Actual Student Preferences - Head to Head Competition

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hey, check this out. It's a little work but worth it.</p>

<p>This article describes the research paper:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/20/new_ranking_system_based_on_choice/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/20/new_ranking_system_based_on_choice/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The paper looks at college choices as you would a round robin sports tournament.</p>

<p>This site has links to download it (I that know the Social Science Research Network site works):</p>

<p><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If you have Adobe Acrobat, open it with Acrobat. There is data that does show head-to-head comparisons of students' choices (ie, what percentage of the time did students choose Dartmouth over Notre Dame, etc.). The results echo what you see everywhere else, with a few exceptions. There are definiitely niche schools, or schools that have special appeal to certain demographics (for example, Notre Dame is a favorite of Catholics) which enhance their ranks. Not the definitive ranking, but an interesting way of looking at things.</p>

<p>To download the file, you may want to open it in a new window so that it can be more easily seen. Just open with their default program (a variant of Acrobat)...if you have Acrobat, it will work. The charts of interest are on pages 28-31, and the head-to-head is on page 32 (page numbers are for Acrobat, not for the report...they differ by just one or two pages). To compare schools, for example Dartmouth vs. Notre Dame, note that Dartmouth is ranked 3 places above ND, and that students chose Dartmouth 76% of the time above the school ranked three spaces below it.</p>

2

<p>That's actually been around for a long time now. It was written in 2004.</p>

3

<p>Sorry, this is hard to read (because the table doesn't line up). Example: Dartmouth is 5 places above Cornell, so look in the Dartmouth #5 column and see that when given the choice between the two schools, Dartmouth was chosen 95% of the time over Cornell. </p>

<p>Table 4: Share of Draws in Which College in the Row is Ranked Higher than the College Various Places Below It
Number of Places Below
College 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Harvard 96 100 95 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Yale 88 78 91 95 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Stanford 58 62 76 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Cal Tech 51 57 89 94 96 96 96 98 98 99 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
MIT 63 99 100 100 100 99 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Princeton 96 99 99 99 99 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Brown 80 87 90 88 97 96 98 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Columbia 65 66 72 80 85 92 99 99 99 98 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Amherst 50 59 62 74 85 92 95 97 95 98 97 100 99 100 100 99 98 100 100 100
Dartmouth 60 65 76 86 95 97 98 96 99 98 100 100 100 100 100 99 100 100 100 99
Wellesley 50 64 75 82 85 93 90 92 90 98 98 98 99 97 94 99 99 99 97 100
U Penn 68 81 94 96 97 94 99 98 100 99 100 100 100 98 100 100 100 99 100 100
Notre Dame 65 73 78 89 84 88 85 97 96 98 98 95 91 99 99 99 96 100 99 100
Swarthmore 53 60 78 73 74 68 90 90 91 93 87 80 95 94 95 91 97 98 98 98
Cornell 61 82 75 81 73 97 95 98 97 94 85 99 99 99 94 100 99 100 99 100
Georgetown 77 68 71 62 93 91 95 95 89 78 97 97 98 91 99 99 99 99 100 100
Rice 45 38 31 62 68 64 75 60 49 75 75 76 77 86 87 89 89 92 93 92
Williams 46 39 67 73 69 79 66 56 78 79 79 80 89 89 90 91 94 93 94 94
Duke 40 81 82 84 89 77 63 91 91 92 86 97 96 97 96 99 99 98 99 100
U Virginia 88 87 90 92 83 70 95 94 96 89 98 98 98 98 100 100 99 99 100 100
Northwestern 62 54 71 49 35 72 72 74 74 88 88 90 90 96 96 93 95 99 98 90
Pomona 40 58 39 28 55 56 55 64 74 75 78 79 83 84 84 85 89 89 83 88
Berkeley 69 47 33 69 69 72 73 86 88 89 89 95 98 93 95 99 98 90 99 96
Georgia Tech 31 22 45 47 45 59 67 70 71 74 78 78 81 82 85 86 79 84 82 80
Middlebury 37 67 69 69 72 84 85 88 87 92 92 92 92 96 96 89 96 94 90 97
Wesleyan 78 79 80 79 90 90 91 92 95 96 94 95 98 98 92 97 97 93 98 98
UChicago 52 52 63 74 76 79 80 85 86 86 87 93 93 83 92 90 85 95 95 91
Johns Hopkins 49 62 72 74 77 78 83 84 84 85 91 91 81 91 88 83 93 94 89 95</p>

4

<p>Yes, it was written in 2004. Not really so long ago. And it does give head-to-head comparisons of real student choices, which are not all that easy to find elsewhere.</p>

<p>These were the overall preference rankings:</p>

<p>A Revealed Preference Ranking of Colleges</p>

<p>rank - College - Points
1 Harvard 2800
2 Yale 2738
3 Stanford 2694
4 Cal Tech 2632
5 MIT 2624
6 Princeton 2608
7 Brown 2433
8 Columbia 2392
9 Amherst 2363
10 Dartmouth 2357
11 Wellesley 2346
12 U Penn 2325
13 U Notre Dame 2279
14 Swarthmore 2270
15 Cornell 2236
16 Georgetown 2218
17 Rice 2214
18 Williams 2213
19 Duke 2209
20 U Virginia 2197
21 Northwestern 2136
22 Pomona 2132
23 Berkeley 2115
24 Georgia Tech 2115
25 Middlebury 2114
26 Wesleyan 2111
27 U Chicago 2104
28 Johns Hopkins 2096
29 USC 2072
30 Furman 2061
31 UNC 2045
32 Barnard 2034
33 Oberlin 2027
34 Carleton 2022
35 Vanderbilt 2016
36 UCLA 2012
37 Davidson 2010
38 U Texas 2008
39 NYU 1992
40 Tufts 1986
41 Washington & Lee 1983
42 U Michigan 1978
43 Vassar 1978</p>

5

<p>I’m sure we’d care, if this weren’t posted so many times in the past 2 years….. :rolleyes:</p>

6

<p>The actual rankings skewed because certain schools share more common admits with the highest ranked schools...so it makes the data really hard to use for anything. The best way to look at it is school versus school decision making, which is still very useful. And stuff. Plus its data from 5 years ago if I remember correctly.</p>

7

<p>The starkest mark of "non-preference" is when a reasonably qualfied student chooses not to apply to a school at all. </p>

<p>Most non-preference is determined at the application stage, not the selection stage.</p>

<p>An individual's most strongly disfavored schools, those which are comparable but did not even merit an application, don't even appear as a datum in this study. In reality they should be "dinged" more than the comparable- caliber schools that the applicant at least thought enough of to apply to, though they were not ultimately chosen.</p>

<p>I'm sure this flaw distorts the results in a number of cases.</p>

8

<p>"Most non-preference is determined at the application stage, not the selection stage."</p>

<p>This is the best quote I have seen on cc this week! It is so true.</p>

9

<p>Based on decisions I have observed from real life applicants whom I know, this data is absolute nonsense. This is perhaps the worst type of ranking system yet.</p>

10

<p>^if it showed school v school choices, it would be extremely useful, but it doesn't.</p>