2017年一个外国教授对于学校排名的看法

不同的人应当有不同看Ranking的方法，如果真的是到美国搞研究，那么象这位教授所说一样，选择专业上最优秀的Program；如果是为了到美国长见识，镀镀金，不妨找些综合排名看看，以那些大家认可的学校为主。

A letter about Rankings from an Professor

School rankings are some times quite deceptive. MIT ranks first in general in a lot of areas， but in chemical engineering， for example， U. of Wisconsin ranks first. It is more important to choose a good program and a good advisor than to choose a school which has high rankings. I believe our economics department ranks above Iowa State， that does not say much because there are so many good programs in economics， unless you go to Harvard or MIT or Standford or Berkeley， your future as an Economics PhD is somewhat uncertain (I know of many economics PhDs who cannot find jobs after graduation). But those good economics programs are extremely difficult to get in because they try to get more local students rahter than foreign ones these days. Besides， I always think your background fits EE better than economics.

Again， I want to tell you that school ranking is only for publicity. The best thing to do is to join a good program and find an active faculty advisor. A good example is the unversity I graduated from: UC Irvine is very much behind UC Berkeley and MIT in general ranking， but our CE program is head to head with their CE programs. In fact， all our recent PhD graduates found professor jobs， but many of the Berekely and MIT grads did not. I competed with some MIT and Berkely grads for the same job position I am holding now and I was the one who got this position. Another good example is UT Austin， where there is a famous professor Hani Mahmassani. When he first started at Austin， the CE there was not fantastic. But because he was new and full of ideas and published a lot， he made the whole program one of the best in the nation， and many of his PhDs found professor jobs (in fact， one of my advisor was his student). We are not there yet， but I think I can do the same to IA as Mahmassani did to Austin. I believe I have the right ideas and we just need to work hard to realize them. In the end， both myself and my students will benit from our success。