PhD in Accounting - top schools

I'm a current Accounting PhD student so I can probably help you out with some insight. Here are some notes:

1) If a ranking exists (more on that later), it probably follows the regular MBA rankings closely. Schools such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Chicago are recognized across academia.

2a) The rankings for masters degrees in accountancy are utterly useless for PhD programs, although they might give you some idea about which public universities have good CPA-oriented masters courses. I don't think there's much of a correlation between MAcc rankings and the quality of the PhD program.

2b) The Financial Times doctoral program rankings are stupid and useless. They are mainly based on the number of doctoral graduates so they only indicate very large programs.

2c) There are studies that rank the quality of PhD programs based on articles published by faculty and graduates. This is a good starting point but remember that faculty members move around a lot, so a school that might have been bad a few years ago won't be on the radar even though some great people have gone there recently (ex: MIT).

3) There are 4 significant subfields in Accounting research: empirical capital markets research, theoretical accounting research (usually called information economics), management accounting research (mostly behavior theories), and tax research. The rankings, if any, are likely to vary depending on which subfield you're looking for. For example, Rochester has traditionally been a capital markets research standout, although they've lost some sparkle with celebrity Ross Watts leaving for MIT. On the other hand, Carnegie Mellon, Ohio State, and maybe Yale, Florida and Columbia are big in info economics. I don't know who's big in management accounting and tax, although I think Cornell has some management accounting bigshots and UNC has some people in tax. The coursework is unlikely to differ that much across all these universities although some places such as Florida make you read a lot more papers. So the difference is the professors that you'll see there.

4) IMO, the best thing you should do is make a list of 30-40 universities with PhD programs, and skim through faculty members and their research interests. If you're interested in tax, you'll find out that most schools have nobody who are, so they'll be easy to eliminate. Among those who are left, look for how many of those faculty working in tax have done anything interesting recently. Especially look at tenured (ie. non-assistant) faculty members as the assistants seem to move around a lot, especially those who are good. I'd also look for schools with more than one guy in tax, for safety.

Good luck in your search!