<p>US Snooze should provide the following disclaimer.
“For entertainment purposes only.”</p>
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<p>Here is the methodology:</p>
<p>*1. Ratio of quality to price: A school’s overall score in the Best Colleges 2011 rankings was divided by the 2009-2010 academic year net cost to a student receiving the average need-based scholarship or grant. The higher the ratio of a school’s Best Colleges 2011 edition rank to the discounted total cost less the average 2009-2010 academic year need-based scholarship or grant, the better the value. Total cost equals the sum of these cost factors for each school from the 2009-2010 academic year tuition, room and board, fees, books, and other expenses, including transportation.
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<p>Harvard has a score of 100 in the USNWR rankings and let us assume a COA of $50,000 and a Rank of 1. In this measure, 100/50,000 = .002. In their opinion this is value received per dollar spent.</p>
<p>Case Western Reserve has a rank of 41, a score of 60 in USNWR and let us assume a COA of $50,000 also.</p>
<p>So the measure for Case Western is 60/50,000= 0.0012, which is less than Harvards</p>
<p>So what the editors are saying is that For Harvard, I pay a certain amount and for that amount I get the top ranked institution. Case Western is not a top ranked institution, and if I pay the same amount to Case Western, I am not getting the same value.</p>
<p>So by their logic, a student who is willing to pay $50,000 for Harvard, should pay only $30000 as COA for Case Western to get the same value per dollar spent. In marketing terms it is called Value to price ration, and here value is measured by the UNSNWR rankings. </p>
<p>Extending their logic, an institution with a score of 50 should charge only $25,000 and with a score of 25, should charge only $12500 as COA. That is why you have all these institutions with different costs mixed up.</p>
<p>Obviously this is naive, but UNSWR gets to define the criteria. So this measure helps top ranked institutions. You cannot measure value by USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>*2. Percentage of all undergraduates receiving need-based scholarships or grants during the 2009-2010 academic year.
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This favors institutions that a give a lot of people little aid as opposed to schools that give few people lot of aid. So a school that gives 500 people 1000 dollars each will be favored over one that gives 200 people $2500 each, even though the total amount of aid is the same.</p>
<p>3. Average discount: percentage of a school’s 2009-2010 total costs (tuition, room and board, fees, books, and other expenses) covered by the 2009-2010 academic year average need-based scholarship or grant to undergraduates.</p>
<p>This measures the ratio of what people actually pay to the rack rate.</p>
<p>It does not make much sense to me, but that is their methodology. Overall, this measure favors top ranked institutions, state schools that have lower tuition and schools that give aid to more people though it may not be as large in dollar terms when compared to a lower ranked college.</p>
<p>mazwanderer, Thanks for dissecting this for me!!</p>
<p>I don’t totally agree with your post #15, Miami DAP, but I understand your thoughts</p>
<p>mazewanderer, that’s interesting, thanks. </p>
<p>Geez, based on that theory, they are saying that a school ranked lower is not worth the same amount of money as one ranked higher! Not my way of thinking. I’d be willing to pay the same amount of money for ANY college my kids had chosen. To me, it is worth the bucks if the school fits my kid. It doesn’t matter what it is ranked. </p>
<p>Maybe that is why I have never understood some posts on CC where a kid says their parents are willing to pay for them to go to a school like Harvard but if they don’t get in, then they want them to go to inexpensive State U…meaning they had the money to send them to college but don’t think “lesser ranked” schools are worth the bucks. Never could wrap my head around that.</p>
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<p>That is exactly what they are saying. After all they are in the business of making money and they want to sell their rankings. To them, ranking is an attribute of quality and value. So, an institution ranked 11 is inferior to one ranked 7 and so on. And they are using their rankings to suggest buying preferences. </p>
<p>This suggestion does not take into account majors, personal preferences, fit between student and college etc. So it is a rather self serving way of ranking colleges. Kiplinger has their ranking, Forbes has theirs and all of them are trying to define the price/value ratio. There is no perfect ranking system.</p>
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Edit: Never mind this post. I see they are talking about the score, not the rank. Carry on.</p>
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<p>What USNWR’s is saying that is that ratio between USNWR Ranking and cost should be the same. So if you are comparing School 1 and School 2, they say School 2 should cost less than school 1 to compensate for the fact that school 1 is higher rated. The amount it should be less depends upon the difference between the scores. </p>
<p>Harvard is 100 on their scoring criteria. So a school that has score of 50 should be at half the price of Harvard or less, else that school is less preferable to Harvard, on that criteria. In other words, if Harvard costs $50000 (they take into account aid also, so it a little more complex than that), a school that a score of 50 should have a cost of $25,000 or less to provide as good a value as Harvard. Remember the score is not the ranking. USNWR puts a score to each school and then arranges the schools with the highest to lowest scores.</p>
<p>That measure does not take the ranking distance. Therefore University of California, Berkley and UCLA, do not appear in that list ([Best</a> Colleges - Education - US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-best-values]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-best-values))</p>
<p>, but UC San Diego, UC Riverside and UC Irvine are in the list. Hence as per USNWR, they provide better value than UCB and UCLA. I would assume that aid structure is different between these schools and there is more aid at the lesser ranked UC’s and hence UCB and UCLA get dinged. Go Figure.</p>
<p>^^^^
Yeah, I got that after rereading your earlier post. I forgot about the overall score. I was thinking strictly position, which didn’t make sense.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, hear, hear!</p>