How to interpret university rankings?

[miffle]

Hello everyone, 

I've made a few posts on gradcafe that were unsuccessful, probably due to how wordy and niche the questions were.. Hopefully this question is more straightforward/understandable.
I was wondering if there's any guideline for getting a sense of a PhD program's strength given that there's often 2 "types" of rankings-- overall ranking and the PhD/field's ranking. Specifically, a school may be well known in a general sense (i.e. Rice or Dartmouth), but are ranked below top 50 for the specific PhD program of interest (i.e. psychology). The reverse can also happen, where a school that isn't well known generally ranks top 10 in a field of choice. Which measure should you rely on, or how do you mediate differences between these rankings? Of course, rankings aren't the most important factor to consider. But I ask this because rankings can be one piece of information when deciding between programs, and because I hear academic employers take ranking of your PhD into account.

Thank you!

[PsyDuck90]

If you're going to focus on rank, the rank of the program typically matters more than the university as a whole. Graduate level training is very different from undergraduate training. Employers are going to care more about the reputation of your specific training than how good the school is in some unrelated fields. 

[miffle]

@PsyDGrad90 I see, that makes sense. Thank you for the input!