On 'Ranking' Philosophy Departments

In my last post, I spoke of ranking philosophy depts and briefly ranked the ones I have heard from. This might have led some of you to wonder how all of the depts I applied to would rank. Here's a rough-and-ready attempt to rank them according to faculty reputation and strength in political philosophy:

Oxford
Michigan
Columbia
UNC/Arizona
Cornell/Toronto
UCSD
UPenn
Chicago/Maryland
St. Andrews/UIC

(Putting schools side-by-side with a '/' in between means someone could make a case for either school being better than the other in terms of the criteria I am using here.)

So, how would I rank them in terms of which I/we prefer to go to? Taking into account other factors such as departmental culture, (potential) financial package, location, specific faculty members, job placement record, and other things I'm not thinking about right now, here is a rough 'Dave (& Barb) Preference Ranking':

Oxford
UNC/Columbia
Michigan/Arizona
Cornell/UPenn (Their status as Ivy League schools is what places them here more than anything else.)
Toronto/UCSD
Maryland/Chicago
UIC
St. Andrews

(Putting schools side-by-side with a '/' in between means I'd have a tough time deciding between the two, but the first probably has an edge.)

This ranking is likely to change many times over the coming weeks as more offers come in and as I negotiate with the schools I have already heard from. (Yes, negotiation is kosher. It's not the case that school's offers are firm. As more offers roll in, I'll use the strong offers as leverage against other schools to try to get the best deal possible.) But at least this gives you an idea of the 'preference neighbourhood' each school is in.

Anyway, sorry about the incessant grad school talk, but it's virtually the only thing I'm thinking about these days. If you want to hear about something else in the next few weeks, you'll have to petition Barb to write more.