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<p>I agree as well. But perhaps the # of nobel prizes a university has can give some indication of the quality of the program. Nobel prizes are typically won by top faculty. Top graduate students and future top faculty want to work with established top faculty as well. And this cycle continues on and on. This, for example can be seen with Terrance Tao at UCLA. He recently won the Fields medal, and had, i believe, the top graduate student in number theory come to work with him.</p>
<p>I think it’s hardly coincidental that MIT has a top linguistics program and that it’s associated with Noam Chomsky; or that Berkeley’s philosophy program has a strong Continental philosophy focus, and it was associated with Foucault; Or that UCLA’s philosophy program is associated heavily with philosophy of language. That’s due, no doubt, to having many eminent philosophers of language on its faculty including Rudolph Carnap, David Kaplan, Keith Donnellan, Kit Fine, and so on. Even UCLA’s current strong subprogram of philosophy of mind is probably due in a large part to having Tyler Burge on its faculty. (who i expect to win the Schock prize soon.)</p>
<p>So, like i said, i don’t disagree with you. But i don’t think it’s a coincidence that Johns Hopkins is strongly known for being a pre-med school, and it has like 16 nobel prize winners on its faculty in medicine. (nearly 45% of all of its nobel prizes.)</p>