The problem here is that a Yelp rating system for restaurants can be consumed by anyone because everyone wants a good-tasting, cheap, pleasantly-served meal. There's not a lot of range of desire and recipient goals.
Grad students on the other hand, come with a huge range of:
-- Motivations for doing a doctorate (say, purely for job prep, versus wanting a life of academia and intellectual fulfillment),
-- Skills and knowledge (some already essentially begun their doctoral work and have achievements already, versus those who will be wandering around searching for a topic for years),
-- Tolerance or willingness to engage in ambiguous, possibly dead-end leading places with no clear sign of success,
-- Need for financial reward / subsistence and productive return for time or opportunity cost traded off.
Add to that in many fields, the supervising professor is the greatest variable, more than the program or university -- and any rating system will be irrelevant or worse, misguiding. One person's paradise could be another's hell. Unless the rating is so dumbed down to generic factors in which case what are you really informing people about?
To echo some advice of a contrarian grad school dean, go into grad school because you know what you want to write about, who you want to work with, and what you want to come out the other end with. Otherwise, the bulk majority of people going into grad school "on autopilot" or based on a Yelp rating are going to be sorely disappointed at some point.
Grad students on the other hand, come with a huge range of:
-- Motivations for doing a doctorate (say, purely for job prep, versus wanting a life of academia and intellectual fulfillment),
-- Skills and knowledge (some already essentially begun their doctoral work and have achievements already, versus those who will be wandering around searching for a topic for years),
-- Tolerance or willingness to engage in ambiguous, possibly dead-end leading places with no clear sign of success,
-- Need for financial reward / subsistence and productive return for time or opportunity cost traded off.
Add to that in many fields, the supervising professor is the greatest variable, more than the program or university -- and any rating system will be irrelevant or worse, misguiding. One person's paradise could be another's hell. Unless the rating is so dumbed down to generic factors in which case what are you really informing people about?
To echo some advice of a contrarian grad school dean, go into grad school because you know what you want to write about, who you want to work with, and what you want to come out the other end with. Otherwise, the bulk majority of people going into grad school "on autopilot" or based on a Yelp rating are going to be sorely disappointed at some point.