Useful or not, knowledge is a pretty good thing.
Compared to some other post-graduate outcomes, earning a doctorate is a better indicator of mastery in a subject that colleges actually teach.
At any rate, the set of schools generated by PT’s metrics isn’t all that different from the set of top USNWR colleges. Neither is all that different from the set of top Forbes colleges. Pick any set of measurements you think best reflects your own interests and needs … but chances are, roughly the same set of schools is likely to come out at or near the top.
So what’s the take-away message here?
Is it that Georgetown, Caltech, and Wesleyan are “near Ivies”?
Is it that UPenn is a “near Rice”.
If we bump up the PhD weighting, I guess we could say every Ivy is a “near Reed”.