“8 of those schools rank in the top 15 slots in the category, while the 9th ranked in the 30s.”
So I quickly perused the rankings and am pretty familiar with one top-10 school, Marist at 8, and I picked another, Rider, at 35 to try and replicate your question. I don’t think there’s all that much difference between them, so don’t discount the 30s college based on that. Also as data10 posted, try and dig into the criteria and why one was ranked higher than another, and if those factors are important.