Anecdotally, a university I attended made a huge deal of breaking into the first tier of the US News rankings, and had commemorative pins made and distributed.

Anecdotally, a university I attended made a huge deal of breaking into the first tier of the US News rankings, and had commemorative pins made and distributed. The administration couldn't not promote it. A year later, their ranking fell (to a lower tier), and the official line was that US News rankings are not important.