@Chrchill pardon my seriousness. 
Over the long run strength of academic departments is going to influence rankings the most, since pretty much all systems rely strongly on peer reviews. If UChicago slips out of the top 5 it will be because the academic departments haven’t kept pace with the very significant positive changes at the College.
UChicago certainly doesn’t play around with J-Frosh or freshman study-abroad and so forth the way that NEU does to misrepresent its stats but make no mistake, they DO look closely at these rankings and they do make changes (some long-term, others short-term) in order to improve their standing. I saw the same phenomenon at Booth many years ago when they jumped from #8 to #4 in the much talked-about B-Week rankings. That was a one-year increase, by the way and it was announced, along with Merton Miller’s Nobel Prize, at our Friday TGIF. Rankings are helpful in that they signal quality in a very low-cost way but they are obviously subject to manipulation. UChicago is not alone in understanding their importance, but they probably have a better handle than most on the information value. They SHOULD, at any rate, given the school’s traditional strengths in the decision and social sciences.
As stated before, the jury is still out.