The two primary areas of focus of the WSJ / THE rating & ranking system both deal with money = “Outcomes” & “Resources”. Outcomes account for 40% of the rating formula, while Resources count for 30% of the rating formula.
Money is important in the real world and in the world of academia. I find it helpful to rank individual schools–as opposed to multi-school systems–by endowment.
The top ten ranked schools enjoy substantial endowments–although Brown & Duke outperform in this respect.
The top ten schools are:
Harvard
MIT
Yale
Stanford
Brown
Duke
CalTech
Princeton
Cornell
Northwestern
The top 4 LACs in the ranking also enjoy healthy endowments:
21 Amherst College
21 Williams College
24 Pomona College
29 Wellesley College
My best guess is that wealthy colleges & universities will fare even better in the various rankings due to the economic impact of the novel coronavirus Covid-19.
It is likely that full-pay students will enjoy a significant admissions bump in the current and upcoming years–even to the wealthiest schools as they have not been immune to unexpected financial downturns due to the effects of the coronavirus.