<p>Worth very little, but fun to put together.....seeing how many VIEWS different Ivies receive here on CC, I started looking to see if some other popular colleges also were viewed with similar volume. However, after I perused a few others, I realized that some of the big state schools must get many views just because they are big and vice-versa. So I built a spreadsheet listing all of CC's colleges (Ivies, LACs, all others), their corresponding # of VIEWS for the past month, and their full-time undergraduate enrollment from the 2005 US News best colleges, then normalized the number of views by enrollment. The resulting "CC Popularity Index" is calculated by dividing # of Views per month by enrollment. Ranked in order of descending index, here are the top 50:</p>
<p>Papa ~ Good work. I've wondered about something like this. I think this shows that CC people in California (with all of thier great schools) use CC more to look at the Eastern schools, but the reverse is not so true. Also, this is a very "Ivy-oriented" board.</p>
<p>Interesting spreadsheet, Papa, but I'm curious as to why you would include all but 3 of CC's own "top universities." Is this your "top 50?" Not sure what it says, except to drive home-- once again-- that CC is definitely Ivy, (mostly) Northeast private school centric...sigh...</p>
<p>Good observation jack on the fact that all but 3 "top universities" are on the list. Could be the way that CC has the various groups laid out, that is, a poster may not be as connected to the other "lesser" universities, providing an instititional impairment to posting, and therefore a bias to this analysis. I don't know. I did this as a student so to speak of the interesting character of this board, no other agenda; I kept it to 50 because it was pretty noisey below 50. CC posters definitely have a preferred appetite. Reasonabledad also observed the eastern dominance....its true that the UC's are not posted upon that much....everyone seems to be fixated on Princeton.</p>
<p>I do not find the list surprising at all. I don't think the fact that many posters/viewers of the forums here are interested in elite schools is astonishing. </p>
<p>For one thing, the people who started College Confidential included authors of books on elite school admissions. Their counseling services deal with all types of students but tend to be heavy on the elite school clientele. If you read the recent thread that dealt with Michele Hernandez's services, she mostly deals with kids applying to selective colleges as well. </p>
<p>Those who are applying to selective colleges are often the ones spending a long time on the college process. There is more involved in applying to such schools compared to applying to state schools or schools that are not that selective. Not as much is riding on an application at some schools more than the facts/stats. People I know who are applying to average level of colleges often do not even start looking into it until senior year, for instance. Some are not even visiting schools. They may do a common application, two essays, finis. Those trying for selective schools or those trying for merit aid and so forth, really have to do a lot of research and put more into the presentation as well. A certain kind of person is going to visit CC and care to spend all this time on every little detail of this process. While a kid applying ANYWHERE would benefit from gathering resources and knowledge about this process, I don't think certain kids/parents are seeking that out as much. </p>
<p>There likely are even more books written on how to get into selective colleges, etc. etc. Even the college directories deal with X number of the best colleges in the US. For instance, you don't see Champlain College in those directories but kids apply there from here. I don't see those kids reading these forums either. </p>
<p>I think many who seek out college counselors (just like those that seek out message boards on college admissions) are those who are entering a selective college process. This is not saying that is the case in every situation but I think it is for a majority. I do know someone who used a paid college counselor and went to Elmira College and another who went to Emerson College. But I think the clients of most counselors and the ones even using the free services on this board tend toward the more selective college process.</p>
<p>Actually, if you want to focus on what gets a lot of views.....mosey on over to the forums on Colleges for Musical Theater.....this is a very very popular forum on CC and many consider it the BEST resource out there at the moment for that topic. The list of "ivies" for musical theater is a completely different list than discussed on the other forums. For example, if I mention the names of the top musical theater colleges, they don't necessarily sound like the top colleges most of you guys or anyone else consider selective necessarily. However, the acceptance rate at all 8 college programs my daughter applied to for musical theater was a mere 5% which is worse than Ivy League odds! But do you guys normally think, for example, University of Cincinatti is competitive? Well, getting into Cincinatti College Conservatory of Music at that university is like getting into the Ivy League for those on that forum. Penn State? They took 5% into their program. NYU is not on the above list but is talked about LOTS on the other forum and they also accept 5% into their program. Those are just a few examples. The list would be a totally different list than posted on this thread. There is not a forum for each of the schools but the forums/threads on those schools overall (and we are talking a fairly small list of schools) has NUMEROUS views. </p>
<p>Papa--I assumed you chose the top 50 to research here, so I meant that I was curious as to why you would omit 3 from what CC lists as "top 20" schools. From their list, you omitted Notre Dame, Carolina, and Vanderbilt--schools that certainly have more postings than, say, Bryn Mawr (I would think). So..I was just curious.</p>
<p>Oh Ok jack...i understand your question I think. I did not omit them, they just didn't rank in the top 50 of those per capita hits. The ranking is not my opinion, its how the numbers shook out. I think Vanderbilt was # 51 and so on. Notre Dame was 59th, just goes to show you that the people pursuing Notre Dame are perhaps not well represented on this board. I looked at every university that is on CC except the service academies & the Canadian's, the latter 'cause I didn't have ready access to full-time undergrad numbers. I did not do the index calculation on any school that had fewer than 100 posts, which cut out many. There were 112 altogether that made that cut on my spreadsheet, only the top 50 reported herein.</p>
<p>Ah, I see. I'm really surprised, then. There are some schools on your list that, over the course of many months, I would check every so often..but no one ever seemed to be posting (Bryn Mawr as an example). But of those not listed, Vanderbilt, in particular, was a surprise. Seems like it's talked about so much on these boards. Anyway, thanks again for the work and for the explanation.</p>
<p>Thanks for your hard work! I do think the fact that the CC forum already has defined subforums titled, "Ivies", "top universities", and "top lacs" unfairly biases the number of posts. Also seems that dividing by enrollment unfairly knocks down the biggest universities, like Michigan and Berkely. An unweighted ranking (just based on post #s) would be interesting to compare.</p>
<p>One weakness in this "formula" is that it treats all posts and views as equal. </p>
<p>On the sites that have them, by far the biggest threads both in terms of # of posts and # of views are the silly "game" threads, including word games having nothing to do with college admissions.. </p>
<p>Also the stats are thrown off because some schools provide special chat sites for applicants and admits, while others do not.</p>