Until USNWR discounts the “click, drop in cart, and send” application process going on with schools that don’t charge an application fee and/or don’t require supplemental essays, that portion of the USNWR ranking system will be meaningless - Colby, while a great school, wouldn’t have achieved a sub-15% acceptance rate without fitting into that box - there are other examples as well…
@tk21769 wrote:
Your example is well-taken. There is a correlation when when you look at the tiers.
The lack of correlation that I was referring to is among the top 20 LACs.
@CrewDad, most of the top-20 LAC’s are listed in posting #28 so I think it correlates well. Not certain why Bowdoin and Smith were omitted as I would have thought they would have each been $30k+ per student. Service Academies aren’t included which makes sense - not certain why they are listed as LAC’s by USNWR.
For me, per student spending and endowment provide insight that isn’t readily distinguishable when evaluating USNWR rankings given they still heavily weight peer/HS GC evaluations and institution driven acceptance rates as compared to student outcomes and student testing profiles
Undergraduate institution, no grad schools. Public LACs, more or less.
I believe you meant post # 18, which is where I got the data that I used in post #26.
This isn’t difficult. My point is that Amherst, Vassar, Davidson, Middlebury, Colby, Colgate, etc spend significantly less per student than # 1 Williams yet still ranked from # 2 to # 12 in US News. Only Pomona, Wellesley, Washington and Lee and Williams spent more per student that Hamilton, yet Hamilton ranked # 18. In other words, spending more per student doesn’t always correlate with a higher ranking, perceived prestige, etc. It’s not a big deal 
@Chembiodad not sure- you can filter institutions by variable and Bowdoin/Smith didn’t show up in the list I made (SAT 25% CR >= 600, SAT 25% M >= 600). In any case, Bowdoin’s spending per student on instruction is $29,673, whereas Smith’s is $27,640.
So when are we all going to address the elephant in the room that spending per student likely does not correlate at all with student academic experience? Endowments allow for a lot of research for some schools, new facilities and expansion for others, and can go many other places as well. Unless we have budgets to show what is actually being spent on, this is all pointless.
Here’s a question for people here: Would faculty average salaries by major be a better or worse stat? Does pay of professors correlate to teaching ability? If not this stat, exactly what part of endowment spending per student is significant for an academic experience?
@CrewDad, yes, you proved my point that the USNWR rankings are weighted towards weak criteria; no offense to the GC industry, but HS guidance counselors, who do a great job getting students ready for the next step, aren’t playing a role in a college student’s outcome and therefore their opinion as to a schools prestige is moot - that will come from great faculty, great resources, great alumni, a really smart peer group in class, which will result in a great outcome.