<p>For undergraduate, while I might phrase it a bit differently (for example I wouldn’t say “merely”, these people went to school for a long time to become competent enough to teach at fine universities. Just to repeat myself, competent is not a dirty word, the standard for being competent is quite high in most cases), yes, I would pretty much say that. To me, assuming they have that competence, being a great teacher is more important than being a great researcher to the undergrad. It is, of course, the opposite for grad school.</p>
<p>It’s not a formula, by any means. But for most of the courses, the subject material is well within the grasp of the professor, and so their ability to impart that to you is very important. Knowing whether they can do that or not cannot be determined from departmental rankings, grad or undergrad, which finally gets us back to the point. The other point being that when choosing a school, if you accept what I just said as true, one should focus on the quality of your peers, the size of the school, the resources it has available in general, the location, non-academic activities, so on and so forth.</p>