<p>UCLA, Ph.D.,</p>
<p>NRC ranking is 13 years old and is based on pre-1995 data; that means the data are more than 13 years old. I bet none of the assistant profs in your department was at UCLA 13-20 years ago. Probably most of associate profs weren’t at UCLA either. The methodology may be better than US News but when it’s so old, I’d take 2008 USN any day for graduate ranking. I am pretty sure NU has a better <em>graduate</em> chemistry program these days.</p>
<p>I also don’t see how “Chicago trumps Northwestern in every field” when Chicago doesn’t even offer any of the engineering fields listed. You didn’t need to exaggerate.</p>
<p>If NRC is so accurate, then schools like Brown, Dartmouth, WashU, and Rice must be significantly worse than UChicago too.</p>