Ask a college admissions officer at an elite university if they care about the school’s ranking in US News & World Report and you’d be hard-pressed to find an admissions officer who suggests they care. But, of course, that’s utter nonsense. Admissions officers, you see, care deeply about rankings. After all, a dean of admissions at an elite university that consistently slips in the annual ranking will not be long for that job. So, of course, the dean’s direct-reports also care about their rankings. Thus, don’t let them fool you. They’re not indifferent. That’s like saying Kate Winslet doesn’t care about winning the Emmy this weekend for HBO’s Mare of Easttown. Of course she cares! And, as a side note, of course Ethan Hawke was robbed of a nomination — and win — after delivering the performance of a lifetime in Showtime’s Peabody Award-winning series The Good Lord Bird. Just saying.

But back to college admissions officers at elite universities professing not to care about college rankings. Hardy har har. Yet don’t just believe us. Read it straight from the horse’s mouth. After all, these same elite universities that supposedly don’t care about rankings make quite a big to-do about where they land in such rankings when things work out for them — even boasting about where they land in sub-categories of certain less well known rankings. Just take a look at the social media posts of Rice University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Sometimes, a picture really does tell a thousand words.

They don’t care, huh? And water is dry. They care. They care a whole lot.