I wanted to refrain from putting info into this because of some thoughts I've previously made, but since you've specifically called my out, I'll give me input again.
I never said the ratings are useless, I questioned the value of it. I was open to learning what could be learned from it, but without any quantitative nor any objective measures, I was left wondering.
Here's my beef with how US News ranks schools: it's peer assessment, and that's it. I've posted previously about how there appears to be an association between the size of the school and its rank (
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=635402&highlight=public+health+rankings). It makes sense why a larger school would have a higher rank only based on peer assessment: they have the most graduates (particularly graduating with doctoral degrees) and are most present in the research community (how other academics perceive them). It's no wonder that the three largest schools have the highest rankings (Hopkins, Harvard, UNC).
The schools that are the biggest have the most graduates, the most name recognition because they have the biggest presence in the alumni-base, and thus the most well known. Everyone wants to go to a well known school, and potential students are most likely to research schools that are well known most thoroughly.
In any of these assessments (whether done by us as a poll or by US News), it's impossible to know anything about: course robustness, course teachings, teaching faculty (you wouldn't believe the number of faculty members that don't teach a single course but are factored into the faculty:student ratio--anyone that went to an Ivy-league school could tell you as much), course offerings, career resources, student networks, connections to the community, and (you get the picture). Even metrics that US News uses for med/law/business schools like: alumni giving, pass/fail rate of standardized practice tests, and quality of accepted student are not public data and as such are not equated into rankings.
Besides, with a discipline like PH, it's impossible to easily put one school above another because the focus(es) of each school is so drastically different. I'd bet that the VAST majority of people on this board have no place going to Harvard because they focus so heavily on research methods. The majority of people here have no place in research and don't want to be in research, but I'll bet nearly everyone thinks Harvard is a top 3 SPH and wants to go there regardless.
Basically, all I'm saying is,for a SPH, here's no clear cut best school. It's all dependent upon your needs and what you want out of your education.
EDIT: I just turned the data from that previous spreadsheet into a graphical image. As I mentioned before, pretty strong association there between size of classes and rank by US News.
US News Rank / School / New Students in 2007
1.) Johns Hopkins - 654
2.) Harvard - 481
3.) North Carolina - 415
4.) Washington - 265
5.) Michigan - 386
6.) Columbia - 385
7.) Emory - 382
8.) UC-Berkeley - 195
8.) UC-LA - 264
10.) Minnesota - 338
11.) Pittsburgh - 176
12.) Texas - 179
13.) Boston - 261
13.) Tulane - 208
15.) Illinois-Chicago - 173
16.) Alabama-Birmingham - 149
16.) Yale - 102
18.) Iowa - 101
19.) George Washington - 279
20.) Southern Florida - 119
21.) Ohio State - 161
21.) Saint Louis - 129
21.) Arizona - 88
24.) Texas A&M - 80
24.) South Carolina - 160
