@Uniwatcher – thank you for the prompt table update, and your work on the public honors site. I chose the public flagship honors option as my undergrad route way back when, and it’s no less viable a path now. As I mentioned, I think the aggregate graduate metric is a much more sensible way to rate academic strengths, and I sincerely hope future students will take these data into consideration.
One interesting observation: the grouping from Columbia through UCLA (#7-12) has an overall point differential of less than 2.0 for aggregate graduate departmental rank – Columbia at 10.77 through UCLA at 12.43. Thus, Columbia, Yale, Chicago, Cornell, Wisconsin, UCLA are all really quite close in terms of their respective strengths when scaled across all measured disciplines. Even this sensible observation could cause apoplexy among those who adhere strongly to other types of rankings and metrics, despite the aforementioned volatility of the latter.