Take my advice with a grain of salt as I'm going through the process. I don't think there's a consensus "best" PCCM program list or "best" any fellowship list for that matter. Contrasted to my experience when applying to residency, many of us looking into fellowship programs have completely different priorities and our check lists for programs vary greatly from individual to individual. For residency, many of us were looking for a strong program that would train us to be strong internists and set us up for good fellowship placement, if that was within our future goals. In just a matter of 2-3 years, a lot of us are are now in deeply committed relationships, have kids, have developed specific clinical/research interests in our sub-specialties of choosing. A lot of this has changed our opinion on what we feel is the "best" program for us, especially now with new geographic limitations. So in short, the only person who can answer this question is you. Do you have specific clinical interests (more pulmonary or CC?), perhaps you're interested in a subdivision of PCCM (e.g. pulmonary hypertension, interventional pulmonology, cystic fibrosis, transplant, ILD) or clinical vs translational vs basic science research vs clinical educator vs training to go into practice. When making my list of programs it was pretty much word of mouth from advisers and also geographical limitations for personal considerations. I can't comment on the perceived strength of programs in each of the areas above because I haven't seen them yet, but after seeing my interests and personal considerations evolve over the past 2-3 years I feel pretty compelled to say there's no "best" program.