It’s been a long time since the last NRC rankings of physics departments were published, and it seems like the new rankings have been “two months away” ever since I started looking at graduate schools. Maybe the NRC should use the NCAA Basketball Tournament to help settle some discrepancies in rankings.
With this in mind, I filled out a bracket based on the rankings of their physics departments. You should be able to see my full bracket here. (In the case of schools where I didn’t know about either department, I took the higher seed.)
Things to look for:
The First Excited State 