I don't think the whole "rankings" thing really means all that much anymore, as far as your concern about tiers—did you get funding from either? The most valuable part of an MFA program is the time to focus on your writing, so if one of them would allow you to put 100% into working with your mentors and completing your work, and the other would require you to work while in the program, that would be more of a deciding factor for me anyway. I think the PhD question is tough to answer as far as them considering low res "worse" than full res; it's kind of like how many MFA programs are still very anti-genre while some more modern/innovative programs welcome genre.
