Note Shanghai ranking doesn’t use reputation questionnaire at all.
Long history and large student intake help name recognition. Even non-positive associations can help build name recognition. A college with such a name recognition must be reasonably good to survive 100 years.
— factor: large alumni .. Reputation ranking based on surveys tend to suffer from alumni bias. A large university (population-wise) would have a larger number of ex-employees, visiting staff, alumni, and their parents. When they are included in the surveys, they tend to give the unversity inflated scores.
— national vs international reputation
QS is more about reputation, but they miss the key point that “Within a big country reputation is usually benchmarked nationally, seldom internationally.” For an international student choosing a college across the world, QS meets the requirement better than other ranking tables, comparing the reputations at a global level. For a domestic student looking across her own country (India, China, Japan or U.S.), the local ranking by national agencies are overriding. The national ranking table may put BB well above AA (whereas international ranking tables put AA above BB), and the domestic student would usually ignore international ranking.
— Many familiar college names have an informal reputation among a small circle of my friends, sometimes just one guy. The published ranking table often challenges those informal, vague, often biased impressions. One concrete example is Princeton. A close friend wrote that “Princeton 本科是第一（USNews)，进入非常困难.” I replied
QS ranking — https://www.topuniversities.com/universities/princeton-university is latest ranking, showing Princeton at #17 as of 2023
THE ranking — https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/princeton-university shows Princeton at #9
Good to recognize that not everyone thinks Princeton is the #1 best college.