US News Clinical Psychology Rankings 2012

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Oh God...please don't let this start the flood of threads, "The school I want is ranked #43, but I only got into the #48 ranked school....am I screwed if I go there?!!" :(

ps. No offense to the OP...as someone was going to post this, so it might as well be them.
 
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Why are the professional schools unranked or N/A? Did they just rank the APA accredited programs?
 
Why are the professional schools unranked or N/A? Did they just rank the APA accredited programs?

Side note: professional schools are mostly also APA accredited. The methodology for this ranking is as follows (per their website):
"All the health rankings are based solely on the results of peer assessment surveys sent to deans, other administrators, and/or faculty at accredited degree programs or schools in each discipline. All schools surveyed in a discipline were sent the same number of surveys. Respondents rated the academic quality of programs on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). They were instructed to select "don't know" if they did not have enough knowledge to rate a program. Only fully accredited programs in good standing during the survey period are ranked. Those schools with the highest average scores appear in the rankings.

Rank Not Published means that U.S. News did calculate a numerical ranking for that school/program, but decided for editorial reasons that since the school/program ranked below the U.S. News cutoff that U.S. News would not publish the ranking for that school/program on usnews.com. U.S. News will supply schools/programs listed as Rank Not Published with their numerical rankings, if they submit a request following the procedures listed in the Information for School Officials in the About the Best Graduate Schools Rankings section on usnews.com.

Schools/programs marked as Rank Not Published are listed alphabetically. Schools in the health ranking that are all based solely on 5.0 peer assessment score are number ranked down to a peer assessment score of greater than or equal to 2.0, Schools with scores beneath 2.0 are listed in alphabetical order as Rank Not Published."

Essentially if the school was scored less than a two using the methodology explained, it was not ranked... which seems to be the case with many of the professional schools.
 
Putting aside the that this ranking measures "reputation" from a self selecting group of raters, not much a of a change. If memory serves me correctly I do not ever remember seeing Harvard being so far up. Seems like Kansas Clinical Child (lets see what their basketball team will do) broke into the Top 10 for the first time ever.
 
So there is a possibility that these rankings could reflect which schools' faculty has the greatest morale/loyalty, and offer no real information on a merit-based ranking?
 
Putting aside the that this ranking measures "reputation" from a self selecting group of raters, not much a of a change. If memory serves me correctly I do not ever remember seeing Harvard being so far up. Seems like Kansas Clinical Child (lets see what their basketball team will do) broke into the Top 10 for the first time ever.

Actually, this is the first year Harvard has been ranked on this list, since the program was just accredited in 2008.
 
So there is a possibility that these rankings could reflect which schools' faculty has the greatest morale/loyalty, and offer no real information on a merit-based ranking?

Yep.

This would be far more useful if it were broken down by specialty area and actually based on outcomes like match rates, EPPP pass rates, employment settings, avg. number of publications and grants awarded to students, etc.
 
Putting aside the that this ranking measures "reputation" from a self selecting group of raters, not much a of a change. If memory serves me correctly I do not ever remember seeing Harvard being so far up. Seems like Kansas Clinical Child (lets see what their basketball team will do) broke into the Top 10 for the first time ever.

Kansas has some prolific researchers. I always forget who is who between the clinical v. counseling facutly...but all and all they are both solid programs.
 
Kansas has some prolific researchers. I always forget who is who between the clinical v. counseling faculty...but all and all they are both solid programs.
There are actually 2 separate clinic programs (general and child) with separate accreditation and a counseling psych program in the School of Ed.

I wonder how much of that gets all jumbled up by people who complete the questionnaires for US News.
 
It may seem twisted, but I'm upset to see so many of the programs I'm interested in ranked so highly. This will mean more applicants and, at the risk of sounding selfish, lower odds of getting in. It seems to me ranking in this way is rather counter-productive, as it encourages applicants to seek programs with greater perceived prestige, rather than those that fit them best. I'm sure its possible for any student to have a terrible experience at one of the top ranked schools, and a phenomenal experience at one of the Unranked programs.
 
There are actually 2 separate clinic programs (general and child) with separate accreditation and a counseling psych program in the School of Ed.

Interesting. I knew there was a clinical program and a counseling program...I didn't realize there was a second clinical program. I know Steve Ilardi is doing some interesting depression research out of the KU clinic. I like it because it isn't all touchy-feely, as there is hard science behind his program. :D
 
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It may seem twisted, but I'm upset to see so many of the programs I'm interested in ranked so highly. This will mean more applicants and, at the risk of sounding selfish, lower odds of getting in. It seems to me ranking in this way is rather counter-productive, as it encourages applicants to seek programs with greater perceived prestige, rather than those that fit them best. I'm sure its possible for any student to have a terrible experience at one of the top ranked schools, and a phenomenal experience at one of the Unranked programs.

Hate to break it to you, but gaining admittance to any reputable, funded, university-based doctoral program in psychology is difficult. But I do agree on your latter point about fit.
 
Hate to break it to you, but gaining admittance to any reputable, funded, university-based doctoral program in psychology is difficult. But I do agree on your latter point about fit.
I have no illusions about how difficult it is to get in, but I'll take any advantage I can get... Although being realistic it would probably change the acceptance rates from 2.4 to like 2.2 or something ridiculous
 
So there is a possibility that these rankings could reflect which schools' faculty has the greatest morale/loyalty, and offer no real information on a merit-based ranking?

Actually, I don't think so. I think that the respondents were asked to give a rating for each school- not just their own. The resulting list reflects ratings of programs by staff from other similar programs.
 
Actually, I don't think so. I think that the respondents were asked to give a rating for each school- not just their own. The resulting list reflects ratings of programs by staff from other similar programs.

Oh I see. That does does present a better picture.
 
Interesting. I knew there was a clinical program and a counseling program...I didn't realize there was a second clinical program. I know Steve Ilardi is doing some interesting depression research out of the KU clinic. I like it because it isn't all touchy-feely, as there is hard science behind his program. :D
The other thing that is very deceptive about KU is that all the programs inter-train. I just got into the counseling program (and have several friends as 2nd or 3rd years in the child clinical) but many of the classes are in the child clinical program/general program.

i'm sure this is not limited to KU when there are multiple programs of similar design counseling/clinical/types of clinical. i always take rankings with a grain of salt for this reason, and others.
 
Following up on the above post: as someone whose program is really bad but is still about halfway through that list - above others on the same page that are, based on what students from those programs tell me, WAY better at training psychologists - I can say that this list represents very little meaningful information.
 
Here is another website with rankings for clinical psychology programs:
http://www.socialpsychology.org/clinrank.htm

That list is based on EPPP scores- probably not a valid measure of program quality. The EPPP is really designed as a pass/fail exam, so I'm not sure of the validity of treating scores as a ratio scale (or even ordinal outside of the pass/fail designations). This is not to say that the USN&WR list is a valid measure of quality either- it's more a ranking of program reputation.
 
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