Cute schoolrank tool applied to Astro departments likes Big Bounce :-D

[marcus]

There are hundreds of options with this tool, so this is just an offthewall sample of what you can get:

http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/astronomy/rank/_M_M____________________________________________________________U

I'm not advising anyone to seriously use this, or believe in it, but just as something to try for fun. Different "priorities" settings will get you different rankings. Do you like large departments with a lot of students, or small departments with just a few students? And so on.

I set "priorities" more or less randomly with my eyes shut (general "quality" and "research productivity") and got this:

1-4 California Institute of Technology Astrophysics 1-7 1-4
1-4 Princeton University Astrophysical Science 1-10 1-3
1-5 University of California-Berkeley Astrophysics 1-6 2-9
3-12 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Astrophysics and Astronomy and Planetary Science 1-8 6-22
3-13 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus Astronomy and Astrophysics 6-23 2-9
4-13 University of Chicago Astronomy and Astrophysics 6-23 2-9
4-16 Harvard University Astronomy 3-15 7-23
3-18 Johns Hopkins University Astronomy and Astrophysics 2-22 6-20
5-20 University of Arizona Astronomy 5-22 5-21
5-18 University of California-Santa Cruz Astronomy and Astrophysics 8-26 4-14
5-17 University of Washington-Seattle Campus Astronomy 8-24 4-13
8-23 Ohio State University-Main Campus Astronomy 9-28 6-21
7-26 Columbia University in the City of New York Astronomy 10-28 6-23
7-25 Cornell University Astronomy and Space Sciences 6-23 10-31
6-28 The University of Texas at Austin Astronomy 1-28 14-32
8-26 University of Colorado at Boulder Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences


WHOA! Look at where Penn State is! Abhay Ashtekar is the Loop Quantum Cosmology kingpin in the USA. Go Abhay! Go PSU! Yay non-singular "bounce" cosmology!

 

[G037H3]

800 on quantitative section of GRE is essentially a necessity, huh (for math and physics)

i think that if that many people are getting 800's, they should make the test harder

 

[cristo]

I don't understand this thread: you ranked the astronomy and astrophysics departments in the US and are happy that Penn State comes out fifth, and then attribute it to the loop quantum cosmology research? You realize that the lqc research is not in the astronomy department, right?