Colby’s hockey stick graph was the topic in this discussion:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/t/colbys-increasing-draw/3514848/12
In Colby’s case the sharp increase appears to have followed the arrival of a new president.
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Yes, in universities as in most bureaucratic organizations, the quality of the leadership has an outsized impact on the effectiveness / success of the organization.
We’ve seen this recently in the impact that focused, smart and energetic leadership can have on organizations such as U Chicago (Pres. Robert Zimmer) and Ohio State (Pres. Gordon Gee a while back).
Negative examples of the same outsized impact would include RPI’s and Oberlin’s leadership.
All that said, I suspect that Draw Rate can be improved substantially if a university or college simply adopts some sophisticated, data-driven, targeted marketing techniques of the sort employed successfully in the last decade by private sector consumer companies. Not complicated, really.
Very much so. I don’t know why Bowdoin and Colorado C. are succeeding so well. My first hypothesis would be excellent leadership at both the presidential level and in the admissions office.
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Just to clarify – directionally speaking, the following schools are roughly equivalent in their (ED-adjusted) Draw Rates, that is, their relative prestige/desirability:
- Bowdoin is of similar prestige as UC-BERKELEY and UCLA
- CMC, Swat, Amherst, Williams and Bates are of similar prestige as U-MICH and UNC
- Carleton, Haverford, Wesleyan, Hamilton are of similar prestige as GA. TECH and UVA
- Vassar is of similar prestige as UT-AUSTIN
- Reed, Lehigh and Colby are of similar prestige as TEXAS A&M, VA. TECH, U-FLORIDA and U GEORGIA
- Lafayette is of similar prestige as UCSD, UIUC, U-WASHINGTON, U WISC and UCF
- Tulane, Oberlin and Grinnell are of similar prestige as OHIO STATE, U-MARYLAND and UCSB
Obviously, the experience of attending a LAC and a public flagship is very different, and a student who would thrive at one might very well despise the other. That’s not the point here.
This is designed to be a more or less objective, directionally accurate comparison of relative prestige and desirability, which, over time, will translate into marketability of the degree and student satisfaction.
Students would be wise to choose accordingly.
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The draw analysis is really great! Thank you!
Where do the tech schools fall in your comparisons? Thinking specifically of Mudd, CalTech and MIT. Maybe it isn’t a fair comparison, since they are so highly selective, like the Ivies? So maybe Rochester and Some of the others on that tier?
Also, where does Pomona fall?
I also am curious about the schools that have distinct personality do with draw. Like Univ. of Chicago. Or Olin. My hypothesis is that draw would be higher for the more idiosyncratic schools. If an idiosyncratic student and idiosyncratic school agree they are a match, the student would be more likely to matriculate.
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Was the change in Bates’s adjusted draw rate simple error? It changed from 1.2 to 1.8 with the same data considered. I’m confused how/why.
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My comment will seem confusing now, since @thibault heavily edited the figures in the first post on this subtopic, which had been numerically and directionally inaccurate (you can see the residual of this, in that the schools appear numerically out of order).
Since then, there has been experimention with different forms of information based on the same underlying data, which is why you see alternative figures for Bates (as well as other schools).
Viewers should verify all that they read, however. This source shows a draw rate of 4.12 for Bates in 2019, for example:
My main hesitancy, however, relates to the comments on prestige. In my opinion, a draw rate of 1.0 (e.g., 30/30) generally suffices to enroll a capable, engaged entering class, and a rate of 1.67 (e.g., 50/30) more than suffices and suggests additional quality. Rates above this indicate a competitive realm not particularly related to academic excellence.
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This is a great concept for fun-sies. But, there is a HUGE confounding factor in arriving at an accurate Draw Rate for public colleges, i.e., significantly more than half their student bodies would not be there but for the tuition break offered to in-state students. This is their equivalent to the LAC reliance on ED to control yield.
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In comparison to draw, academic atmosphere may be better assessed by student profile. USN, for example, uses its “student excellence” statistics as the criteria for its selectivity ranks:
U.S. News Selectivity Ranks (NLACs)
︎1. Pomona
︎2. Harvey Mudd
︎2. Haverford
︎4. Amherst
︎5. Hamilton
︎5. Swarthmore
︎5. Williams
︎8. Barnard
︎8. Bowdoin
︎10. Washington & Lee
︎11. Wellesley
︎12. Colorado College
︎12. Smith
︎12. Vassar
︎15. Carleton
︎16. Colby
︎17. Colgate
︎17. Davidson
︎19. Claremont McKenna
︎19. Grinnell
︎19. Middlebury
19. Wesleyan
As relates to the OP, note the close spacing of Amherst, Williams and Bowdoin.
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Late to this and degustibus non est disputandum indeed, but my family would put Bowdoin on a very short list of the most pleasant and attractive campuses we’ve visited: classic New England old college buildings/quad with all of the modern structures well-integrated into it, closely connected to the town but with a little buffer, super walkable/bikeable, gorgeous trees…too small or quiet I can understand, but unattractive, wow 
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Why do you think this ranking would be a good way to assess ‘academic atmosphere’ at a school? How do you define ‘academic atmosphere’?
What are the variables and how is this ranking calculated? From what year is the data? Does it use test scores from all students, or just those who applied with test scores? One example that can lead to discrepancies is that some schools require test scores be submitted from all matriculants (pre-pandemic), even those who applied and were accepted TO.
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These statistics are interesting, but like all statistics, they are just one criteria to consider, hardly a perfect indicia of relative desirability or prestige. Especially when comparing top liberal arts schools to flagship universities. Because these statistics entirely ignore the self-selection of the applicant pool. The reality is that a major state university will receive FAR more applications from egregiously underqualified applicants than a school like Williams or Amherst or Pomona. The vast majority of students who even become aware of a top liberal arts school will generally have very strong high school records. No one is applying on a lark because it’s their state flagship or because they have an awesome basketball team or whatnot. If, say, Williams or Amherst are admitting 10 percent from a pool featuring 80 percent highly qualified candidates, vs. say, UMich admitting 10 percent from a pool featuring 50 percent highly qualified candidates, that a reflects a very different prestige / desirability metric.
If Williams or Amherst took a class at random from the next 20 percent of non-athletic recruits candidates they reject, the class would be just about indistinguishable academically from the class that they ultimately yield. And their yield rates would actually probably be higher. (If you replaced athletic recruits, the class would be even stronger academically, but that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison). These schools (like Ivies, though not to the same degree as H/P/Y) reject a huge amount of kids with, say, 1450 plus SATs and 3.9 or higher GPAs, just to build the type of class that they want with kids who will be good fits on campus. State schools with a much bigger student population aren’t in the position of having to, say, take an ace Oboist because there won’t be any otherwise in a 2000 person campus.
I’m not someone who is unduly focused on prestige, by the way. I think (as I said earlier on this thread) that there is no meaningful difference in the prestige or academic quality between Williams, Bowdoin, and Amherst, and that should not by a determinative factor in deciding between them. I just write this to suggest that being overly reliant on raw statistics like these, absent context, is not a great idea.
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Odd that you use a that latin quote, then add a “BUT…” to it. But whatever…
My kid was fortunate to have wonderful choices. He chose Bates. It’s his experience not mine (I just pay). 
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Two problems with the Bates data:
- the “higher ed data stories” site does NOT ADJUST FOR ED ADMITS. It’s artificially high, as has been discussed above. So Bates’s numbers there need to be shifted down.
- Bates itself has swung wildly in the last 5 years.
Just using RD Admits as the denominator, Bates went from a (not-adjusted-for-ED) Draw Rate of 1.93 in 2015 to 1.76 in 2016, back up to 1.93 in in 2017 and then 2.15 in 2018… and KABOOM! to 4.12 in 2019!!
I don’t know why, or frankly care enough to bother finding out why, Bates’ rate went through the roof a year ago. I do know that the real rate, adjusted for ED Admits, for Bates is below 2.0.
Is it 1.2? Is it actually 1.8? That depends on the reference period you choose. Maybe the new president of Bates has made a big difference; maybe there’s some manipulation going on; probably a bit of both, along with sheer randomness.
Again, these are DIRECTIONALLY accurate for a LARGE GROUP of colleges. This is not a full-time job or obsession for me, so feel free to correct/adjust/fiddle with these data points as you choose.
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Of course this is not and should not be viewed as the last word regarding prestige. It’s one data point that has several great advantages: it’s hard and quantitative and transparent. As opposed to the USNWR gobbledygook that merely rediscovers conventional wisdom, ED-adjusted Draw Rate is difficult to manipulate without being caught.
It’s NOT precise. There’s no major difference between, say, 1.2 and 1.6. But it’s useful for like, comparing like with like (if you like).
And it highlights outliers such as Bowdoin, which clearly is at least as prestigious / desirable if not more so than other institutions normally considered better, and Oberlin, which clearly is much less prestigious / desirable than its supposed peer institutions. And it raises interesting questions as to what is going on at climbers such as Bates.
MIT has an astronomically high Draw Rate, similar to Stanford’s which is highest by far in the nation. CalTech is quite low.
I suspect that this indicates that parents and tech-obsessed kids think that a Stanford or an MIT degree is a ticket to startup or other phenomenal wealth – whereas a CalTech education is, rightly or wrongly, still associated in the public mind with JPL and the (nonprofit, government) space program: “Feynman, shmeynman! I want my kid to build the next DoorDash!”
Again, not my kind of logic or maybe yours, but this is what the market for academic prestige – parents and kids applying – thinks today. Maybe the next generation will be less obsessed with money… we can only hope.
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Hey @merc81. Where did you get this list? Is it behind the US News paywall?
The selectivity ranks posted above appear in USN’s 2021 print edition, and extend through the top ~50 schools in the two national categories.
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I have no problem with the data qua data or with trying get one’s arms around a phenomenon. I do wonder, however, whether any of this is a functionality of prestige. Every decision I’ve encountered on this board, at this time of the year, usually boils down to which school is offering the most generous FA to an otherwise middle-class family (and g-d forbid their child should evince the slightest desire to attend medical school.) Is that the siren song of prestige, or merely the white knuckled terror of middle-class anxiety calling?
Don’t disagree on the lack of usability of USNWR data.
But, draw rate is able to be manipulated (beyond ED) by decreasing the acceptance rate…which is typically done by eliminating the application fee and/or supplemental essays, and/or going test optional. These factors alone, or in combination, are powerful in terms of increasing applications, which decrease acceptance rate, which directly impacts draw rate.
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