I think it's easy to underestimate the impact of rankings. Just from your description, it seems that one of the most important overall decision factors for you seems to have been some sort of vague personal sense of how you'd rank them. That subjective ranking is probably influenced by a lot of factors, including many rankings that you consciously claim to disregard.
My personal opinion is that students are highly influenced by where the best students in the grades above them chose to apply, where they got in, and where they eventually chose to go. The software the students use also ranks how likely they are to get into each college/university based on the past performance of students at their high school with similar grades and test scores.
That might be the one thing I would do over again. Move to a "better" HS for my kid, especially since he missed out on 1.5 years due to Covid anyway. His HS ranks top 15 in our state in college readiness scores but falls out of the top 50 overall since there are also a lot of poor students who are lucky to have parent at home at all and often are the surrogate parent for their single mom or dad. Basically, the top students are about as strong as any school in the area but the reputation gets dragged down by the kids who were never on the college track due to life circumstances and a limited support network.
As a result, if you have your sights set on anything other than the two in-state schools or BYU (strong Mormon influence here) the counselors don't know what to do with you and you are on your own.
It worked out and I have no doubt my kid will have strong opportunities post-college but he missed out on any chance at the truly life-changing schools, which I have no doubt he would have succeeded at had he gotten in.
