<p>Question: </p>
<p>How would the “State Advanced Engineering School” fare on this list … if it admitted 100% of students with a 450 SAT in Math and English, have 100% remedial classes, have 100% in Engineering classes, and graduate 100% of each class? Would the score be 4.5?</p>
<p>Does it help to start with low standards, go lower from there, and let everyone graduate?</p>
<p>xiggi- That’s funny. It made me laugh. I think you’ve discovered how to get a high “overperformance” score from US News! That must be the secret: low standards for admission, low standards for graduation. That would work until word gets out that your graduates don’t know what they are doing. You might lose your accreditation.</p>
<p>Great, CH, I am happy you laughed. However, now that we have established that the lower standards do indeed influence your rankings, could we look at the schools that display graduation rates nearing 100% and see if they deserve to be ranked higher than schools that are known for a very demanding coursework and only admit the most competitive students in the nation? </p>
<p>And, by the way, lower standards DO work miracles in the USNews. Perhaps, on a slow day, you might play with the impact of lower SAT scores on the … expected graduation rates, and understand that it might help a school to report lower SAT scores. </p>
<p>But that is for another day, and another laugh!</p>
<p>xiggi-
I agree that lower graduation standards could increase graduation rates and hypothetically lower my simple ratio of SAT to graduation rate. Conversely, schools with high standards have somewhat lower graduation rates. Schools like Chicago, Swarthmore, Caltech, Harvey Mudd have reputations for high standards.</p>
<p>Generally, I think standards are not universally the same. I believe more selective schools tend to have higher standards because they CAN have higher standards (and still have successful students). Generally, I think less selective schools tend to have lower standards (yet their graduation rates are still lower than those at the more selective schools).</p>
<p>But, grad rates are not always lower because of high standards. Grad rates can also be lower than you would expect because of poor educational practices, bad environment, and so on. It is hard to know what the real reason is for low graduation rates</p>
<p>How much do high standards affect graduation rates? My hunch is 3-7%. Caltech’s grad rate underperformance is -7% according to US News. Harvey Mudd’s is -3%. Swarthmore’s is -2%. How much can low standards affect graduation rates? Well, I look at Penn State with a grad rate overperformance of +18%. That’s hard to believe.</p>
<p>So, yes, differences in academic standards can hypothetically affect the ratio of SAT to grad rate. But, it is hard to know whether lower than expected grad rates are due to poor students, poor educational practices, poor environment…or what? Furthermore, I don’t think grad rates are affected a great deal by differences in academic standards. They are affected most by student ability (which can be measured by the SAT).</p>