<p>If you want to study sexuality there are few places better than IU, assuming you can obtain a stellar letter of rec and excellent research experience. If you want to go onto a phD in say, hydrology, IU won’t help or hurt you. If you just want a terminal masters, that’s an entirely different story. </p>
<p>While Indiana is a respectable university, and my sister loved getting her undergrad degree there, “prestigious” is not a word I’d use to describe it.</p>
<p>Depends on your audience - in NYC, IU will never be prestigious. In small town Indiana, IU probably outranks Harvard, or is at least it’s equal in many people’s eyes, and would serve you just as well. No one is going to pay a premium for a Harvard degree there.</p>
<p>Yes, general prestige rankings are kind of stupid and useless. For jobs in specific industries and locations, network, brand, and recruiting prowess matters, but that definitely could be different across industries and locations. I know that teenagers obsess about how they appear to others, but looking at the opinion of strangers of general prestige of colleges even as a datapoint is just an awful, stupid way to select colleges.</p>
<p>Do you know what you want to do yet after college? Where you want to be?</p>
<p>^ Ideally in a PhD program for cultural anthropology.</p>
<p>Most Big 10 schools are academically prestigious. They are all (but one) members of the Association of American Universities. There are only 60 members total in US and Canada. Only 34 are public. From this group you will find the most academically prestigious universities in North America. Note: Nebraska was a member and withdrew a few years ago. </p>
<p>For those of you ranking the Big 10, you are overrating Wisconsin and under rating Minnesota.</p>
<p><a href=“Association of American Universities - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Universities</a></p>
<p>Maybe someone who has more expertise in the field can comment, but my thinking there is that for something like a PhD program for cultural anthropology, any major research university (and maybe even the top LACs) would do. It’s much more about the research you do with the profs there than the school that matters. IU would be fine.</p>
<p>For those of you ranking the Big 10, you are overrating Wisconsin and under rating Minnesota.</p>
<p>Not really by most measures. If anything it is slightly underrated.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2013.html”>http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2013.html</a></p>
<p>I would say that for someone seeking a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, you need to find a school that offers an undergrad degree in it, it’s a place you can afford, it’s a place you like, and it will successfully lead to your next school. Strong travel abroad programs are probably a must. And it may not be a place you want to get your Ph.D. from - sometimes cross-pollination results in a stronger student, so that could open up LACs. </p>
<p>By the time you get through your junior year, you should have a pretty good idea where to go for your grad degree(s), and who has the specialties you’ll be interested in - we’re way too far out to predict that. In short, you need some place that will provide a good foundation based on your preferences. That is going to mean different things to different people.</p>
<p>^ Oh I’m sorry! I should have said something. I’m a rising junior in college!</p>
<p>For what it is worth, The Daily Beast ranked IU as the third hottest college of the 2000’s. </p>
<p><a href=“The Decade's Hottest Schools”>The Decade's Hottest Schools;
<p>Again, what is it worth?</p>
<p>Grad school admissions don’t depend on prestige. They depend on the student and the credentials you present. Academic preparation, what research, what your letters say about your research potential. As long as you are from a respectable school it doesn’t matter about prestige. Now if your department produces very good candidates in the area you are applying to, that will be known and appreciated and very helpful. If you have research and a letter from someone known in the field or a subarea, that is a big plus. But not necessary.</p>
<p>“In small town Indiana, IU probably outranks Harvard, or is at least it’s equal in many people’s eyes, and would serve you just as well. No one is going to pay a premium for a Harvard degree there.” </p>
<p>Quite an overstatement. I’m not from Indiana, but I highly doubt all those in smaller towns share that view. </p>
<p>^^“Grad school admissions don’t depend on prestige. They depend on the student and the credentials you present.”</p>
<p>This is self-contradictory. Prestige plays a hugh role in the credentials presented.</p>
<p>Shouldn’t this thread be titled: “Prestige” OR Indiana-Bloomington ?</p>
<p>^ Well I was just wondering what you guys thought because apparently the top political economy anthropologist teaches there…</p>
<p>@rhg3rd </p>
<p>“This is self-contradictory. Prestige plays a hugh role in the credentials presented.”</p>
<p>There’s no contradiction there. By credentials, she means your individual credentials, not the prestige of your school. Grad schools would be more excited by someone who has already done good work and shows potential to do great research but went to Podunk U than a kid at an Ivy who hasn’t done anything that shows research potential.</p>
<p>In my field, a high school drop-out who built key parts of a heavily-used complex, multi-threaded open-source library has much better credentials than a Princeton kid who hasn’t shown that he can code yet.</p>
<p>@rbouwens:</p>
<p>This isn’t that surprising. Academic research talent in this country is much more broadly spread out than undergraduate prestige is. And different schools could have very strong departments in different fields for idiosyncratic reasons. So pretty much all the major research universities will have experts in one field or another.</p>
<p>I believe I said before that general “prestige” is a poor metric to use for almost anything.</p>
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<p>I’m from a city in the Midwest and even we don’t pay a premium for Harvard grads, let alone a small town. Harvard is just another good school for most jobs here, with very few exceptions.</p>
<p>This thread should probably be in the grad school forums.</p>
<p>^ Yeah I guess I didn’t think that the grad school and college in the same institution would be “ranked” differently </p>
<p>@wayneandgarth:</p>
<p>"“In small town Indiana, IU probably outranks Harvard, or is at least it’s equal in many people’s eyes, and would serve you just as well. No one is going to pay a premium for a Harvard degree there.”</p>
<p>Quite an overstatement. I’m not from Indiana, but I highly doubt all those in smaller towns share that view. "</p>
<p>Where are you from?</p>
<p>I can probably make a pretty accurate guess as to either the region of the country you’re from or your age. BTW, in the company I’m current at, which is in a high-paying industry, alums of the in-state public flagship (which is not prestigious in any sense) dominate up and down the hierarchy. Grads of the regional Ivy-equivalents (usually of their grad programs) can also be found here. I’ve yet to meet a single Ivy alum here, much less Harvard grad. Well, we did hire in a Duke PhD, but we kicked him out after less than a year because he was lazy and unproductive. He believed that he deserved a higher level and comp than he got despite knowing nothing and producing nothing.</p>