@prezbucky
Definitely true what you are saying, but I think for national universities the overall prestige and strength of a school directly affects its undergraduate standing. Given how focused on undergrad Princeton is, it is almost definitely true that it has better undergraduate quality than Harvard or Stanford. Yet Princeton loses the cross admit battle to both Harvard and Stanford. USNews does TRY to measure undergrad quality (i personally don’t completely agree with methodology and would prefer to see a combination of the USNews-WSJ rankings methodologies but anyway). However USNews does not have the power, for the most part, to change perceptions of the schools based on the individual positions it gives them, especially within the top 10 - it rather has the influence to create tiers for the schools (top 10, top 20 etc). For example USNews has ranked Princeton #1 since forever and has not put Stanford in the top #4 since 1992, but that does not change applicant and cross-admit preferences towards Stanford, Harvard over Yale and Princeton. and I believe this has to do with the overall strength of the schools which lead to stronger names domestically and globally which in turn affects perception for undergrad too.