What would all recommend to find schools similar to one a student is interested in?
I think the Fiske Guide lists schools that attract the same applicants.
Well, it depends what you mean by “similar” – e.g., if someone says they want a school like Chicago or Brown, but much easier to get into, that’s one thing – but here’s something I found very interesting:
http://chronicle.com/interactives/peers-network
Each year, schools submit a list of schools they consider peers to the Dept. of Education, and based on that data, the Chronicle of Higher Education created this interactive tool showing the connections between schools, and even a ranking based on the data. Here’s the accompanying article about the data and the tool:
http://chronicle.com/article/In-Selecting-Peers-for/134228
This is from a few years ago, but should still be fairly representative (they should update this regularly with new data – I imagine the hard part was building the tool, and plugging in the new data should be pretty straightforward). It can be gamed a bit, because schools might pick some unreasonable peers, but I’ve found it fairly reasonable. Another set of data one can look at.
They do and even though I love that book, I think the Princeton Review guide does a slightly better job of that one feature.
Best of all our school’s Naviance has an “Overlaps” links which I think correlates to actual applicants from the school; not only can you get to those with one click, you can see the results and how you measure up as well. Most importantly, it list all the similar applications from those kids, reaches, matches and safeties. I found that very valuable as in “Where did the kids who applied to CMU also apply as safeties”?
Some athletic conferences are filled with peer schools. Like the patriot league, NESCAC, IVY
Centennial conference. These all have similar schools both academically and athletically within each conference
That is an easy quick way to start
That looks interesting, but I will have to challenge its credibility. Who is responding from each school, and if they are responding seems to lack consistency. For example, if I used the tool correctly, it says UC Berkeley selected 0 peer schools.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Use the Choose A College feature, then hit the Similar Schools tab.
Google. Especially if the student has two or more similar colleges already in mind, a search for their names together will often turn up lists that include other similar schools. Or just “TopChoice University similar schools”.
The aforementioned self-selected DOE peer schools.
While on campus tours ask students where else they applied.
@yikesyikesyikes: Sounds like you didn’t read the accompanying article. It provides some info about the data. It’s part of, or related to, the IPEDS data, so there is a certain amount of law/requirements/repute behind it. They talked to some people at some universities about how they came up with their lists of peer comparison schools. Some of these people were pretty high up in the administration (directors, vice presidents), and they talked about the analysis and criteria they used to determine peer schools. So it sounds like in most cases this is pretty legit. They did talk about how some schools reached high and listed some schools they aspire to be like, and how in some cases these lists are specified by lower level personnel.
As to Berkeley (and/or some other schools) not listing any peers, most likely their data wasn’t included for some reason (e.g., they didn’t submit the data or they submitted it late).
As to questioning the credibility of the data – I’m sure there are errors/inaccuracies/omissions/problems in this data, and I’m not saying it’s the be-all/end-all of school comparison data. But I think it’s basically legit, and provides some interesting and useful comparison data.
My question of credibility was not if the data is real or valid, but that it was being misused on such a matrix.
Firstly, the likely nonresponse/reporting from schools, and still including them on this matrix results in misleading ranking.
The peer schools selected by respective reporting schools were selected not necessarily on just academic standing/reputation (which is what academics usually think of when the term “peer school” is used), but also largely on finances and total enrollment amongst other things.
This is still OKAY, but the article labels schools as “aspiring” when they select a peer based on the guidelines given by the DoE (which involves making groupings of peers based on finances, enrollment, amongst other things). For universities which take this direction at face-value and make these groupings by these various metrics like finances and total enrollment - they are not necessarily saying that they are equivalent academically or reputation-wise, yet this is exactly what this article and accompanying matrix incorrectly insinuate.
Fiske guide.
Plus try the SuperMatch college search feature on CC.
Along the lines of “overlaps” roughly equating to “peers”, I suggest Parchment, knowing full well that someone from Hobsons (owners of Naviance and CC) will harshly pan that choice.