<p>SAT midpoint + HS GPA + class ranks would make a sensible high quality student body. SAT alone is just not enough to determine the intellectual capacity of the student. Look at HYPSM data, for example. Many high scorers are still kicked out from the school. If SATs are that reliable measures of intelligence, how come still many students fail to coup up the rigour of college education?</p>
<p>Th average GPA at the university and grade inflation/deflation should be taken into account as well… All these pre-college stats are irrelevant past freshman year of college anyways. I agree, the pre-college stats are good starting point to determine the intellectual capacity of your peers and the type of competition you will be facing… The average GPA university is probably an important and highly relevant metric to gauge undergraduate rigor at different respective universities…I’ll admit, it is difficult to compare average GPA across different institutions… which is why we have MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, GRE etc…!</p>
<p>Also, the mean MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, GRE scores from each institution should be included as well because admissions committees for graduate schools re weight GPAs using these factors to adjust for the school’s rigor…</p>
<p>^ That sounds good but that’s very complicated and quite tedious to do. Besides, MCAT, LSAT, GMAT and GRE can be reviewed through informal ways at home or formal ways with some guidance such as attending a in review class. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>This doesn’t take into account the strength of faculty/research at the school, which in part explains why some lesser known schools are up as high as they are.</p>
<p>How would you account for grade inflation/deflation??</p>
<p>I question your conclusion. A school that has selective students, a good percentage in math/science and a high graduation rate may be easier than a school with students of similar stats and a lower graduation rate. One of my kids was specifically looking to major in math/science at a liberal arts colleges and that’s the conclusion we reached, even after talking to students. For example, we looked at Amherst, Bowdoin, Vassar and Wesleyan. Amherst and Bowdoin stick out. Amherst manages to graduate almost 96% of students and Bowdoin only 88% of students even though their median SAT is only 20 points apart. Since both schools meet full need, $ shouldn’t be causing the difference. Frankly, when we spoke to students, what we found was that classes at Bowdoin were hardest, Amherst were easiest and Vassar and Wesleyan were in between.</p>
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<p>I had wondered that, but then you also had a lot of other score-optional colleges, so I wasn’t sure.</p>
<p>Either way, I’m not sold, but I do find it interesting. :)</p>
<p>Another useless (except to people who are ranking obsessed) ranking with outdated information. Another attempt to make people feel superior (or inferior as the case may be). Blah blah blah.</p>
<p>I could spend hours debunking several schools and their lofty rankings. I’m not into school bashing. But I will say this much, if you pick a college based on outdated SAT mid points, you are already missing the point of college. Faculty depth and credentials, strengths of particular programs whether its engineering or english, history or biochemistry…is what is important and whether that fits YOU individually is what is most important.</p>
<p>There is a school several levels above where my kid goes. She also got into that school. She picked the right one. We know people at the other school and that school was all about admissions selectivity but their faculty and programs were not nearly as good as “billed”, and where she is now is wonderful with caring faculty, amazing credentials and very deep programs. All that glitters is not gold.</p>
<p>Be warned.</p>
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<p>Yeah, that makes a great deal of sense: penalize an institution because its students can read.</p>
<p>mudd is more than 93% eng/sci/math. where are you getting these numbers?</p>
<p>In the case of Harvey Mudd, I excluded Psychology and Econ majors. They may be majors from the Claremont consortium. I also excluded multidisciplinary studies, which are math/comp sci, and should have been included. So Mudd’s percent should be 97%, not 93%. It just wasn’t possible to sort out the math/sci multidisciplinary studies for this project.</p>
<p>This is an interesting model, but as others point out, there are problems both with what it includes and with what it excludes.</p>
<p>Graduation rate is a little like GPA. You want it to be high, but if two schools (or two students) are apart within a certain margin, it really does not tell you much about relative quality. A variety of factors (not just the percentage of hard science courses) could be affecting the difference. </p>
<p>Consider Reed College and Guilford College, two LACs on the “Colleges that Change Lives” list, both with some claim to quality in one or more science fields (Guilford in Geology). Both have suffered from relatively low retention/graduation rates compared to peer schools. The reasons sometimes offered for Reed have to do with the difficulty of the courses and the senior thesis requirement. Guilford, in contrast, does not seem to be as academically grueling (it does not seem to have that reputation anyway); low retention may be due to very different factors. (Both schools, by the way, graduate students who go on to earn Ph.D.s at high per capita rates. What are the arguments favoring graduation rates vs. Ph.D. productivity as “quality” factors?)</p>
<p>We cannot control for “difficulty” factors other than by trying different weighting and averaging methods, as the OP has done. But how do we know that the correct weights and averaging methods have been used? What we seem to be doing here is exposing the outcome to readers to see if anyone thinks the formula is producing screwball results. This approach might work if done systematically with sufficiently informed or sufficiently numerous participants.</p>
<p>Notice that the graduation rates at Caltech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, RPI, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Cornell, Bucknell, Stevens, Case Western are somewhat depressed by a high proportion of science/tech majors.</p>