> high school students preparing to go to university are most interested in rankings

Wouldn't league tables like Norrington and Tompkins be more important for them?

I remember during my Britishphilia phase in HS and imagined doing a CS Tripos at one and then a BCL at he other before I removed the emotion and realized the services and network was inferior to a good UC like Cal or UCLA or a B10 like Mich, I was concentrating more on the College itself, not the Uni as a whole. Like being at Harris Manchester College, Oxford wouldn't open the same doors that Balliol College, Oxford would, and it was Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE, or bust.

At the undergrad level, Oxbridge is college driven and not all colleges are equal even if everyone is in the same faculty.

It's not like Yale or Harvard where you are randomly assigned a house, and the overwhelming majority of education services are provided by departments.

Anglophilia

^ inferior as an international student from the US with options at peer universities.

A portion of Russell Group programs are amazing, but I felt I could get similar exit opps at at a good domestic state flagship in the US with less headaches around AP-to-A level equivalencies, admissions exams, and logistics.