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<p>Here is an example of a “totally arbitrary” list of criteria:
- age of the college president
- number of letters in the school’s name
- collective weight of the women’s volleyball team members
- average annual donations from alumni named “Pete” for the past 20 years</p>
<p>Here are examples of criteria that are not totally arbitrary:
- selectivity (based on admit rate, average SAT scores, and average GPA/rank)
- average class size
- average faculty salary
- endowment per student
- graduation and retention rates
- average alumni starting & mid-career salaries
- library size
- alumni PhDs per capita
- major faculty awards & national academy memberships, adjusted for school size</p>
<p>There is a fairly self-evident relationship between the above criteria and college quality. Nobody needs to convince me that small classes, well-paid professors, and high-achieving alumni are desirable features. But if you don’t agree, try repeatedly picking any 3 (or so) at random to generate your own rankings. See if the same schools don’t show up nearly every time in the resulting top N. The major rankings are based on criteria like these; these criteria tend to be mutually correlated (i.e. very selective schools tend also to have small classes, high faculty salaries, big libraries, highly paid alumni, etc.)</p>