Evaluate my profile pls

1) You provided a list of schools based on a single report that looks at a single facet of a doctoral program. I don't think that view is widespread. (more on that below)

2) The PAR report has nothing to do with funding. The rule of thumb at the PhD level (this is from experience; I don't know of a single publicly available source of data that looks at this) is that if you're concerned about funding you need to see it the opposite way from what you'd do for an undergrad or MBA: at most private schools, they'll waive tuition and give you a stipend if you accept their offer. For public schools, most will do the same, but will generally have a lower stipend and will add research/teaching requirements to make you "earn" your stipend. Frankly, I'd be extremely surprised if any state school gave its incoming PhD students better financial conditions than the top private universities the OP listed.

(A lot) more on 1):

PAR = Public Accounting Report. To evaluate doctoral programs, the faculty members have to answer the question "What PhD program do you have the most regard for in turning out quality accounting professors?" -- "Quality accounting professors" can mean very different things to different people. Given the report's emphasis on public accounting, I'd assume that professors who answer the survey are also interested in public accounting. (The same professors are also ranking undergraduate and graduate programs, where they rank schools according to who's the "most able to turn out potential partners", so they need to know something about public accounting.) I'm sure part of "quality accounting professors" means teaching accounting standards to prospective accounting professionals.

I have no problem with that, but this is NOT how most people at research universities would define "quality" -- research productivity and impact will likely be much more important, and in terms of the "academic food chain" (e.g. salary and status) it is my experience that research beats teaching almost every time. Hence to _unconditionally_ put schools like Georgia in front of MIT is wrong (I have nothing against Georgia).

Here's a paper that looks at research publications, the most important factor for tenure in all top universities (even including state schools where public accounting is important -- in those places, teaching ability will be factored in more heavily than at research universities, but publications will still be the #1 criteria):

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=382930

The paper looks at PhD programs from 2 angles -- research impact for (1) past graduates and (2) current faculty. They adjust for the total number of graduates/faculty, which is important. Here's the top 10 for both of these angles:

Based on past graduates
1 Rochester
2 Chicago
3 MIT
4 Oxford
5 Iowa
6 UC Berkeley
7 Stanford
8 Michigan
9 Lancaster
10 British Columbia

Based on faculty
1 UC Berkeley
2 Rochester
3 UNC - Chapel Hill
4 Pennsylvania
5 Cornell
6 Stanford
7 Yale
8 Michigan
9 NYU
10 British Columbia

Based on what the OP wants to do, these are undoubtedly very different rankings. I'm not suggesting PAR is wrong. What I am suggesting, however, is that to blindly follow PAR and choose Georgia, Mississippi or Oklahoma State over MIT, Yale or Columbia would be seen as idiotic by everyone involved, including the people at Georgia, Miss or Ok State. If you graduate from Yale (not in top 25 of PAR) and you're good enough, you can go anywhere and do anything you want with that PhD. I don't know of a single Georgia, Mississipi, or Ok State graduate who went on to teach at any of the schools listed above.

(More on that in another thread, which I'll start right now.)