New College Rankings?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'd be tickled pink to see college rankings for both liberal arts colleges and universities that took the following factors into account:</p>

<p>1) Student-faculty ratio
2) Percent of students going to graduate school
3) Endowment divided by total number of students (ugrad and grad)
4) Average financial aid grant (on average, how much does the school subsidize the cost of attendance with its own grants?)
5) Percent URM</p>

<p>I imagine that Harvard would be in first place, but I wonder where the other colleges would show up, especially some perennial favorites.... would anybody mind finding this data and creating a rank, rating each category equally?</p>

2

<p>Princeton bests Harvard on Student/Faculty ratio, according to USN&WR, 5-1 vs. 7-1. Also Princeton wins by a significant margin on endowment per student. USN&WR lists 9% black, 7% Hispanic at Princeton vs. 8% and 8% at Harvard. I know that the class of 2010 at Princeton is a student or two more than 10% black.</p>

3

<p>
[quote]
1) Student-faculty ratio

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</p>

<p>uchicago up</p>

<p>
[quote]
2) Percent of students going to graduate school

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</p>

<p>uchicago way up</p>

<p>
[quote]
3) Endowment divided by total number of students (ugrad and grad)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>northwestern way up</p>

<p>
[quote]
4) Average financial aid grant (on average, how much does the school subsidize the cost of attendance with its own grants?)

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</p>

<p>harvard, yale, princeton even more ahead</p>

<p>
[quote]
5) Percent URM

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</p>

<p>stanford up</p>

4

<p>Don't know what "up" means, but it is true that USN&WR has Stanford at 10% black, 11% Hispanic.</p>

5

<p>i was just listing what schools would move up in rankings as a result of taking each category into consideration; stanford has a really diverse student body</p>

6

<p>Dividing the June 30, 2006 endowment numbers from NACUBO by the total full time undergraduate and graduate numbers from the 2007 Newsweek "How To Get Into College", the top schools in endowment per student are-</p>

<p>Princeton...$1,933,151
Yale .........$1,578,309
Harvard......$1,494,043
Grinnell.......$952,007
Pomona......$951,183
Swarthmore.$845,979
MIT...........$824,115
Amherst.....$823,880
Rice...........$777,127
Stanford.....$742,041
Williams......$736,961
CalTech.....$728,871</p>

<p>A couple of schools mentioned-</p>

<p>U of Chicago..$345,349
Northwestern.$305, 030</p>

7

<p>I think it is important whether by "going on to graduate school" you mean people becoming MDs, Lawyers, and MBAs as well as PhDs. Including all, I doubt that there is a big difference between HYP and Stanford.
If you mean only PhDs, then schools like Swarthmore, Grinnell and the University of Chicago would rank high.</p>

8

<p>
[quote]
1) Student-faculty ratio

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Here's the problem: colleges use total number of undergraduates divided by total number of faculty, despite the fact that faculty spends more time with grad students than undergrads, or at least shares them equally. If UChicago has 1100 professor in arts and science, 4400 undergrads, and 4400 graduate students, it will publish 4:1 ratio, although 8:1 gives a better indication.</p>

<p>Slide 8 of the powerpoint gives a good idea of National Universities Rice considers its peer school:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.professor.rice.edu/professor/Size.asp?SnID=194578800%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.professor.rice.edu/professor/Size.asp?SnID=194578800&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Princeton: 7 to 1
Rice and Chicago: 8 to 1
Emory and Yale: 10 to 1
MIT, Harvard, and Brown: 11 to 1
Duke and Northwestern: 12 to 1
Stanford, Cornell, and Columbia: 13 to 1
Carnegie Mellon: 14 to 1
Johns Hopkins: 15 to 1</p>

<p>Note: Most top private national universities included. Caltech is 8 to 1 as well.</p>

<p>This doesn't really account for some faculty only doing researching, but is a better indicator than the numbers published by the college.</p>

<p>
[quote]
2) Percent of students going to graduate school

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</p>

<p>For PhD, Grinnell's institutional research site gives good numbers
<a href="http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/institutionalresearch/reports/PhDProd_F06.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/institutionalresearch/reports/PhDProd_F06.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It gives overall PhD and PhD by subject area, ranked by percentage of graduates. In ranking the different subjects, it only gives those ranked 5 above and 5 below Grinnell, or the top 10.</p>

<p>Overall, it's:
1. Caltech
2. Harvey Mudd
3. Swarthmore
4. Reed
5. MIT
6. Carleton
7. Oberlin
8. Bryn Mawr
9. Chicago
10. Grinnell</p>

<p>(The rest are in that link)</p>

<p>
[quote]
3) Endowment divided by total number of students (ugrad and grad)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The wikipedia site says it all. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_colleges_and_universities_by_endowment%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_colleges_and_universities_by_endowment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I would like to mention that Olin College of Engineering has $1.5 million per student in endowment, right between Harvard and Yale.</p>

<p>
[quote]
4) Average financial aid grant

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</p>

<p>I think US News and World Report posted this on their website. Someone on CC linked it a while back, but I can't find it now.</p>

<p>
[quote]
5) Percent URM

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</p>

<p>No idea. I think a community college in NYC has more URM than all the ivy leagues combined. URM form majorities. Perhaps look to historically black colleges.</p>

<p>I hope noone takes any of these rankings too seriously. It should give a general idea. Low faculty-staff ratio doesn't make the faculty good teachers. High graduate school could simply mean more people want to pursue PhD in the first place, or even perhaps because they couldn't find a job so they can only keep staying in school. Endowment doesn't mean the college spends all of it. Schools might be worse in financial aid because less poor student apply; all top colleges promise to meet full need.</p>

9

<p>On #4 (how much does the school subsidize the cost of attendance), there are at least a couple ways of looking at this. Two are the amount of scholarship grant and the amount of average debt for those graduating with debt.
From the College Board website for schools listing both, checking some of the "usual suspects", I found-</p>

<p>Average Need Based Grant-</p>

<p>Amherst......$33,272
Harvard.......$33,015
Williams.......$31,819
Princeton.....$28,209
Yale............$27,902
MIT.............$27,516
Swarthmore..$27,403
Stanford......$26,639
U of Chicago.$26,356
Grinnell........$19,411</p>

<p>Average Debt For Graduates With Debt-</p>

<p>Princeton.....$4.969
Harvard.......$9,717
Williams.......$9,943
Amherst......$11,626
Swarthmore.$13,404
Yale...........$14,306
Stanford.....$15,758
MIT...........$17,956
Grinnell.......$17,975
The Avg. Debt was not listed for the U of Chicago</p>

<p>Looking at your 5 criteria, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Princeton would rank #1, just as it does in the USN&WR rankings. I guess USN&WR isn't a complete fluke.
Of course all of these schools are terrific in their own right. I've spent much of my life hanging around the University of Chicago.
Full disclosure...my daughter will start at Princeton in the fall!</p>

10

<p>Rice would benifit from the S:F ratio part.</p>

11

<p>Yes, it would.</p>

12

<p>I heard about two siblings at Amherst a few years ago whose extremely wealthy parents refused to pay anything, and they had to each take out $120k in loans, raising the school average by $800 between the two of them. Crazy. The debt stat tells very little, though - as much how poor the student body is as how good the financial aid is.</p>

13

<p>I have to admit, none of these numbers really say anything at all, though I chose five that might "mean" something, especially put next to each other. </p>

<p>1)Student-faculty ratio would indicate how many professors there are around, not necessarily how many are teaching classes (at Chicago, for example, profs are required to teach undergrads-- at least that's what they tell us).... if nothing else, it's a start. I don't like those "percent under 20" "percent over 50" classes... Cornell's starting to cut down on some of its best classes, large lectures, to conform to the rankings. And why would a discussion class with 23 students be any worse than one with 19?</p>

<p>2) Percent going on to graduate school considers both the motivations of the students and the perceived quality of the institution. I was thinking calculating both professional, master's and PhD programs, not just PhD.</p>

<p>3) endowment per student also isn't indicative of very much, if the school isn't spending it, but it certainly means that there's enough money to go around and fund things. If there's something I've learned as a college student so far, it's that going to a school that has money to spend is a very, very good thing. I know Harvard has a bigger endowment overall-- next time my Harvard friends try to pull that "biggest endowment" stat on me I'll be able to tell them that Princeton's is larger per student :-)</p>

<p>4) Average Need-Based grant gives an idea of a) how socioeconomically diverse the students are, and b) how generous the university is. Chicago is a lot higher than I thought it would be, thanks danas for supplying that data.</p>

<p>5) Percent URM is cool... I think it's important for a school to be racially diverse, and I applaud schools that consider diversity a priority.</p>

<p>Didn't include SAT midrange... top schools consistently defer/reject students with scores out of their reported midrange. (How many times do you hear about the kids with 800's who don't get into Harvard? If the schools wanted higher SAT scores from their students, they could easily get them.)</p>

<p>Didn't include % admitted... some schools don't require any additional essays (Yale, Harvard, WashU, to name a few) and your dog could apply after he wrote the common app essay. Though it indicates that the applicant pool is large, it doesn't indicate how many students are academically qualified.</p>

<p>Didn't include peer review... it's my least favorite number of all the numbers, because I don't know where it comes from.</p>

<p>Didn't include prof salary... highly contingent on the cost of living.</p>

<p>etc.</p>

14

<p>
[quote]
Princeton...$1,933,151
Yale .........$1,578,309
Harvard......$1,494,043
Grinnell.......$952,007
Pomona......$951,183
Swarthmore.$845,979
MIT...........$824,115
Amherst.....$823,880
Rice...........$777,127
Stanford.....$742,041
Williams......$736,961
CalTech.....$728,871

[/quote]
</p>

<p>These numbers aren't right. Take MIT and Stanford for instance.</p>

<p>MIT 2006 Endowment: 8.4 billion
MIT Student Body: 10,253 students</p>

<p>Stanford 2006 Endowment: 15.2 billion
Stanford Student Body: 14,890 students</p>

<p>Do the math and it doesn't quite work out. At all.</p>

15

<p>We are very close on MIT.
I get endowment of $8,368,066,000, student body of 10,154</p>

<p>You are off on Stanford.
Endowment of $14,084,676,000, student body of 18,981</p>

16

<p>Stanford 2006 Endowment, from the San Francisco Chronicle: <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/01/BACADIGEST3.DTL%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/01/BACADIGEST3.DTL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Once again, from The Stanford Management Company:
<a href="http://www.stanfordmanage.org/smc_endowment.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanfordmanage.org/smc_endowment.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Also, student body counts:
Undergrads: <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/undergraduate.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/undergraduate.html&lt;/a>
6,689 matriculated</p>

<p>Grads: <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/graduate.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/graduate.html&lt;/a>
8,201 matriculated</p>

<p>6,689 + 8,201 = 14,890 students</p>

<p>No, I am right on the money with my numbers.</p>