<p>It’s useful for determining who has the very best scholars in a very few areas. But, having a single Nobel prize winner in a department (or even two or three) doesn’t tell you that much about the overall strength of the department. And it’s only useful to a grad student if that student’s thesis adviser is going to be one of the Nobel winners. As an example, Yale has a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry on its faculty (Sidney Altman). The most recent NRC rankings put its graduate chemistry program at 12th in the nation. UC Berkeley has no current active Nobel laureates in Chemistry (its only winner since 1961, Yuan Lee, is emeritus). Those same NRC rankings put its department 1st. Looking at numbers of Nobel laureates is a very imprecise way to look at anything beyond how many Nobel laureates a university has.</p>