So, I just discovered this site a few days ago and have been lurking and clearly now decided to join. I'm looking into a Phd (just finished up junior year) to try to make Mom & Pop proud, and I have a question for y'all:
Before now, I've received much of my "knowledge" of the strengths of different programs by the U.S. News and World Report rankings. In those rankings, there are dozens of programs that are listed as "unranked." However, some of these "unranked" schools, which one would think would be worse than any ranked school, seem to have better reputations here (what specifically comes to mind are American, UMass, West Virginia, Delaware, New Mexico, and maybe Utah). So my question is, are these schools unranked because for whatever reason they didn't fit U.S. News methodologies or didn't send in data or something like that, or does U.S. News believe they are below all the ranked schools?
Thanks for the help!;)