MPH Program Rankings

[WHO]

If anyone was curious about rankings, I found this 2005 (most recent) report by the Chronicle of Higher Education on public health programs. The assessment includes all mph programs, not just public health schools.


1 Harvard U.
2 Yale U.
3 U. of Washington
4 Dartmouth College
5 U. of California at Berkeley
6 Case Western Reserve U.
7 U. of Alabama at Birmingham
8 Emory U.
9 U. of Massachusetts Medical School at Worcester
10 U. of Wisconsin at Madison

Link: http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?bycat=true&primary=6&secondary=61

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[namazu]

They have a separate ranking for Epidemiology, under biomedical sciences:

(based on these criteria:
"Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index
Number of faculty
Percentage of faculty with a book publication
Books per faculty
Percentage of faculty with a journal publication
Journal publications per faculty
Percentage of faculty with journal publication cited by another work
Citations per faculty")

1. Harvard U.
2. U. of Washington
3. Yale U.
4. U. of Iowa
5. Johns Hopkins U.
6. U. of Minnesota-Twin Cities
7. U. of Southern California
8. U. of Pennsylvania
9. U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
10. U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Just goes to show that you have to know what you're looking for before you rely too heavily on anyone's ranking!

 

[WHO]

Good point. I guess the "public health" section ranks programs offering general ph degrees?

 

[ren19]

I'm surprised U of Washington is up there.....
and Columbia U's not listed!?!

 

[ceruleanblue]

I'm surprised U of Washington is up there.....
and Columbia U's not listed!?!

University of Washington public health faculty members actually make up a good number of the researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. It's quite a place.

 

[swemory2007]

Also remember that faculty productivity is just one measure, and the rankings don't reveal everything. Overall, pick the place that best suits your interests.

 

[qwopty99]

i'm a bit surprised by the numbers:

Percentage of faculty with a journal publication
Journal publications per faculty
Percentage of faculty with journal publication cited by another work
Citations per faculty

even for harvard, their numbers are only:
88%
17.58
88%
219.71
respectively

for some of the other unis, the faculty averages like 5-6 articles per faculty.

doesn't that sound kinda low? i seem to know faculty with 50-60 pubs, and i thought that was the norm. and how on earth are there faculty with NO publications??

 

[ceruleanblue]

I think their methodology is kind of shady. Apparently, they count faculty by looking them up on school websites. Would that not lead to an overcount? Maybe they count lecturers, postdocs? Maybe these faculty members don't update their webpages all that frequently so they don't have a current list of all their publications? ...how would you get such a list if they don't post a CV? I can't imagine this Chronicle thing doing searches on PubMed!

 

[qwopty99]

no - they use scopus, an outside citation database, for their numbers.

if u've ever used scopus, u won't doubt its referencing capabilities. that's not where the "weakness" of the rankings lie.

my question remains, why do the number of pubs seem so low? whenever i use scopus, i type in the name of any prof i know, i get at least 30-40 hits.

(as for scopus - its the reference database of the future. i played with it recently on a trial - cause ur university has to subscribe to the service for u to access it - u heard it here: it is about 100 times more powerful than medline for article searches, and will be the new benchmark website for research. www.scopus.com - i'm not affiliated with it, but i'm telling u its great)

 

[AndrewJ42]

i too don't really buy into this ranking system (nor any ranking system). All schools have their merits and faults...yes there are a few that are towards the top, but the differences between those schools are slim. I don't believe that citations and publications are a good measure of how good a school or professor is...you have to look at the journals one publishes in and the impact factor of those journals. you can publish a billion things in journal of whatever (low impact factor paper), but it'll never amount to a paper published in a great journal like JAMA/Nature/Science/New England Journal of Medicine...

 

[qwopty99]

that's what citation counters are for....

further, "low impact factor journal" doesn't equal "low impact paper". nor does "high impact factor journal" imply "high impact paper"

 

[AndrewJ42]

no - they use scopus, an outside citation database, for their numbers.

if u've ever used scopus, u won't doubt its referencing capabilities. that's not where the "weakness" of the rankings lie.

my question remains, why do the number of pubs seem so low? whenever i use scopus, i type in the name of any prof i know, i get at least 30-40 hits.

(as for scopus - its the reference database of the future. i played with it recently on a trial - cause ur university has to subscribe to the service for u to access it - u heard it here: it is about 100 times more powerful than medline for article searches, and will be the new benchmark website for research. www.scopus.com - i'm not affiliated with it, but i'm telling u its great)

from what I've gathered, they are only refering to publications from 2003-2005 in journals and book publications from 2001-2005. This may be where this rating system has a weakness...and also why such a low number. If they're counting Emeritis Professors this may lower the number of articles per faculty member as it doesn't seem they delinieated between full time profs and those that have retired. Overall this ranking is based on a limited amount of information from a limited amount of time.

 

[swemory2007]

If anyone was curious about rankings, I found this 2005 (most recent) report by the Chronicle of Higher Education on public health programs. The assessment includes all mph programs, not just public health schools.


1 Harvard U.
2 Yale U.
3 U. of Washington
4 Dartmouth College
5 U. of California at Berkeley
6 Case Western Reserve U.
7 U. of Alabama at Birmingham
8 Emory U.
9 U. of Massachusetts Medical School at Worcester
10 U. of Wisconsin at Madison

Link: http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?bycat=true&primary=6&secondary=61

For anyone who's interested, I contacted U.S. News and World Report who said that new public health school rankings (2007) are being released online on March 31st and two weeks later on the shelf.

 

[Adcadet]

I think public health "rankings" are largely just a tool drummed up by US News to sell magazines, and for the most part are irrelevant in life.

 

[AgentSik007]

US News looks like this for MPH programs in 2006:

1. Johns Hopkins
2. Harvard
Univ of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
4. Univ of Washington
5. Univ of Michigan-Ann Harbor
6. Columbia
7. UC-Berkeley
UCLA
9. Emory
10. Univ of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Their ranking is based on evaluations given by professionals at universities as well as private and public institutions dealing with Public Health issues. What the evaluators look at exactly I don't remember. More importantly I think its somewhat of a peer ranking system. Also, no matter if you agree with it or not it's also the most popular ranking system in the country as it is quoted in print all the time. (Personally, I don't really believe in the rankings, I think its more important for an institution to be well connected for experiential learning purposes.)

 

[swemory2007]

US News looks like this for MPH programs in 2006:

1. Johns Hopkins
2. Harvard
Univ of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
4. Univ of Washington
5. Univ of Michigan-Ann Harbor
6. Columbia
7. UC-Berkeley
UCLA
9. Emory
10. Univ of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Their ranking is based on evaluations given by professionals at universities as well as private and public institutions dealing with Public Health issues. What the evaluators look at exactly I don't remember. More importantly I think its somewhat of a peer ranking system. Also, no matter if you agree with it or not it's also the most popular ranking system in the country as it is quoted in print all the time. (Personally, I don't really believe in the rankings, I think its more important for an institution to be well connected for experiential learning purposes.)

I think that was actually in 2003. The new ones (as I posted above) will be coming out on March 31st.

 

[Coclean]

Really though.....for those of you interested in rankings...pay attention just enough to make sure you are not going to a mail order school.

It's more important to check the research interests of faculty at the school and see if they match with yours, check the curriculum, do a site visit and see if you feel it is a research campus or an "applied" campus (or a mix, as is my program), talk to professors that you already know about what schools are on the rise, AND if this will not be your only degree....possibly think about a school you might want to teach at in a couple of year (even if other programs might be "ranked" better than it)

Even in sub-disciplines like Epidemiology (my program) there is great difference by subject.....are you chronic epi or infectious epi? Do you want to model or do you want to design?

Ultimately no ranking can tell you about that. I only applied to one school in the end, because I felt it was the best for ME. Not the best, but the best for me. And was so happy with my choice.....and later commitees could tell that it was the right program for me (regardless of rankings...though it is a top 10 school, whichever way you cut it)

 

[swemory2007]

Really though.....for those of you interested in rankings...pay attention just enough to make sure you are not going to a mail order school.

It's more important to check the research interests of faculty at the school and see if they match with yours, check the curriculum, do a site visit and see if you feel it is a research campus or an "applied" campus (or a mix, as is my program), talk to professors that you already know about what schools are on the rise, AND if this will not be your only degree....possibly think about a school you might want to teach at in a couple of year (even if other programs might be "ranked" better than it)

Even in sub-disciplines like Epidemiology (my program) there is great difference by subject.....are you chronic epi or infectious epi? Do you want to model or do you want to design?

Ultimately no ranking can tell you about that. I only applied to one school in the end, because I felt it was the best for ME. Not the best, but the best for me. And was so happy with my choice.....and later commitees could tell that it was the right program for me (regardless of rankings...though it is a top 10 school, whichever way you cut it)

I agree, I figured out that the only way to make my decision is to go visit the schools. I will be visiting three schools within the next two weeks.

 

[DGrossberg]

Rankings are a useful tool, but they are just that - a tool. They are not scripture.

Ranking systems are inconsistent and incongruent. My college (Grinnell) was ranked #1 amongst all schools (universities and colleges) by Newsweek and Kaplan in the same year that US News ranked us 14th amongst just colleges!

That said, be very wary of the Chronicle's ranking system - it is based upon one criterion, and not the best one of you ask me. If you are looking for an institution at which you should research, then publication rate is of primary concern. However, if you are looking for a school to attend as a student and get a degree, it is secondary to many other factors. This argument is not as extreme in its validity as with an undergraduate degree, but still true.

I am glad that US News is FINALLY updating their rankings. However, the single factor they use in ranking (which is even worse) is "reputation". That is too heavily weighted amongst colleges, but here is it 100% of the system.

For me, unlike pursuing my undergraduate degree, location will be a major concern. I learned the hard way, after 5 Iowa winters, that I have serious Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Cheers,

-D