Money's "Best Value" college rankings are out and they are somewhat surprising

@tk21769, the fall admit rate everyone looks can may be fairly and accurately reported and still be heavily manipulated (more by some schools than others). Of course, some schools simply lie while others don’t release a CDS (so that we don’t know the official number; just the first number put out in the press release before WL, summer melt, etc.) And what does the admit rate tell you about the quality of the student body when close to half the people who will eventually graduate don’t come from the pool of people that the admit rate applies to?

No, this is too simplistic. It’s not nearly as efficient and perfectly informed a market as you posit. Admit rates are a function of three factors—the number of people who apply, the number of seats to be filled, and the yield, i.e., the percentage of those offered admission who ultimately enroll. The first and third of these, applicants and yield, might arguably have something to do with a school’s perceived desirability, but the size of the enrolled freshman class is not, in itself, a marker of the desirability of a particular school (if it were, then other things equal the tiniest LACs would be the most desirable, and while that’s perhaps true for some people, it’s certainly not true for everyone). Yet the size of the enrolled freshman class is a powerful determinant of admit rate. Take two schools with identical numbers of applicants and identical yield curves, but school A’s entering class is half the size of school B’s. Do the math. School A’s admit rate will be exactly half that of school B. Does that mean school A is more desirable or perceived as “better” than school B? Of course not; not if identical numbers of people apply (call that primary demand) and identical percentages will attend if offered (call that final demand). It just means school A is smaller, that’s all. And it’s no accident that the schools with the lowest admit rates generally have relatively few seats to fill. It may surprise you to know that the University of Michigan actually gets more applicants than any Ivy (primary demand). In 2015, for example, Michigan had 51,761 applicants. Yale had 30,236. So Michigan had about 71% more. But Yale had only 1,364 seats to fill, while Michigan had 6,050. Michigan did have a lower yield (44.7% to Yale’s 67.1%), largely because Michigan doesn’t meet full need for OOS students—but even if Michigan’s yield had been identical to Yale’s, Yale would have had a much lower admit rate because its entering class was so much smaller, about 22.5% the size of Michigan’s.

Beyond that, the number of applicants can be manipulated. Many schools dramatically increased their applicant pools by switching to the Common App. Did that make those schools suddenly that much more desirable or “better”? No, it simply reduced the barriers to applying. Schools in the UC system get record-busting numbers of applicants because they all use the same application, so if you’re going to apply to any UC you can add others just by checking a box on the same application. That, combined with the fact that they’re the affordable in-state public options in a state with a mega-population of 39 million, ensures they’ll get tons of applications, and their admit rates will be relatively low. Does that mean a school like UC Davis with an admit rate of 40.6% is better than the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with an admit rate of 49.8%? I don’t think so. I think it mostly means that Wisconsin’s population is about 1/7 that of California, so Wisconsin is drawing on a much smaller base. Then there’s overt manipulation through branding and marketing, which some schools invest in heavily. Or waivers of application fees. Or shamefully misleading promotions by schools like Harvard, which sends out thousands of actual applications with a cover letter stating “We think you’re just the kind of student we’re looking for,” leading thousands of gullible people to apply thinking they’ve been hand-selected when in fact their chances of admission are slim to none, but it boosts Harvard’s applicant pool and drives down its admit rate, so hey, why not? Many schools also manipulate yield and ultimately admit rates by making heavy use of early decision; some schools fill up as much as half their entering class with binding early admits, on whom they get a yield approaching 100%, allowing them to have a much lower admit rate in the RD round, with the result that their final “blended” yield is much higher and their final admit rate much lower than would be the case if they admitted everyone RD. Similarly at the back end, some schools waitlist large numbers of students and then admit off the waitlist only if the student agrees to enroll if offered, driving up their yield and driving down their admit rate. In light of all this, it’s just naive to think admit rates tell us anything meaningful or objective about the quality of a school. But because some applicants naively equate a low admit rate with academic quality (and to its shame, US News promotes this misguided notion), schools that cross a certain threshold in lowering their admit rate tend to be on a glide path toward even lower admit rates, because a low admit rate boosts applications from the prestige-conscious, and allows those schools to reject even more applicants in the next round.

I’m talking about the combination of admission rate and average stats, not the admit rate alone.
Nor am I claiming that the market is completely efficient and perfectly informed.
The high concentrations of top students who tend to gravitate to the Ivies (and their peers) may be influenced by factors that aren’t completely rational (like perceived prestige), but surely they aren’t (collectively) completely stupid, uninformed, or duped by faked CDS data, year after year.

As for size v. selectivity, for reasons I don’t completely understand, it apparently is never the case that a small selective LAC gets as many applications as a large research university. A huge research university like NYU or USC might get ~50K applications; a small ~T20 LAC might get ~5K. Across all sizes of colleges, there is great variation in selectivity. So I’m skeptical that small size per se strongly influences admission selectivity (though it may be a factor, as it may be in other quality-ranking metrics such as class size, instructional spending per student, or alumni-earned PhDs per capita.)

15 - University of Florida! :)

@SouthFloridaMom9 - Lol. Go Gators! My twins both got into some of the top 10 but the best value at my house is where they can go for free and not be college poor. And no second mortgage.

^^you guys hit it out of the park @madredos! =D>

If the Money ranking doesn’t mean anything to you, why do you care? It’s maybe a ranking with little use to YOU, but another person can look at it and think ‘Oh, I never considered BYU but it looks like I can get a good education for a low tuition and still get a good paying job.’ Why does that change the value of the USNWR rankings or your bragging rights to the #4 spot or that you think your school is #27 on the USNWR but didn’t make the Money list because it costs a fortune and graduates a lot of librarians and not a lot of Wall Street bankers?

For people looking for a good value in a college, this might be a good chart to check. For someone looking for the best piano conservatory without regard to cost, this list would be useless, but so would the general USNWR.

^ the point is that there are many schools way down on that list that can give you a good education for a low tuition and still get a good paying job.

The bottom line is that the Money Ranking isn’t taken seriously by anyone except partisans who like that their pet school is higher up than on the generally accepted list. Michigan is a great university but ranking it second for undergraduates is silly and BYU is even worse. A cursory look through the list provides some minor humor but exposes their flawed methodology. For better or worse USN has dominated for so long because most knowledgeable people generally agree with the list. Everyone can find arguments about a few places here or there but none would ever put Williams remotely near 49. Garbage in gets you garbage out.

LOL. Choose to believe it or not, but it’s an undeniable mathematical relationship. Admit rate = X divided by (number of applicants), where X = (size of entering class) divided by (yield).

So if you have two schools with identical numbers of applicants and identical yields, but school A has an entering class half the size of school B, then school A will also have an admit rate exactly half that of school B. Assuming these schools also have applicant pools with identical stats, School A will also have higher median entering class stats, because school B will need to reach deeper into its applicant pool to fill twice as many seats.

There are, of course, many factors that influence the number of applicants, yield, and the quality of the applicant pool. But size also plays a direct and undeniable role in determining admit rate, and a less direct but IMO equally undeniable role in influencing median entering class stats. In my hypothetical, school B could very easily have just as many high-stats entering freshmen as school A, but because school B needs to dip deeper into the applicant pool it will also end up with substantially lower GPA and SAT/ACT medians.

This mathematical relationship is well understood by admissions officers and college and university administrators, by the way. Case in point: when the bottom fell out of law school applications a few years ago, the first thing many law schools did was to sharply reduce the size of their entering class, because they knew that was the only way they could maintain their median GPAs and LSAT scores, a vital component of their US News rankings. There’s absolutely no reason to think it works differently for undergraduate institutions.

Your analysis is flawed for many reasons. First of all this would only be true if the same applicants were only applying to these two schools. The best public colleges are UVA,UCB, and UCLA. If you look at their admitted and entering students there is virtually no overlap with the top rated schools. Are you really claiming HSYP have lower admit rates because they are smaller than pubic universities? This is true at the small LAC’s but for an entirely different reason. These colleges field 25-28 sports teams and most of the student athletes are recruited with an admission advantage along with other hooks. Once that is done it leaves very few positions for non-hooked students. This is also true to a lesser degree at the top private universities.

I’m not making a point about public v. private. The point is a purely mathematical one, and I think it’s irrefutable. Public v. private just confuses the issue because the dynamics and driving principles of admissions policies are quite different in the public context as opposed to private schools. Public universities have a mandate to educate large numbers of their own state’s residents. They generally aren’t free to pick and choose the top students who apply regardless of state of residence, as private schools are. [For the record, though, I strongly disagree with your premise that there is “virtually no overlap” in the credentials of applicants and entering freshmen at the top publics and the top privates; but that’s another discussion].

To illustrate my mathematical point, consider two private schools,Brown and Cornell. Both Ivies, both very good schools, ranked #14 and #15 respectively in U.S. News, so most would say they’re probably schools of similar quality drawing applicants from an overlapping applicant pool, or at least similarly credentialed applicant pools. Yet Brown has a significantly lower admit rate than Cornell—9.5% for Brown in 2015 v. 15.1% for Cornell in that same year, according to each school’s most recent CDS… Why? It’s not because Brown draws more applicants; quite, the opposite, Cornell drew about 38% more applicants than Brown in 2015 (30,396 to Brown v. 41,900 to Cornell)., Brown’s yield is slightly higher, 56.2% to Cornell’s 49.7%, but that’s not a big enough difference to account for the difference in admit rates. No, the biggest single difference is that Cornell’s entering class is almost twice the size of Brown’s, 1,615 at Brown v. 3,140 at Cornell in 2015. In short, Cornell has nearly twice as many seats to fill, and that means it needs to reach deeper into its applicant pool, offering admission to roughly twice as many students (2,875 admits at Brown v. 6,315 at Cornell) in order to fill twice as many seats. Hence the difference in admit rates.

[Note that even if Cornell had Brown’s 56.3% yield, its admit rate would dip only to 13.3%—still substantially above Brown’s 9.5%.]

And this has a significant effect on SAT medians. Brown’s middle 50%in 2015 was 680-780 CR and 690-780 M. Cornell’s middle 50% was 650-750 CR and 680-780 M. So essentially indistinguishable in SAT M, but a definite edge to Brown in SAT CR. But let’s think about this for a moment. A 75th percentile 780 CR at Brown means that approximately 404 entering freshmen at Brown had CR scores of 780 or higher. A 75th percentile 750 CR score at Cornell means that approximately 785 entering freshmen at Cornell had CR scores of 750 or higher. We can’t tell for certain from the data, but there’s a strong possibility that as many or more entering freshmen had CR scores of 780 or higher at Cornell than at Brown. What we do know for certain is that with identical 75th percentile M scores and an entering class roughly twice as large at Cornell, roughly twice as many entering freshmen at Cornell had SAT M scores of 780 or higher (again, 404 at Brown v. 785 at Cornell). The same logic applies at the 25th percentile level. There are actually more top scorers at Cornell than at Brown (on the M side it’s not even close, even if Brown maintains a slight edge on the CR side, which is questionable). But Cornell’s SAT medians end up a bit lower because it has nearly twice as many seats to fill, which means it needs to dip deeper into its applicant pool.

As a result of a lower admit rate and slightly higher SAT medians—all the artifact of a smaller entering class—Brown has a decided edge in US News’ selectivity rank, #13 for Brown v. #20 for Cornell. And that’s easily enough to place Brown ahead of Cornell in the overall US News ranking, where “student selectivity” counts for 12.5% of a school’s overall ranking.

There’s no question US News’ methodology systematically favors smaller schools.

I’m not sure Cornell is a good school to use in the discussion. It has some public college components which none of the other Ivies do.

^ Yes, and if you compare only the Cornell CAS with Brown, I think you’ll find the CAS still has a higher admit rate than Brown, despite a student body that is smaller than Brown’s.

The average admit rate for the USNWR top 10 LACs (or top 11, including ties) is 15.8%.
That’s approximately equal to Berkeley’s admission rate, but nearly double the average for the top 11 national universities. If we nevertheless want to claim that certain college ranking metrics systematically favor small schools (or private schools), then let’s either come up with a better set of metrics, or else separate the schools. US News already separates LACs from universities. In my opinion the argument is stronger for separating public from private universities in a ranking, like Money’s, that focuses on costs (or ROI, or “value”). The Money ranking may be plausible for ~full-pay “donut hole” families (~T10% to ~T5% by income) or for residents of one of the states with a highly ranked public university. Otherwise, I think the Kiplinger “best value” rankings are better organized and more plausible. Though I agree that if any of them help struggling families find good affordable schools, then great, use whatever works for you.

I do think that in general, it is reasonable to assume that if College A is much more selective than College B, then College A probably is objectively “better” in significant ways than College B (especially if we’re comparing colleges that are otherwise similar in kind). If this isn’t reasonable, broadly speaking, then maybe we ought to reexamine the long-standing reach-match-safety strategy. Why seek out more-selective colleges at all if you don’t believe they tend to be objectively “better”? Whether they are better by a big enough margin to justify a certain price difference is best assessed for each family’s circumstances.

While I agree with bclintonk’s larger point in general, the women’s colleges often throw a wrench in this, because they have higher admission rates than comparable co-ed colleges, but that’s because they are self-selecting in their applicant pool – obviously men can’t apply, and the all-women aspect is only appealing to a subset of qualified women. In other words, they tend to be an admissions bargain for a top female student.

@tk21769: “Why seek out more-selective colleges at all if you don’t believe they tend to be objectively “better”?”

Maybe some kids shouldn’t. Reach-match-safety may be useful in terms of evaluating chances, but they shouldn’t be used to rank personal preferences. For some, match-safety may be perfectly fine.

And if you go by alumni accomplishments (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html), there are a few “undervalued” options there (including some all-female colleges).

Setting aside the big v. small, public v. private dynamics for a minute …
consider how Money ranks Earlham College (#28) v. Swarthmore College (#100).
Does anyone else think these results look a little out-of-whack?

My kids attended Quaker high schools. Many of their classmates would have considered Earlham a desirable safety school. Only the best students would have seriously considered applying to Swarthmore. I cannot imagine too many top students turning down Swarthmore for Earlham if the net prices were close. Nevertheless, I could be persuaded that for some students, it might not make sense to pay a huge price premium for Swarthmore over Earlham.
The thing is, though, as I run the College Board NPC for various hypothetical family scenarios, I’m not seeing those big price premiums. Or actually I do … but they favor Swarthmore.

For $30K family income (w/ no siblings, no home equity, and $15K cash savings), the estimated net prices are:
$15,545 Earlham
$2,000 Swarthmore

For $60K family income (w/ no siblings, no home equity, and $30K cash savings), the estimated net prices are:
$18,595 Earlham
$5,996 Swarthmore

For $120K family income (w/ no siblings, no home equity, and $60K cash savings), the estimated net prices are:
$30,210 Earlham
$18,523 Swarthmore

For $180K family income (w/ no siblings, no home equity, and $90K cash savings), the estimated net prices are:
$45,110 Earlham
$35, 285 Swarthmore

At some point Earlham begins to be cheaper just because its sticker price is lower.
But for that to be true, your family income would need to be somewhere in the US top 10% or less.
And as your family income rises much beyond that point, you probably won’t begrudge paying a few thousand dollars per year more for Swarthmore … if you believe it’s a significantly better college. The admit rates (S=17%, E=64.5%) seem to suggest that is what many top students do believe. So what is Money seeing that justifies ranking Earlham so much higher? Maybe it runs cheaper for the average Money magazine subscriber?

@tk21769, NPC doesn’t take in to account merit awards. My understanding is that Earlham gives out merit money while they are almost impossible to get at Swarthmore.

And in fact, according to the US government, the average annual costs paid by FA recipients at Earlham ($19.4K/year):
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?name=earlham&sort=advantage:desc
is less than the average annual costs paid by FA recipients at Swarthmore ($24.2K/year):
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?name=swarthmore&sort=advantage:desc

And in 2011 (where I could find data), the admit rate for Cornell CAS was 15.5% (https://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000003.pdf)
Admit rate for Brown in 2011 was 13.5% (https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■/2011-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/)

A difference, but not much of one.

I agree completely. I don’t think you can compare LACs with research universities on the size/selectivity question because LACs are competing in a much smaller niche market; most students have no interest in going to schools that small, consequently the applicant pools of LACs are tiny in comparison to those of research universities (in addition to which the LACs tend to be less well known and even more regionally flavored, which also contributes to their small applicant pools) But you can compare LACs to each other. If you look at the US News top 10 LACs, Wellesley—the only women’s college in the group–sticks out like a sore thumb with a 30.3% admit rate in 2015, roughly double the median figure for the top 10. This is mainly because Wellesley has by far the smallest applicant pool in the group, only 4,555 as compared to roughly 7,000 to 8,000 for most of the top 10 LACs. That’s because half the college-age population, the male half, is simply ineligible to apply to Wellesley.

But it turns out that’s not the only factor. Wellesley also has the largest entering class among the top 10 LACs, 595 in 2015, which is roughly 20% larger than the median for the group. And there’s a pretty consistent correlation among these schools between the size of the entering class and admit rate. The smallest of them, Claremont McKenna with only 343 entering freshmen in 2015, had the second-lowest admit rate at 10.8%. Lowest admit rate at 10.3% went to Pomona with the second-smallest entering class, 400. Third-smallest and third-lowest admit rate went to Swarthmore (407 and 12.1%). Fourth-smallest and fourth-lowest admit rate went to Amherst (477 and 14.2%). Fifth-lowest admit rate (14.9%) went to 6th-smallest Bowdoin. The correlation isn’t perfect even among these schools, the outlier here being Carleton which was the 5th-smallest but had only the 8th-lowest admit rate due to both a smaller-than-average applicant pool for this group and the lowest yield in the group, probably because of its location on the frozen Northern tundra of Minnesota. Over a larger group of schools many other factors will affect both the size of the applicant pool and yield, thus influencing admit rates. But in an otherwise closely matched set of schools with comparable applicant pools and comparable yields, the size of the entering class will be an important factor in determining the admit rate. That’s simply a mathematical reality, and I’m surprised it’s meeting so much resistance here.