Not everything has to break in order for it to need fixing.

Auburn’s graduate psychology program, despite placing 15th in student rated top-25 graduate programs in the country, supports about two-thirds of its students on outside grant money, shrinking the pool of possible candidates the school can accept every year.

“It’s not that we’ve lost any money or anything like that,” said Daniel Svyantek, chair of the Auburn graduate psychology program. “We’re just trying to get more money and we’re being frustrated by the same forces that are affecting everybody else in the U.S. right now.”

The ranking comes from GraduatePrograms.com, an online guide to graduates programs and opportunities around the country for students.

“I think its a testament to the dedication our faculty show to the mentoring role and all aspects of graduate training,” said Steven Shapiro, Associate Professor of Psychology.

It was created by and for college students based on a schools combined score out of 15 categories, which include academic competitiveness, career support, network quality, and financial aid.

The recent sequester and subsequent government shutdown severely constricted the amount of grants available for graduate programs across the country, forcing most schools to raise the competitiveness of their programs and reducing the number of possible graduate students.

While Auburn continues to be thrifty in terms of budgeting its graduate program, some view the online ranking as misleading.

“We basically do not belong there [in the top 25], to be honest,” said Jinyan Fan, associate professor of industrial organization psychology. “The ranking is basically completed by graduate students, not completed by some authoritative agency. It says graduate students like our programs a lot, but does not speak to the quality.”

State money provides stipends for graduate teaching assistants, who proctor the expanding undergraduate programs and are used to attract grant money from around the country for the University programs.

Svyantek said he is confident Auburn will maintain its average graduate student population of about 85-90 for the next year while still finding ways to develop and continue to expand.

“The hard part is finding ways to make the program more economically efficient while not losing any of the progress it has already made,” Svyantek said.