Um, yeah. US News should be dumped out in the middle of the Atlantic. Don't even bother with it if you're trying to use it to rank schools by academics, because the schools are not ranked solely by their academics. They're rank by the beauty of the campus, how comfortable the dorms are, the quality of the food, which sports division the school ranks under, the average amount of debt a student will graduate with... It's ridiculous. Schools become so obsessed with this list that they'll spend their money on more food options and air conditioning in the dorms rather than on a new science center.
Also, if you look, there are some colleges that opted not to be ranked. For instance, Reed College is an excellent school with an extremely rigorous undergraduate program that is known throughout the work--look at their ranking. You can't find it on the website, but if you buy the report, you'll find that Reed sits in dead last with a handful of other colleges that declined to participate.
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A lot of schools offer "science days", where potential students can come tour the college with an emphasis on science. Look into those and attend as many as you can because they give you a real good feel for what each program is like. Also, do overnights and shadow a student taking some science classes. Talk to someone about research opportunities, internships, studying abroad... You'll never find a way to rank academics. You have to go in and ask questions until you're blue in the face, and then figure out which answers you like best.