According to a 2012 UCLA survey, a good academic reputation was chosen by more students than any other assessed factor as “very important” in their decision to attend a particular college.
http://www.heri.ucla.edu/pr-display.php?prQry=111
(see p. 41 of the full report)
But how do HS students evaluate academic reputation (let alone absolute academic quality)?
How could they do it, if they made practical use of the best available information?
The US News “peer assessment” does purport to measure undergraduate academic quality based on a survey of 800+ college presidents, provosts, and deans of admission. Some of the other metrics that go into the USNWR, Forbes, or other rankings could be considered (individually or collectively) indicators of academic quality.
It’s impossible to say exactly what each of the USNWR “peers” really is assessing, or how qualified (and unbiased) they are to assess academic quality of schools other than the few where they’ve actually studied or worked. It may be significant that many of these measurements (including the peer assessment) do point to pretty much the same set of top schools. Yet, some underlying factors (such as institutional wealth or admission selectivity) may be confounding how well any of these measurements represent true academic quality.
I do think that available metrics/rankings can help build an initial application list of colleges that are close enough in academic quality that any small overall differences won’t matter as much as within-school differences among courses and instructors (or as much as the effort you put into any college once you get there.)