Grad students react to survey rankings

Now that the University's graduate programs have been recognized by the National Research Council as the ninth-best in the nation, graduate students are demanding that the University administration recognize their needs. Graduate students simply do not have enough space on campus, Graduate and Professional School Assembly chairperson Victor Prince said. And currently, no rooms in the proposed Perelman Quadrangle have been allocated exclusively to graduate students, he added. Prince, a Wharton graduate student, plans to bring up this issue at the University Council meeting Wednesday. "I think [the ranking] strengthens the case that Penn is missing a big opportunity to get the most strength across all of its relatively isolated graduate programs," Prince said. If graduate and professional students were less segregated and instead given a dedicated space on campus to call "home," they could "share their ideas and experiences to make each program even stronger," he added. History graduate student Randolph Scully said he was impressed with the "great range of programs from the sciences to the humanities" which received high rankings in the National Research Council survey. But none of these programs has a designated facility which would foster interaction. Prince said this isolation may be hindering further growth in the graduate program as a whole. "Penn would be at the very top if it could start to capture the synergy between its 12 excellent -- but independent and isolated -- graduate and professional schools," he said. While Prince sees the rankings as ammunition for GAPSA's cause, other graduate students simply perceive the survey as a positive reflection of the University's graduate programs. "This shows that Penn is a great place to be a grad student," Graduate Student Associations Council President Brian Ray said. Although many graduate departments received high ratings, some students thought they should have been even higher. Scully said he was disappointed that the History Department did not make the top 10 list. "The rankings are a silly thing," he said. But many graduate students whose departments fared well in the poll were not particularly surprised by the outcome. "We all expect to be in the top 10," Physics graduate student Surya Ghosha said.