And even when the rankings are carefully done…Well, just take a look at the linguistics rankings, and yeah, Johns Hopkins has a decent program, but I know of pretty much nobody in the field (aside from some Hopkins faculty, perhaps—but probably not even them) who’d say with a straight face that it’s the top program in the country.
EDIT: Of course, part of the problem there is a lack of proper granularity. I mean, listing cognitive science programs and communicative disorders and linguistics programs all in one list? Really?