<p>Have many of you visited the OIR page on college web sites. I have to be honest schools with plenty of available data on their web pages move up a notch in my ranking. The NC system has information of all types - on the whole the best I have seen. UMBC has information that included student evaluation of teachers- the instructor is ranked in many areas. It provides the # of students enrolled in the class and how many submitted the survey.
One school my D likes has hardly any information and the majority of what they have requires a password to access. The school moves down a notch in my mind.
The information available can really be valuable- although I have to admit while I like all the data my kid will still base her decision on the "tour guide" friends opinion, the weather the day we visited etc.
If you used the OIR info. can you tell me what schools had good/bad sites. Thanks.</p>
<p>I've looked at the OIR site for the College of Wooster, which my older daughter attends. Wooster has an excellent website, overall.</p>
<p>I often visit OIR web sites to gather info for posts here. However I have also noticed that the more highly selective colleges tend to be far less transparent in the data available to the general public, with many reports being passworded. Same goes for post grad career/grad school data.</p>
<p>originaloog- locking the information by requiring a password bothers me. I am all for transparency. That is why I am so impressed with UNC system- all the information is out there. I guess private schools have the rignt to keep the data from us but I would hope public schools would not. My feeling is that by locking away the data the schools increase the importance of rankings and guidebooks. I guess those highly rated have a vested interest in the current system. The less selective may want to provide the data to shout look how good we are.</p>
<p>hindo, I did my laps around our neighborhood lake in my COW tee!</p>
<p>Most state universities are governed by state law (surprise, surprise) that prevents them from keeping too much information secret. (They are also often governed by state procurement rules, HR policies and such.)</p>
<p>Private universities have far fewer restrictions on their actions, and do indeed keep much useful information away from the prying eyes of the public. We are all losers because of this.</p>
<p>I would be very surprised if you could even find anyting useful at top privates. Harvard only provides its PR tested "fact book"</p>
<p>Yale at least has a page of good links: <a href="http://www.yale.edu/oir/otherlinks.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.yale.edu/oir/otherlinks.html</a></p>
<p>Brown has some interesting tables: <a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/tables/%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/tables/</a> Table 13 is very interesting. Field with the lowest percentage of honors? social sciences.</p>
<p>Brown grade inflation? See table 21! By discipline, percentage of A and B:</p>
<p>Humanities 48%, 15%
Life Sciences 50, 28!!!
Physical Sciences 46, 25
Social Scienses 51, 26
Overall, 49, 22 and for completeness, 4.2% C, (poor kids!) 21% S (passed) rest incomplete, NC etc. </p>
<p>So if you were wondering about Brown grade inflation, the facts speak for themselves.</p>
<p>Columbia's site gives little new info</p>
<p>Cornell has some interesting surveys: <a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/IP_E_Surveys_Results.htm%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/IP_E_Surveys_Results.htm</a></p>
<p>Penn has mostly "under construction"</p>
<p>Princeton just gives the common dataset</p>
<p>Dartmouth has nothing useful</p>
<p>So good luck fact finding!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yale at least has a page of good links: <a href="http://www.yale.edu/oir/otherlinks.html%5B/url%5D%5B/quote%5D">http://www.yale.edu/oir/otherlinks.html
[/quote]
</a></p>
<p>At the OIR main page, you can also find the CDS as well as some historical data (dating to 1701), which, while perhaps not relevant to the current student is at least interesting. See <a href="http://www.yale.edu/oir/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.yale.edu/oir/index.html</a></p>
<p>I have always been able to find what I was interested in by typing Common Data Set into the search function for Vanderbilt. Of course, the most recent data won't be available until October.</p>
<p>2vu,</p>
<p>The problem with the common data set is that it is so limited. Many OIR do much more interesting stuff, as you can see at the Brown website. Too bad such data is not more generally available.</p>
<p>To me the CDS is just a starting point, a usefull screen, if you will. But it tells you nothing about the policies and culture of a place. More thorough IR does.</p>
<p>newmassdad- I agree with you about the limited use for the CDS and also about the information made available by the public colleges. While I was not on the UNC- CH site I was on the others and for a research nut like myself the information is amazing. The availability of this information has actual sold me on some schools and because of the limits on data at some private schools my D will not apply.</p>
<p>tom1944,</p>
<p>The blocking of the release of information is, to me, shocking and disappointing. I remember reading a WSJ article about alcohol abuse in college and what some places were doing about it back when we were developing my D's college list. The article mentioned a researcher who was employed by my own employer. I emailed him asking what had been published, whether institutional specific data was available and such. His reply was that, in order to get cooperation from the various colleges, he had to guarantee confidentiality of the data and the results, other than in aggregate. </p>
<p>Needless to say, I found this disappointing. But, as I read books like "the early admissions game" (EAG), which was published the next year, I realized how far many colleges, especially elite private ones, go in hiding relevant information from us parents, or "consumers". They even go so far as engage in outright disinformation. For example, elites have been saying for years that ED gave no advantage. Surprise, third party research, such as that in EAG, showed it gave a big advantage, using the U's own data. It strains credibility to imagine that those same U's were not aware of this: that they had not analyzed their own data to see the effect.</p>