<p>The things that gives me pause about the survey are just my personal experiences. I probably have more personal school experience than most professionals since I like to recruit and am very familiar with the work of five or six schools that have consistently produced the best students for us. </p>
<p>When I get to the survey and have to rank 20 schools, beyond the 6-10 I really know, I am just going on reputation and word of mouth. Now you are asking me about sub-categories, and beyond the top 1 or 2 schools with a particular emphasis I am just pulling names from the air. If you rank Harvard the best for communications is that because they teach it, or because so many of their students have a liberal arts undergraduate degree and love to argue?</p>
<p>The other thing that gives me pause is that as the importance of this survey has increased, so have efforts to game it. I now get letters from the deans of two of my schools urging me to vote for our school on the survey so they can get a higher ranking.</p>
<p>I still think it has value, but I would use it broadly to gauge the general respect of a program, but not as a substitute for a visit and deeper research.</p>
<p>rick</p>