Just-released National Research Council assessments of graduate program quality rank the Penn State Sociology Department No. 3 of 118 programs nationally on the overall summary ranking, based on the NRC’s 20-factor objective S-method and the 5th percentile criteria.
Penn State is tied with Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania and trailing only Princeton in the overall quality of sociology graduate program ranking. Penn State is the top-ranked public university sociology graduate program in the country.
The Penn State Sociology Department is ranked second in the discipline on the NRC’s “research activity” dimension (average number of publication, citations, and grants per faculty). The Sociology Department is particularly pleased to be ranked at the top in research productivity, as the components of this dimension were identified as the most salient indicators of program quality by all sociology discipline faculty participants in the NRC evaluation.
Confirming the department’s strong commitment to the training and mentoring of the next generation of scholars, the NRC ranked Penn State’s Sociology Department particularly highly — No. 3 across all sociology programs — on the dimension of “student support and outcomes.”