A new ranking system for graduate programs was unveiled this week at Phds.org. The Web site lets users rank departments based on the factors that really matter to them. The system, created by Geoff Davis, a mathematician who previously taught at Dartmouth, uses data from various sources, including the U.S. Department of Education and the National Research Council.

The results do vary depending on what the user selects as most important. Take Classics. If you tell the Web site that the most important factors for you are how long it takes students to earn their degrees, how successful they are in finding jobs, and how effective others think faculty members in the department are, then the program tells you the top three programs are Harvard, Brown, and Princeton. But if you say that low cost, financial support, and large departments are most important, then the No. 1 department is … still Harvard. But No. 2 is the University of Pennsylvania, and No. 3 is Cornell. —Scott Smallwood