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<p>Perhaps relevant to some undergraduates, though certainly not to most. I think what most would gain out of a non-LAC is the greater breadth of offerings (and in some cases depth too) at a bigger department. </p>
<p>I don’t think that overall faculty productivity is how one would choose a PhD program either, actually. One would restrict not only to a specific department, but to several related subfields within this department and check on the strength of faculty there. I.e. in some fields, UCLA’s maths faculty tangibly lags behind the advancements Berkeley’s faculty make, but one wouldn’t necessarily let that deter one from going to LA to study harmonic analysis and PDEs with the master.</p>