Again let me see incoming freshman ACT/SATs, valedictorians and GPAs of BYU versus UW to get a handle on the undergraduate strength.

In academia, I am aware that it is key to rankings to be a great research university, which carries the advantage of state government money helping UW in the ranking department, but I am not sure it is a great measure of undergraduate quality given (I am assuming) that a lot of research money goes to the graduate programs and not undergraduates. Of course, this is all a somewhat subjective argument to begin with, but it is how the game is played in determining the "best" schools.