How accurately do the USNWR rankings reflect a school's strength?

Graduation rate of a college is strongly correlated to admission selectivity and students without financial limits. So it is mostly a proxy for exclusivity and connections to wealth, without explicitly saying so.

Graduation rate performance relative to the graduation rate expected from the student cohort may be a more relevant factor, but few pay attention to it (USNWR gives it a lower weight than raw graduation rate).