<p>I would like to add that citations/paper favors schools with projects concentrating on “hot/popular” areas. My guess is these could very well be the smaller schools with limited resource. If a school has diverse range of projects (demonstrated by large number of faculty members in many different subdisciplines), its score is “diluted” by projects on areas that less people care about. Someone at MIT could be publishing the best paper in the world. But if no other people work on related topic because its so advanced or whatever, it’s not gonna get many citations. The main point is citations/paper can be skewed depending on research areas.</p>