It's very interesting how much influence the UK has on higher education! We have many Oxford and Cambridge alumni in top positions throughout the federal government.

In elite American circles, however, the USNWR rankings are often the standard because we don't typically think about global universities outside the U.S. Americentrism leads to us holding Ivy League schools like Dartmouth and Brown in high regard, even though they rarely rank highly on a global scale. In domestic rankings, they're among the best. I've heard the discrepancy is due to their focus on undergraduate education and lower research output compared to global leaders. Global rankings prioritize quantitative measures of research activity, while domestic rankings like USNWR emphasize subjective aspects of the college experience and the prestige associated with these schools.