My kid just went through college selection process and I can assure you that the US News rankings are largely irrelevant in terms of decision making. The revealed preference score[1] or global university rankings[2] are much closer to how students, their counselors, and their parents rank the universities. For instance, any ranking that does not have Stanford first among non specialized US universities (i.e. excluding MIT, Caltech, Julliard, etc.) is suspect.
[1] https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php?pag... [2] https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-un...