Picky, Picky, Picky: Ranking Graduate Schools of Social Work by Student Selectivity

During the past 3 decades dozens of studies have ranked schools of social work using faculty productivity or program reputation to gauge program quality. These studies are often controversial because they rely on only a few dimensions of schools' performance. This study used publicly available admissions data from the past 15 years to examine how selective schools are in admitting full-time MSW and PhD students. The findings demonstrate that selectivity varies greatly among schools, and that rankings by productivity or reputation are somewhat different from rankings by selectivity. Trends in admissions and contextual reasons for wide variation among programs are discussed. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)