<p>Whats funny is that all those “elite schools producing PhD’s” have to find jobs for their graduates or their programs flail around like a beached whale. Thus, they restrict who they accept in their graduate programs to ensure they all get job offers when they obtain their PhD’s. And where do all those PhD’s get jobs? You guessed it…at all the schools ranked below the Ivy League.</p>
<p>To me the measure of a college is its TEACHING faculty, not how many Nobel Prizes in research they have obtained. Because those Nobel Laureates won’t be teaching your kid in undergraduate school, I can assure you.</p>
<p>So I look at the teaching faculty in any given college, to get a feel for how deep they are in a given program. Not that a PhD from Oklahoma University wouldn’t turn out to be “teacher of the year” at your favorite college. But that for an initial representation of the quality/depth of faculty, I look at how many professors are there and what are their credentials. </p>
<p>And many, many second tier colleges are chock FULL of PhD’s from the Ivy League and other “elite” universities. </p>
<p>So much for rankings.</p>