Well, when it comes to accreditation, rankings are very useful to look at. For example, my college is ranked #2 for it's aerospace engineering program and is ranked in the top 10 for public college and unviersities. Another thing you could always look at is admissions, i.e. difficulty of admission process, who is admitted, etc.
There are other ways to rank schools and see who is well credited and who is not, but it's early in the morning and I'm tired...