Customer Reviews

Princeton Review: Gourman Report of Graduate Programs, 8th Edition: A Rating of Graduate and Professional Programs in American and International Uni ... in American and International Universities)

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Jack Gourman is a former professor from the University of Michigan who compiles his rankings by calling professors in various departments at different schools and asking them which programs they think are the best in their field. Not a bad way to rank schools and programs if your sampling is statistically valid, but since Jack is vague about his methodology, we'll never know that. What we do know is that his rankings are noticeably skewed in favor of large state universities and especially the University of Michigan. For instance, most observers rank Harvard Stanford and Yale among the top three law schools, with Michigan between fifth and ninth, but Jack consistently ranks the Wolverines in the top three. (Hey! They've got a great football program, haven't they?)

This approach produces ludicrous results in his rankings of undergraduate institutions (a separate book), but is less of a problem with graduate programs which are (1) the province of larger universities, and (2) subject to fewer constraints in their acceptance of out-of-state residents.

The book is especially useful as a checklist of all of the major players in a particular discipline. Just remember to move all Big Ten schools down one to two notches, and the University of Michigan down three to four, and you'll end up with some pretty decent rankings.

I think that this book is good for assessing the academic reputation of a school. It is highly correlated with the National Research Councils report on graduate schools. This is good because, for universities with graduate schools,and this includes all schools except liberal arts schools, their reputation is reflected in the quality of their Phd programs. Compared to the US News Report survey, it is a more accurate assessment of faculty quality. The US News survey includes reputation in its survey, but the method that they use is highly inaccurate(surveying deans of admission), so the reputation score is extremely biased and since it counts for 25 % of the score creates an unusable report. The only downside to the Gourman report is that it does not weigh student factors as heavily as it should.

I've used several major ranking references. I have found the Gourman Report to be the most accurate in rating educational institutions in terms of faculty quality and library - an often over-looked yet the MOST important resource for research in graduate schools and professional schools such as med schools, business schools and law schools.

By contrast, other ranking reports tend to put too much emphasis on subjective opinions (mostly gathered via opinion polls) in their ranking calculations. Some put almost no emphasis on the size of the library; and some calculate a "library size to student population ratio", making a lousy library of a small school seems better than a good library of a big school.

I have encountered many disenchanted students at small private universities who are disappointed at the lack of library resources and the small selection of classes in their particular programs. Their research is slowed down or made impossible because of the inadequacy of these resources. They would have avoided such disenchantment if they had used the Gourman Report.

Princeton Review: Gourman Report of Graduate Programs, 8th Edition: A Rating of Graduate and Professional Programs in American and International Uni versities ... in American and International Universities)Princeton Review: Gourman Report of Undergraduate Programs, 10th Edition: A Rating of Undergraduate Programs in American and International Universities ... in American and International Universities) As an educational professional for over thirty-years, I have used Dr. Jack Gourman's guides to select my graduate schools, to help my children select their undergraduate and graduate schools, and to help my students choose their colleges and universities. As consumers of collegiate products, most parents just accept what a school says about how good they are. Dr. Gourman (Univ of MI) furnishes us accurate information to measure school quality vs. price. Given the impact of these decisions on a child's education, Gourman has done a great public service by publishing his evaluation. It shows how far from accurate are the evaluations contained in popular "news" magazines which many depend on to make this momentous decision. Gourman's guidea are easy to use but they also contain a discussion of the methodology he uses in his analysis. This is key information for parents concerned about getting what they pay for.

Jack, you really should make your ranking available online. Otherwise, many people will not refer to it and they will miss the opportunity to access the most objective and accurate college ranking!

As an educational professional myself, I can assure that the rating provided by Dr. Gourman is certainly the most objective and well prepared of its kind. Of course, there is no equal to the National Research Council study conducted every 10 years, but the Gourman Report certainly fills the gap.

This book provides a bunch of tables without any disclosure of the system behind the rankings. Correlation with Business Week (for business schools) and US News ranking is very small. This makes me think that the author is way off. Usefulness of this book is minimal.