Your point is fine and well taken but we can all point to colleges in our own backyard where we could say the same. If I were to tell you that BC and Fordham and Seton Hall are disproportionately influential in the Northeast (even if most folks in Texas have never heard of them… or maybe just know the sports angle) you’d say “so what”. If I were to tell you that Williams (tiny Williams) dominates the art/museum/curatorial world even though most folks in Texas have never heard of it, you’d say “so what”.
It doesn’t make Williams the “peer” of TAMU in engineering, and it doesn’t mean that Catholic families in New Jersey are going to start sending their kids in droves to TAMU. It just means that this is a very, very big country and it is difficult to generalize and extrapolate from one’s own experience.
The fact that TAMU has increased in whatever rankings or its median SAT scores are now X vs. Y from 20 years ago is going to get a collective yawn in the state of California.
Which you’d agree with me is quite logical. Nobody in Texas is obsessing about UC Santa Barbara or arguing the merits of Santa Cruz vs. San Diego.