LA, so UCB should be greater than UCLA by your logic.
Posted 10 months ago # -
It's true that the top students at UCLA are as good as anywhere and come from rising up. But they seem very nice. Advisors don't want jerks for students either. Definitely some mediocrity there too though. But the best from UCLA can work anywhere.
Posted 10 months ago # -
^^Only people who live in the Bay Area think SF is better than LA. LA people don't really think about the Bay Area that much. Just like New Yorkers don't give a **** about DC or Boston as much those two cities obsess over NYC. Still I don't disagree that SF is a big draw and helps Berkeley attract top talent. I said NYLA benefit from being global cities, but SF is certainly a nice pleasant place to live and many upper middle class liberal white folks consider it something like a mecca. No doubt. But definitely the Bay Area is not really comparable to NY or LA. More like a West Coast version of Boston, another nice enough city to live in.
Posted 10 months ago # -
You are a total moron. Must be sad to be you.
Posted 10 months ago # -
But where does rapid rail fit in this theory?
Posted 10 months ago # -
Um, Davis is the 3rd best UC overall.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Um, I think you mean 2nd best.
Posted 10 months ago #