Ran across this article today from my DD2016’s school.
https://marquettewire.org/3978552/news/study-shows-students-hype-up-college/
Thanks for posting this. This is an important lesson that deserves to be repeated. It is a good article and seems correct to me. However, I don’t think that this is news to regulars here on CC.
Clearly many students put way too much importance on rankings. On the one hand a ranking is just a number and says very little about whether the school has the right program, is where a student wants to live for 4 years, or is otherwise a good fit for any particular student. Also, we do see posts quite often from students who went to a very highly ranked university and found that it was not a good fit and they don’t like it (although the high ranking does not normally seem to get blamed for why the student went there).
Reading posts on CC makes me very glad that my daughters went to universities that appear to be very good fits for them, and that fit our budget. They both could have gone to slightly higher ranked schools that would not have fit them as well.
Plenty of parents make the same mistake placing too much emphasis on rankings. We see them on all the time. 
I agree I do not think it is news to anyone here on CC. I like to encourage people to look beyond the top 50. Marquette seems to be an awesome fit for my DD2016.
No surprise that rankings matter a lot to many students and their parents.
20-30 years ago, would high school students and their parents have had the apparently high opinion of Northeastern, NYU, and USC that they commonly have now?
You don’t say…