<p>@Hunt
Agreed. But the point is not to say that college A is always better than college B but to recognize signs when college B may have a problem (poor college culture, bad teaching, lack of student challenge, bad curriculum) or alternatively identify what college A may be doing well. These clues could be used to dig deeper to try to determine if there actually is a problem. Some of the GRE test is general enough (not the subject tests) - I would expect that the reading sections of the GRE should go up relative to expected score depending on how rigorous some of the electives the student took were, but even the subject tests could be interesting if scores go down over a period of a few years at the same University without the curriculum changing.</p>
<p>Since we lack almost any useful data to compare college outcomes (other than the Payscale data, PhD outcomes, and percentages of certain academic awards) - having any objective data would be helpful, especially since there is a common perception (probably true, but hard to test) that:
- harder schools with good professors and small classes and better pools of students help make their classmates smarter (but is the effect really that strong? and how much is it worth?)</p>