<p>See, that is the thing, in so many fields rankings do not capture how good a school is. I don’t know why but they really do it poorly. The best ratings for psych I have seen are purely objective using statistics, and those I at least kinda trust because they are harder to fudge, but again it all depends on what categories you pick and how you weight them and what not. Looking at my field, there are many decent schools with great psych program (Oregon, IU, Minnesota) where their undergrad ranking isn’t anywhere close to their grad psych (granted, it is only one field) ranking. Here is the list <a href=“Ranking of U.S. Psychology Ph.D. Programs by Area”>Ranking of U.S. Psychology Ph.D. Programs by Area;
<p>Sometimes undergrad does suffer a bit for the sake of a grad program. For instance, I will not name my program, but I will start teaching Intro to Psych the day I walk on campus and will be teaching classes completely on my own the whole four years I am there. Compare that to a school like ND where grad students almost never teach and you can see why undergrad may suffer some. I am sure I will be a fine teacher, but I am not going to say I am better than the profs in the department! Remember, just because a school has good profs doesn’t mean that they are the ones who do the teaching.</p>
<p>I know you aren’t trying to discredit ND. I just am trying to discredit rankings in general because there are so many factors (like grad students teaching) which they rarely look at. We may have to agree to disagree, and that would be fine, but I am not saying you are a ND hater…though I do still think ND is underrated</p>