Our Department of Theatre only recently discovered that we were ranked third in the country in the 2015 summary. The embargoed new listings show that we have dropped three places. We were about to advertise that your site had so ranked us and that we were third-ranked because we were behind only UCLA and NYU.

We pulled the ad this morning and are creating a new campaign. It is highly unlikely that Loyola Marymount, Yale, and Wisconsin have supplanted us. Yale does not offer undergraduate training for the professional theatre. The struggles in Wisconsin are familiar to anyone following the presidential campaign. Loyola is a fine school, but its recent alumni list is a far cry from the well known and busy theatre, television, and film professionals that come from our highly selective program.

Our student to tenure-stream faculty ratio is more like 10:1 than the 20:1 you have listed. Please see http://dmi.illinois.edu/ for correct information by department. Finally, none of these programs--including UCLA and NYU, who were also ranked above us and have nothing like our student:faculty ratios or high percentage of successful working professional alumni--have a faculty member of the high standing of Broadway director Daniel Sullivan, who is a tenured Swanlund Professor and who teaches undergraduate acting every academic year between his professional commitments. I would venture to say without fear of contradiction that no other undergraduate program can make such a claim. Every undergraduate actor trains with this legendary talent.

Please contact me immediately and I will provide an extensive list of alumni credits. A list that includes Robert Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC Universal, and the iconic American actor and author, Nick Offerman.