It means absolutely nothing for PT.
This isn't like law or medicine where the top tier practices only hire people from ivy league colleges and rank #1 medical/law schools. There is no PT equivalent to this situation.
You're still going to be doing the exact same exercises, modalities, progress notes, etc. Making ~$65k a year, depending on your state.
I have shadowed PTs that went to Duke, MUSC (South Carolina), and University of Tennessee. There was no difference in their knowledge or competence.
With the exception of a small handful of major schools, like USC, 99% of people, specifically employers, wouldn't even be able to tell you how most of the schools rank against each other on the official list.
Remember that they're all accredited, so they have at the very least the same minimum education standards.
The only major thing I see is the amount the higher rated schools charge for tuition. Some of them as high as ~40k a year. Compare that to some of the lower ranked ones that give the same education for ~$15 a year.
IMO, choosing your school based on a tier list put together through mail-in surveys is going to give you severe diminishing returns. You're spending more money, getting arguably the same education, and negligible name brand recognition on your resume.
I think the only way you can rank a school is rank based on several key things taken as a whole, such as graduation rate, pass/fail boards first attempt, employment rate, average salaries post graduation, and years of practice after graduation. Of course that's impossible because no school cares/wants to do that when they can just rank the schools based on a 1-5 questionnaire.
I love the physical therapy career, but going ~120k+ into debt for a job that pays roughly $60k is just stupid.
