Trustworthy I-O Master’s and PhD. Program Rankings

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply | Traditional vs. Online Degrees | Personal Statements
Alternative Path: Managing a Career Change to I/O | Pursuing a PhD Post-Master’s
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year
Rankings/Listings: PhD Rankings | Online Programs | Trustworthy Master’s and Ph.D. Rankings

Having written my grad school series, one of the most common questions I get is, “Which graduate programs should I apply to?” What people generally want to know is some variation of this question:

• What are the best IO psychology graduate programs?
• What is the best IO psychology master’s program?
• What is the best IO psychology PhD program?
• Which IO psychology programs will get me a good job?

As I’ve explained on this blog before, evaluating program quality a complicated problem. It is difficult even for those of us in the field to agree on what “best” means; it is a worse problem for you as a prospective student. Fortunately, the advice is more straightforward: in the end, you should evaluate which schools offer what you want out of them as a student. Don’t look for “the best”; look for the best for you. That means compiling information from multiple sources, including multiple rankings, and keeping track of how each program matches you, as an individual.

Because trustworthy rankings tend to get buried on various websites over time, whereas spam rankings seem to live forever, I decided to start a running list of all current trustworthy rankings of IO programs, splitting them by the year they were released. This way, you can get the most recent information available but also see historic rankings and how they’ve changed. Again, you should not rely upon any single ranking system to determine where you apply, but consulting multiple ranking systems, seeing how they agree and don’t, and then weighing that against your own priorities is a great way to narrow down the field of options. “What is the best IO psychology master’s program” or “what is the best IO psychology PhD program” has a different answer for every prospective student.

By the way, I’m defining “trustworthy” as based upon empirical data, reporting a transparent ranking methodology, and where a reasonable argument could be made for construct validity of “program quality.”

Without further ado, here is the list.

• Ph.D. Rankings
  • 1997
    • Princeton Review (no clue about the methodology on this one, so “trustworthy” may be a bit of a stretch, but it is a classic)
  • 2004
    • Kraiger and Abalos Student Rating Rankings
  • 2013
    • Beiler et al. Research Productivity Rankings
  • 2014
    • Multiple Combined Older Sortable Rankings of Research Productivity, Satisfaction, and the 2014 US News Rankings
  • 2017
    • US News and World Report Rankings by Reputation
  • 2018
    • Howald et al’.s Development Opportunities Rankings
    • Landers et al.’s Research Productivity and Interdisciplinarity Rankings and associated searchable web app
    • Roman et al.’s Student Perception Rankings
• Master’s Rankings
  • 2004
    • Kraiger and Abalos Student Rating Rankings
  • 2018
    • Acikgoz et al.’s Student and Alumni Perceptions Rankings
    • Roman et al.’s Student Perception Rankings
    • Vodanovich et al.’s “Objective Data” Rankings, mostly based upon applied experiences and student accomplishments

As I alluded to earlier, there are many rankings on the internet that are… let’s say “stupid” which I have chosen not to include here (I’m looking at you thinly veiled attempts to earn commissions by sending people to online programs at Capella, Walden, and/or Phoenix). Most of these are based on nonsensical metrics (e.g., one Ph.D. ranking I found was based on tuition cost, which is misleading in several different harmful ways).

If you know of other rankings you think I should include or would like my opinion on a ranking you found, drop it in the comments!