I mean I basically agree that a numerical ranking of 1 to whatever is pretty silly, but, this particular ranking carries a lot of weight in the circles of kids looking at colleges. So, accurate or not, it matters.
If you don't want to nitpick 28 versus 47, or whatever, do you think the schools ranked around us now are correctly deemed our peers versus the schools that were formerly ranked in the same range as us?
Phrase the question however you want - are we actually a tier 3 school instead of a tier 2 school?