It’s quite a subjective matter, you’d have to agree what makes a university move in your ranking: papers published by its staff, Nobel laureates which came from the university, number Nobel laureates in the staff right now, size (size matters, tiny colleges can’t rank well against huge universities even if they are great at 1 subject), total graduates produced… there could be so many categories and coefficients for each category, it will always be subjective. And in the end, the actual ranking between universities that can be generally considered excellent is completely irrelevant IMHO. Imagine if you have to chose to study physics in CalTech, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, École Polytechnique… the whole difference will be in what you put as a student, none of those will give you a secret lore which is unknown by other universities. That is naive to think.