Pomona won’t make it into the top 3 in USNews Rankings this year or for a while (if methodology is consistent) due to a number of reasons:
*It has a lower evaluated peer reputation than Amherst/Williams/Swarthmore
*It has less classes with 20 students or less due to consortial sharing of courses; this is a significant factor for the rankings. Unlike schools like Claremont McKenna, which place caps on the number of courses that are over 20 students for the fall, Pomona does not do this. Furthermore, a heavier concentration of STEM kids than other LACS- especially in super popular departments like math, biology, and computer science- makes this a difficult ranking for Pomona to excel in.
*While faculty salaries are among the highest of any LAC, they are weighed down by a cost of living adjustment
*Alumni donation rates are lower against Williams and Amherst
Input factors that Pomona excels in- student selectivity, admissions rate, retention rate, etc.- are not very heavily weighted in this ranking.
You can see some of the US News components from last year in this page: http://pitweb.pitzer.edu/institutional-research/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2015/02/2015-USNEWS-Public-Final.pdf
As to William’s unique offerings among top LACs: Winter Study (though Middlebury has this as well) and Oxford style tutorials