New "Revealed Preference" Ranking Released

<p>Here are the top 25 colleges and universities (as determined by a study examining which schools students are most likely to attend if admitted to multiple schools):</p>

<p>1 Harvard
2 Yale
3 Stanford
4 Cal Tech
5 MIT
6 Princeton
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 Amherst
10 Dartmouth
11 Wellesley
12 U Penn
13 U Notre Dame
14 Swarthmore
15 Cornell
16 Georgetown
17 Rice
18 Williams
19 Duke
20 U Virginia
21 Northwestern
22 Pomona
23 Berkeley
24 Georgia Tech
25 Middlebury</p>

<p>If you look at the original report, based on ELO points (too complicated to explain here), then Middlebury is actually 23 with 2114 points and Berkeley & Georgia Tech tied for 24 with 2115 points.</p>

<p><a href="http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Because the variables are so minimal, schools separated by three points or less are actually comparable. Rice at 17 and Williams at 18 are separated by a single point; they should be tied at 17, for all intests and purposes.</p>

<p>It's a very interesting list, with several schools in places you wouldn't have thought possible, e.g. Furman at 30, Michigan at 42, WUSTL at 62, Miami at 55, Colby at 71 and Hamilton at 94.</p>

<p>It's not the ranking that's particularly interesting, but the study. The section on strategic admissions in which the authors describe how they know that Princeton practices strategic admissions while MIT does not is fascinating. Thanks for the post.</p>

<p>interesting stuff</p>

<p>Beware: the final draft of this study is flawed and from what I can see the pdf file has not been corrected. The researchers themselves admitted to inadvertantly omitting some data (including Boston College)</p>

<p>Collegeparent, the Revealed Preferences is not a ranking of academic excellence or of reputation. It is popularity ranking. that explains why schools like Cal, Chicago, Johns Hopkins and Michigan do so poorly in it.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The section on strategic admissions in which the authors describe how they know that Princeton practices strategic admissions while MIT does not is fascinating.

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</p>

<p>Of course, an alternate explanation of those two graphs is that MIT's admissions process simply weights SAT scores more heavily than Princeton's. A school that based its entire selection process on SAT scores, taking into account absolutely nothing else, would probably have a graph that looks a lot like MIT's.</p>

<p>"popularity ranking"- I disagree with this label. It is illogical to think that these rankings are based on something as trivial as popularity simply because of the numerous LACs that are listed. LACs are generally unknown except to the people who are very college savvy. How popular are Swathmore, Pomona, Williams etc. Considering their small student body they probably don't recieve the attention, or what you would call "popularity" that schools such as mich, and berk. would recieve. I think a better label would be "student esteemed".</p>

<p>Good point UVAjoe. It is basically a student opinion poll.</p>

<p>This is just another in a long line of "closed-loop" surveys with methodologies designed to produce a desired result.</p>

<p>Think about it. They surveyed just 3000 students and only students from a relative handful of "feeder" high schools with large numbers of students getting accepted to the "top" schools. The very nature of the sample, because it over-represents wealthy, northeastern prep and suburban high schools, is going to produce the same-old results. The methodology penalizes schools outside of the northeast, public universities, and any school that is not "old-money".</p>

<p>Put it another way. If you go to the "top" colleges, ask them which wealthy high schools send them the majority of their students, and then survey those high schools, you are going to get a predictable result -- especially if you further filter out the impact of two strong "revealed-preference factors (early-decision and merit aid). Couching that result in pseudo-science doesn't change the fact that this is just another ho-hum attempt to validate a desired outcome. It is just another exercise in brand-name recognition among a small group of targeted consumers; not unlike asking the shoppers on Rodeo Drive which is their favorite French designer label.</p>

<p>"The methodology penalizes schools outside of the northeast, public universities, and any school that is not "old-money"."</p>

<p>it also gives weird results. like in real life, rarely does one choose UC Santa Cruz over UC San Diego.</p>

<p>Well the method was not designed to produce a result. It was a demonstration of the method, with the sample they could obtain. The authors explain that they would love to have more data, from a larger selection of students and schools, but collecting the data is difficult and expensive. They actually approached USNews to do a large study with this design, covering a much larger sample, but USNews said it would be too expensive. </p>

<p>So you get a preferences study that is revealing for a certain type of student, with a certain set of choices. It shows the colleges these students chose when they had a choice. It is probably reasonable to extrapolate to students elsewhere who also have enough money that financial considerations do not trump prestige and who also attend high schools that send a large number of students to elite colleges. It is illustrative of the approach one could use if the data were available for a national sample, but the results actually might not change that much. They took account of financial aid, and students for whom cost is a major issue often end up at their state colleges. Since there are many of them, the effect would be to dilute each one (Virginia resident go to Virginia, Michigan residents to Michigan, Iowa residents to Iowa, etc). Harvard could well end up at the top, even with a full sample of all high school students. Of course few of them even apply to Harvard, but, among those who do, Harvard still attracts the great majority of those it accepts.</p>

<p>[
[quote]
]It's not the ranking that's particularly interesting, but the study. The section on strategic admissions in which the authors describe how they know that Princeton practices strategic admissions while MIT does not is fascinating.[

[/quote]
]
It is a joke to believe Princeton practices strategic admissions. Many highly-qualified students that apply ED to Princeton that get deferred, then rejected are eventually accepted at Harvard/Stanford/Yale.</p>

<p>Well at the time it was written, Princeton did not dispute this observation. In fact, they counted on it to fill their class with top students, some of whom would have been admitted to HYS, by getting them to apply ED.</p>

<p>Under new admissions management they reportedly have changed their practices.</p>

<p>"It is a joke to believe Princeton practices strategic admissions. Many highly-qualified students that apply ED to Princeton that get deferred, then rejected are eventually accepted at Harvard/Stanford/Yale."</p>

<p>Do you have any proof? They did an entire study on this and Princeton implicitly acknowleged that it was true. How can you refute this well-established claim with a sentence of BS?</p>

<p>In fact, this may explain why Princeton is the only school in HYSMP that uses Early Decision. I suspect that if Princeton went Early Action she would get torn to bits by Harvard, Stanford, and Yale like the paper tiger that she is.</p>

<p>As someone just mentioned, those ways of admission were before the times of Rapelye. Under her direction, Princeton admission has drastically changed as many people now know. Princeton, with the exception of Harvard, competes very well during the RD round against Yale and Stanford, many of the times winning more admits in the Stanford-Princeton cross-admit pool. Princeton's selectivity and overall admissions have greatly changed under the new president's direction, hence, ranking at the top, or near the top, in many Selectivity Rankings.</p>

<p>Throughout many debates on CC, many people if not most have usually agreed that Princeton, sometimes Harvard, is the most difficult school in terms of selectivity. And, throughout posts here on CC and rankings on selectivity, Stanford usually comes in last. </p>

<p>The main reason Princeton still uses Early Decision is because its graduate programs are still not known. Also, it does not advertise as much as schools such as Harvard. Since graduate programs are usually much more prestigious than undergraduate, Princeton's lack of many distinctive schools such as law, business, and medicine have caused it to fall behind Harvard and Yale in terms of prestige. In its competition against Harvard and Yale (Stanford and MIT are much less significant), Princeton needs ED in order to capture those that are truly interested in its school. As you very might well know, Princeton has the lowest number of applicants each year of HYP and less international prestige, mainly because of its lack of graduate programs, thus, the lower amount of prestige.</p>

<p>As we have seen in the carefully planned out study, Princeton loses miserably to Stanford and Yale. Where did you find the data that Princeton wins cross-admits from Stanford? The study suggests otherwise.</p>

<p>Anyway, Princeton not using EA is already an admission of defeat. You can't say that "oh, but Princeton doesn't have a good grad program" as an excuse. What does a grad program have to do with undergrad desirability? Berkeley has a wonderful grad program and yet it is a safety school for the HYSM-bound. And you're using the excuse that Princeton doesn't advertise? Baloney. That's not the reason that undergrads choose HYSM over Princeton.</p>

<p>Quit ragging on Princeton. I don't see anything revolutionary about the rankings. If Princeton is so darn bad, why does it rank just under Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and Caltech in selectivity? All the ranking does is rearrange the already established acronymns people use on this board. Instead of HYPSMC it's HYSCMP. Oh my god, the world is going to end! Princeton is so horrible! </p>

<p>Get a sense of perspective dudes. Princeton is still one of the 6 most selective schools in the country.</p>

<p>Give credit where credit is due. This is a better measure of institutional prestige value within the US high school community than the USNEWS rankings.</p>