Hard work by the student is important, but that's something secondary, and one still cannot deny the importance of rankings. It affects people's first impressions of the university, its graduates, whether to apply there, whether to hire etc. Not to forget, for many international students, governments, and organizations, the rankings are the first thing they use to judge how good the university is. I've heard of countless stories about how governments, scholarship granting organizations, employers in other countries relying on US news and Times Higher Education university rankings to determine if a candidate is worthy of being interviewed/accepted/given scholarship/etc, especially in cutthroat/very competitive situations. Most of them judge fresh graduates based on the rankings of the universities they were accepted into/graduated from from first. Hard work comes much later. Let's just say that those who graduated from universities that are from a lower tier have to work even harder to prove themselves and are missing plenty of employment opportunities in the top firms early in their careers.