<p>I can think of at least a dozen majors that would be better at Indiana than at Notre Dame--anything in music, business, languages, and social sciences for starters.</p>
<p>The Revealed Preference Ranking indicates the net result of high school seniors decision-making process. The decision process no doubt varies from student to student and involves different factors for different students. With respect to the top 56 Revealed Preference colleges listed at the beginning of this thread, it appears that students are making decisions systematically and predictably. The rankings are prdictable based on college selectivity, cost, peer assessment, faculty resources, class size, graduation rate, college financial resources, alumni giving, liberal arts versus university structure, and optimal size. I am not saying that all students deliberately follow a systematic approach that takes these factors consciously into account. I have no way of knowing how all these students make their choice. What I am saying is that, whatever their natural decision process involves, the outcome is not random. If they are making their decisions about these 56 colleges in ignorance, they must be very lucky indeed.</p>
<p>The Revealed Preference elo score is based on dichotomous choices. The choices are in turn based on many different things. I've tried to study what those things might be using some software I have on my computer. It has not yielded any final answers but it makes some interesting suggestions.</p>
<p>Here is a list of individual things that seem to matter in student choice taken from US News, the IPEDS COOL website, Princeton Review, and other sources. That is, they are related to elo scores. I've listed the important ones and put a percentage after them. The percentage is more or less indicates how much influence that factor has on choice (elo score). The percentages add up to more than 100% because factors overlap. For example, peer assessment and selectivity are not mutually exclusive. Peer assessment takes selectivity into account as well as other things. </p>
<p>SAT 75th percentile 60%
SAT 25th plus 75th 56%
SAT 25th percentile 49%<br>
peer assessment 45%
US News overall score 31%
graduation rate 26%
alumni giving 20%
ave institutional grant 13%
college financial resources 16%
difference from ave enroll 10%
LAC or University 10%
percent classes under 20 7%</p>
<p>"difference from average enrollment" is the difference in undergrad enrollment between each school and the averga enrollment of the 56 (7865). Is there an optimal size?</p>
<p>I was not able to esteblish whether the follwing had a relationship to elo points: % classes over 50, % full time faculty, public or private, located in a coastal state, located in the north or south, Princeton Review Academics score, Princeton Review campus life score, enrollment size, population of the state where the campus is located (the small northeastern states made this hard to analyze because their populations were smaller but they were collectively in a high population area).</p>
<p>By using a certain combination of the the factors listed above, I was able to account for 82% of the differences in elo scores. This suggests that there is a certain rationality in the college admissions market. In fact, there were 4 key indicators that, by themselves, explained 73% of the differences in elo points. The combination of 4 factors was:</p>
<p>US News peer assessment
SAT 75th percentile
LAC or university structure
campus life rating from Princeton Review</p>
<p>From this analysis, I concluded that the Revealed Preference Ranking had validity and that a substantial contributor to the Revealed Preference Ranking was college quality.</p>
<p>Barrons,</p>
<p>Are you saying Indiana is a better choice for a high school senior than Notre Dame (knowing that if they are too dumb to choose the better college they are certainly too dumb to choose a career and thus major)?</p>
<p>There wold be a lot of shocked college students in Bloomington and South Bend...to say the least!</p>
<p>How dogmatic are you about this?</p>
<p>Arizona is as good at undergrad as Tufts (according to the Peer Assessors)?</p>
<p>Berkeley better than Cal Tech?</p>
<p>Ohio State (3.7) is better than:
.......................Tufts (3.6)<br>
........................Brandies (3.6)
........................Boston College (3.6)
........................Wake Forest (3.5)?</p>
<p>Really? Peer Assessment seems a pretty poor judge of schools.</p>
<p>Peer Assessment is pretty good and poor at the same time.</p>
<p>Reasons:
1. The professors who are involved in the assessment normally would have bias towards their alma maters and schools which are full of their colleagues.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Accordingly, peer assessment is in fact an assessment measure for graduate schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Since it is a measure for graduate schools but averaged across all majors, schools which have over-emphasis on narrow fields like Caltech are at disadvantage.</p></li>
<li><p>It's a pretty solid indicator, esp. for the graduate school ranking list.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I'd say Indiana is a better choice if you wish to major in music, drama, voice, business, sociology, most languages, computer science, environmental science and others. It has far more top faculty and resources in these and other areas.</p>
<p>I think the US News peer assessment survey for America's Best Colleges is sent only to Presidents, Provosts, and Deans of Admission (who may delegate it to others but who still have responsibility for its content). It is not sent to faculty. The instructions indicate that respondants are to rate undergraduate programs, not graduate.</p>
<p>Barrons, </p>
<p>I'm guessing Indiana was not on your short list, lol
How about Ohio State?</p>
<p>A couple more points about the peer assessment survey in US News Best Colleges:</p>
<p>The President, Provost, or Dean of Admissions only rates their peer institutions (institutions in the same US News category), not all institutions. For Masters/Regional colleges, this means rating only colleges in the same region. I believe National Universities and National Liberal Arts are rated only by those in their respective category. Universities do not rate Liberal Arts Colleges and vice versa.</p>
<p>The schools are actually listed one by one on the survey with a scale alongside each one that goes from "marginal" to "distinguished". There is also a "don't know" category next to each college.</p>
<p>The rater is supposed to take into account the record of scholarship, the curriculum, and the quality of faculty and graduates at each college. (It specifically refers to undergraduate programs).</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I agree that some of the peer rankings seem out of order.</p>
<p>Through work and recruiting for work I have a high regard for IU business grads. I have also worked with some Domers and was less impressed. IU's Music School is considered among the top 5 in the nation public or private. WAY better than what ND has to offer in that area.</p>
<p>Barrons,</p>
<p>I don't know about everyone else, but you've convinced me that Indiana is in fact superior to Notre Dame and should be ranked accordingly: that would make Indiana #17 in USNWR.</p>
<p>Anybody else want to hop on board this one:</p>
<p>Indiana, the top 20 school coming to a Ranking near You!</p>
<p>But why stop there:</p>
<p>Ohio State (according to Peer Assessment) in the top 25 tied with Georgetown and UCLA just ahead of Wake Forest and Tufts.</p>
<p>Ohio State, the top 25 school coming to a Ranking near You!</p>
<p>(look out HYP, Ohio State and Indiana are gaining on you!)</p>
<p>Barrons,</p>
<p>Maybe so but I can tell you that this has no bearing on recruiters or even entry to grad school. Schools are looked at wholistically by recruiters and grad schools generally (I give you the importance of a particular program in music, film, and maybe computer science) but in less vocational subject matters the overall school is so much more important. When McKinsey visits Duke they don't care whether its psycology program is 10th or 50th, the same applies for grad school. Why do you think law, business, med, and many advanced graduate schools don't care what your major is?</p>
<p>I made very clear what areas I was talking about. I bet the top classical orchestras recruit a lot more at Indiana than at Duke. McKinsey is in the top .005% of employers. How many do they hire at Duke-a handful at most. How many at ND-maybe a couple at most. Pretty much everyone else recruits at Indiana. IU's business school placement is as good as ND's or better.</p>
<p>You're all a bunch of lemmings.</p>
<p>Barrons,</p>
<p>I only used McKinsey as an example. My point is that recruiters and grad schools don't care how good your major is, they care how good the school you go to is (with a couple exceptions like Music, Film, etc).</p>
<p>Barrons,</p>
<p>The US News peer assessment is a score for the overall university. Its great how you've now switched the focus to individual departments...nice try. I'm sure there is a 2nd tier state U out there that has one single department thats better than Harvard's....so I guess by your logic a prospective student should turn down Harvard. </p>
<p>I don't think anyone rationale believes that Indiana should have a score equal to that of Notre Dame if you're rating overall universities. </p>
<p>US News peer assessment=very iffy or complete garbage...take your pick, but the Revealed Preferences ranking is superior.</p>
<p>I don't think ND is all that hot as a school. It attracts high quality students due to the name but hardly anyone on their staff would get hired at Michigan, Northwestern, or Chicago and a lot would not get hired at Indiana.</p>
<p>If I wanted to study music I'd seriously consider Indiana over Harvard.</p>
<p>RP is garbage--a popularity contest.</p>
<p>Me too, but only MUSIC! Same with Film! Same with marketing! Maybe a couple more areas like engineering if you actually want to be an engineer (i.e. not go into business afterwards). That's about it. Otherwise choose the better overall school.</p>
<p>I'd take Harvard too for most things. But Indiana vs. Notre Dame--not that clear cut IMHO. Same for IU vs Emory, Tufts and some other similar schools. Once you get out of the Top 10-15 is the reputation really that much more compelling? I doubt it.</p>
<p>I don't understand the constant ND-bashing on this board.</p>
<p>"hardly anyone on their staff would get hired at Michigan, Northwestern, or Chicago and a lot would not get hired at Indiana."</p>
<p>I'm not sure how that could be proven...</p>