I generally have a low opinion of rankings so I’m not going to die on this hill. However, I do think the fact that there are some surprises on here (like Wooster, Agnes Scott and Hope) suggests that it’s not as simple as the usual group of elite schools patting each other on the back. The Hope College website claims that: “Hope is consistently awarded more National Science Foundation grants for undergraduate research than any other liberal arts college in the country” which presumably helps explain why they fare surprisingly well on the undergrad research ranking (#22) compared to their overall ranking. Maybe the people filling out these surveys know that certain schools punch above their weight in this area.