I see now what you mean. Then the context was confusing to me: You were writing this to someone who is interested in Aquinas. I would assume that someone's interest is in reading him as a source of philosophical ideas, rather than just using him before writing in order to get into the right focus. But I see now that this was exactly the point you wanted to make: some people ALSO read Aquinas this way. I guess Anscombe/Foot did both...
Yes, right, UCLA seems to be great for that, too (but in Pittsburgh almost the whole philosophy faculty studied Aquinas/Anscombe/Foot at some point, right?)
And yes, I am very interested in the three of them. Plus Aristotle (and a little bit of Plato, Hegel, Wittgenstein).
But I didn't really know what I got myself into by applying to American PhD programs (I'm from Europe) and I think I prepared my application the wrong way. I don't expect any acceptances this year but take it as a learning experience to try next year again.