“if you compare the non-HYPSM top 10 schools and the schools #11-15 or so you se that the former have more higher-ranked departments than the latter. Not that this makes such a huge difference for undergrad, but that is how it is.”
Based on what rankings? US News own undergrad engineering rankings in 12 majors only has one school 6-10, Cal Tech, one 11-15, Cornell, the rest are ranked below 20 in US News national rankings. Undergrad business is the same story, in the majors there, Wharton, Michigan, NYU, Berkeley are the top schools, so only school, Penn, is 6-10. A lot of the schools don’t have undergrad business, but still, you have 50% of the college population where the best schools are not 6-10. Add in computer science, where CMU, along with UM and UCB are higher ranked than any of the 6-10 schools. It’s only when you get into humanities and majors like Economics where schools like Chicago and Columbia have top ranked depts. And even there, our friend US News has Berkeley and Michigan in the global, undergrad top-10, ahead of YP.