Ranking of undergraduate colleges

College Search & Selection
1

<p>So, to follow up on some more number crunching from a previous post</a> that combined 6 international rankings, what if The Princeton Review actually ranked schools in order? The Princeton Review assigns overall academic, selectivity, and quality of life ratings to each of its 373 Best Colleges. These scores range from 60-99, but are never examined in combination and therefore where a particular schools might fit into the overall population is not always obvious. Princeton Review is unique in that it uses both institutional (CDS) data as well as student surveys to come up with their ratings, so I find the difference between them and other rankings interesting. </p>

<p>Anyway, if one averaged PR's 2010-2011 academic, selectivity and quality of life ratings for each school, this is how the top 100 would look. Like Forbes' rankings, this includes all colleges and universities, regardless of size, mission or research. Ties are listed in alphabetical order. Enjoy and have at it.</p>

<p>Rank / School name / average rating</p>

<ol>
<li> Deep Springs College 99</li>
<li> Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering 99</li>
<li> Princeton University 99</li>
<li> Middlebury College 98.7</li>
<li> Bowdoin College 98.3</li>
<li> Stanford University 98.3</li>
<li> Washington University in St. Louis 98.3</li>
<li> Claremont McKenna College 98</li>
<li> Davidson College 97.7</li>
<li>Haverford College 97.3</li>
<li>Pomona College 97.3</li>
<li>Wellesley College 97.3</li>
<li>Yale University 97.3</li>
<li>Barnard College 97</li>
<li>Brown University 97</li>
<li>Macalester College 97</li>
<li>Webb Institute 97</li>
<li>Amherst College 96.7</li>
<li>Rice University 96.7</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr College 96.3</li>
<li>Columbia University 96.3</li>
<li>Reed College 96.3</li>
<li>Whitman College 96.3</li>
<li>Carleton College 96</li>
<li>Smith College 96</li>
<li>Swarthmore College 95.7</li>
<li>Harvard College 95.3</li>
<li>Pitzer College 95.3</li>
<li>Williams College 95.3</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd College 95</li>
<li>Scripps College 95</li>
<li>Skidmore College 95</li>
<li>Tufts University 95</li>
<li>Tulane University 95</li>
<li>Dartmouth College 94.7</li>
<li>St. Olaf College 94.7</li>
<li>Vanderbilt University 94.7</li>
<li>Wesleyan University 94.7</li>
<li>Colgate University 94.3</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology 94.3</li>
<li>College of William and Mary 94</li>
<li>Gustavus Adolphus College 94</li>
<li>Thomas Aquinas College 94</li>
<li>Villanova University 94</li>
<li>Furman University 93.7</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke College 93.7</li>
<li>Gettysburg College 93.3</li>
<li>Boston College 93</li>
<li>Stonehill College 93</li>
<li>Cornell University 92.7</li>
<li>Hamilton College 92.7</li>
<li>Kenyon College 92.7</li>
<li>University of Chicago 92.7</li>
<li>West Point – The United States Military Academy 92.7</li>
<li>Emory University 92.3</li>
<li>Agnes Scott College 92</li>
<li>Brigham Young University (UT) 92</li>
<li>Ripon College 92</li>
<li>University of Miami 92</li>
<li>University of Virginia 92</li>
<li>Lawrence University 91.7</li>
<li>The College of New Jersey 91.7</li>
<li>The George Washington University 91.7</li>
<li>The University of Tulsa 91.7</li>
<li>Trinity University 91.7</li>
<li>University of Notre Dame 91.7</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania 91.7</li>
<li>University of Richmond 91.7</li>
<li>Wabash College 91.7</li>
<li>Bard College at Simon's Rock 91.3</li>
<li>Bates College 91.3</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology 91.3</li>
<li>Marlboro College 91.3</li>
<li>New College of Florida 91.3</li>
<li>St. Mary's College of Maryland 91.3</li>
<li>United States Naval Academy 91.3</li>
<li>Vassar College 91.3</li>
<li>Wheaton College (IL) 91.3</li>
<li>American University 91</li>
<li>Connecticut College 91</li>
<li>Grinnell College 91</li>
<li>Loyola University New Orleans 91</li>
<li>Rhodes College 91</li>
<li>St. John's College (MD) 91</li>
<li>United States Air Force Academy 91</li>
<li>University of Pittsburgh--Pittsburgh Campus 91</li>
<li>University of Puget Sound 91</li>
<li>Wofford College 91</li>
<li>Georgetown University 90.7</li>
<li>Occidental College 90.7</li>
<li>St. John's College, Santa Fe 90.7</li>
<li>The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 90.7</li>
<li>University of San Diego 90.7</li>
<li>Colorado College 90.3</li>
<li>Pepperdine University 90.3</li>
<li>University of California--Los Angeles 90.3</li>
<li>Wesleyan College 90.3</li>
<li>Colby College 90</li>
<li>College of the Atlantic 90</li>
<li>Denison University 90</li>
<li>Seattle University 90</li>
</ol>

2

<p>I quite like this list. These schools all seem to have what I value in a college - a great atmosphere for learning. Of course, the quality of life ranking sometimes skews against engineering schools because engineering students often report that they are unhappy and overworked.</p>

3

<p>I don’t like PR’s scoring metrics because they do not provide a clear methodology. The results cannot be trusted.</p>

4

<p>Princeton Review wouldn’t put Deep Springs on the list, they’d throw it on an “Honor Roll” and say something about comparing apples to oranges. But it’s cool to have it at the top, haha. Though I disagree with rankings like this, anyway.</p>

5

<p>An interesting list, at least.</p>

6

<p>Remember, the PR ratings are based on what students say, not objective criteria (not that one can be objective in saying one college is the best).</p>

7

<p>Gettysburg College > University of Chicago</p>

<p>Brigham Young & Tulsa > Penn and Cal Tech</p>

<p>Pitt: the second best public university in the nation</p>

<p>Stop…stop…you’re killing me, here.</p>

8

<p>Who cares if PR uses student surveys to measure quality of life? How else do you measure happiness, which in itself is subjective? </p>

<p>For what it is, there is nothing unreliable or wrong with Princeton Review’s methodology.</p>

<p>However, I would argue what the OP has done here is worthless. </p>

<p>You can’t just average the numbers because Princeton Review never claimed the selectivity, academic, and quality of life indexes were on comparable scales. You’re interpreting data in ways it weren’t intended.</p>

<p>A better alternative might be taking the ranks of each of the colleges in each category and averaging them out like you did before.</p>

9

<p>Actually, PR has effectively normalized those metrics to identical scales because each index runs from 60 to 99. In fact, the mean rating for each of the three ratings are all very close. Mean+/-SD for Academic=82.9+/-9.8, Selectivity=88.5+/-7.5, Quality of Life=82.4+/-9.8. That is different than how many rankings combine different indexes, and it is at least mostly uniform. Now, obviously, what can be argued is, yes, whether it is appropriate to combine them or how much weight to ascribe to each component. The fact is, that individually, these ratings are supposed to be compared from on institution to the next. The above is a straight average so each component is equally weighted. The appropriateness of that is certainly debatable, but it is no different than U.S. News or any other ranking service arbitrarily deciding on which components to include or how much to weigh different components. However, the point of this exercise was one of pure curiosity, not to point out the superiority of one college to another. Moreso, what would PR’s ratings look like if they were assembled in a more traditional ranking.</p>

<p>BTW, Pitt isn’t the second public in this ranking. The top 10 publics would go like this:

  1. William & Mary
  2. West Point
  3. Virginia
  4. College of New Jersey
  5. New College of Florida
  6. St. Mary’s College of Maryland
  7. U.S. Naval Academy
  8. Air Force
  9. Pittsburgh
  10. North Carolina</p>

<p>You have to remember, quality of life metrics, such as those directly surveyed by PR, aren’t included in any other ranking that I’m aware of, so it is a unique look to combine that with academics and selectivity. You can either appreciate that novelty or dismiss it, that is entirely up to an individual, as is the acceptance of any particular ranking. Personally, quality of life is one measure that I feel is valuable and often overlooked in other rankings. As far as the above comment about Pitt specifically, which can be used to address similarly curious results, it should be noted that Pitt’s purely quantitative numbers, such as admissions statistics, hold up very well with other publics. E.g. it has been in the top tier (7) of publics in the purely quantitative [Center</a> for Measuring University Performance](<a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/]Center”>http://mup.asu.edu/) survey for the last four years. It’s numbers in PR, btw, were 83 Academic, 92 Selectivity, and 98 Life. With its high life rating, it isn’t surprising where it places, especially since it is bunched around UNC and UCLA. More surprising was how low Cal-Berkley’s quality of life rating was. In any case, it is surprising what you get sometimes when you take prestige surveys out of the equation. If anyone wants to know more about how PR’s methodology works, which btw, uses both survey results and quantitative data to come up with the ratings (which is different from their specific categorical rankings), it is listed on their web page [url=&lt;a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/college/college-ratings.aspx]here[/url”&gt;The Princeton Review's College Ratings | The Princeton Review]here[/url</a>]. All I did was average those three ratings.</p>

10

<p>

Here it is done by ranking, then averaging. The advantage of this method it is more precisely normalized and also that some of the ties can be broken by a secondary sort of standard deviations. There is little shuffling of places, but in general the list is very similar. </p>

<p>Here is the top 100 by average rank.</p>

<p>1 Deep Springs College 1.0
1 Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering 1.0
1 Princeton University 1.0
2 Middlebury College 7.3
3 Stanford University 8.3
4 Washington University in St. Louis 10.3
5 Bowdoin College 12.3
6 Claremont McKenna College 19.0
7 Davidson College 19.7
8 Yale University 19.7
9 Pomona College 20.3
10 Haverford College 22.7
11 Brown University 23.7
12 Wellesley College 24.3
13 Amherst College 26.0
14 Barnard College 29.3
14 Webb Institute 29.3
15 Columbia University 29.3
16 Rice University 29.7
17 Macalester College 32.0
18 Swarthmore College 32.0
19 Reed College 34.0
20 Harvard College 36.7
20 Williams College 36.7
21 Carleton College 39.0
22 Bryn Mawr College 42.0
22 Whitman College 42.0
23 Smith College 42.3
24 Harvey Mudd College 43.0
25 Dartmouth College 45.7
25 Vanderbilt University 45.7
26 Tufts University 46.0
27 Wesleyan University 48.0
28 Scripps College 48.7
29 Pitzer College 49.0
30 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 49.7
31 Tulane University 53.7
32 Colgate University 54.7
33 St. Olaf College 57.0
34 Skidmore College 58.3
35 College of William and Mary 58.7
36 Mount Holyoke College 66.7
37 Villanova University 67.3
38 Gettysburg College 69.0
39 Cornell University 69.0
40 Boston College 70.3
41 Furman University 72.0
42 Emory University 73.3
43 Kenyon College 76.0
44 Hamilton College 76.0
45 Thomas Aquinas College 76.3
46 University of Chicago 78.0
47 University of Virginia 79.0
48 West Point – The United States Military Academy 79.3
49 University of Pennsylvania 79.7
50 University of Notre Dame 80.0
51 Stonehill College 86.0
52 California Institute of Technology 89.0
53 Gustavus Adolphus College 89.3
54 University of Richmond 91.0
55 The George Washington University 91.7
56 University of Miami 91.7
57 United States Naval Academy 92.0
58 Bates College 92.3
59 The University of Tulsa 92.7
60 Georgetown University 93.3
61 Vassar College 94.0
62 New College of Florida 95.0
63 Trinity University 95.3
64 The College of New Jersey 96.7
65 Wofford College 99.3
66 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 99.7
67 Ripon College 100.0
68 Brigham Young University (UT) 100.0
69 Occidental College 100.7
70 Connecticut College 100.7
71 University of California–Los Angeles 100.7
72 Rhodes College 101.0
73 United States Air Force Academy 101.7
74 Lawrence University 102.3
75 Agnes Scott College 102.3
76 Wheaton College (IL) 103.0
77 Grinnell College 103.0
78 Wabash College 103.7
79 St. Mary’s College of Maryland 104.0
80 Marlboro College 104.7
81 Bard College at Simon’s Rock 105.7
82 University of San Diego 107.7
83 The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art 108.3
84 University of Puget Sound 110.3
85 Colorado College 110.3
86 Colby College 111.3
87 Denison University 111.7
88 University of Pittsburgh–Pittsburgh Campus 112.0
89 Pepperdine University 112.7
90 American University 114.3
91 Loyola University New Orleans 114.7
92 Duke University 115.3
93 Wesleyan College 116.0
94 Bucknell University 116.3
95 Northwestern University 119.0
96 Lewis & Clark College 120.3
97 Brandeis University 120.3
98 Centre College 121.3
99 Carnegie Mellon University 121.7
100 St. John’s College (MD) 122.3</p>

11

<p>Why does anyone want yet another one-size-fits-none ranking? It does no one any good, only harm if anyone pays any attention to it.</p>

12

<p>I don’t disagree that Quality of Life information is valuable, but in the individual PR QOL ratings of some schools with more or less similar environments, I see odd results. Middlebury gets a 99, Williams an 88. Haverford gets a 96, Swarthmore an 89. WUSTL 98, Harvard 88, Georgetown 84. </p>

<p>WUSTL seems to have pretty good facilities and QOL, but Harvard and Georgetown are blessed with 2 of the premier urban university environments in America. Harvard’s facilities are unsurpassed. Middlebury and Williams, or Haverford and Swarthmore, are pretty much interchangeable for QOL as far as I can tell.</p>

<p>Is the Smith College QOL (96) really that much bettter than Vassar’s (79)? Why are Oberlin (74) or Grinnell (79) so much lower than Carleton (93) or Whitman (97)? Etc.</p>

13

<p>re: post #10</p>

<p>All 5 of the Claremont Consortium schools: Pomona, CMC, Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps are in the top 30.</p>

<p>Is there something in the water supply of Claremont, CA?</p>

14

<p>

I certainly agree that any measurement of student happiness should rightfully be based on subjective data, but that isn’t the problem here. The problem is that PR does not tell you what their methodology is. How do they translate the survey responses into rankings on the 60-99 scale?</p>

<p>I am also uncertain of whether they release their sampling methodology…</p>

15

<p>“Is there something in the water supply of Claremont, CA?”</p>

<p>I think it’s more likely that scientists are about to discover that a particular smog component enhances learning. This would also explain UCLA’s lower ranking (less of the beneficial stuff near the coast).</p>

16

<p>

Whatever it is, it tastes awful.</p>

17

<p>As far as I know, PR discloses what general component go into their ratings, but not the methodology. The method of calculating the rating seems to be proprietary, and not open, which is unfortunate. Regarding quality of life, this is what they offer:

</p>

<p>It seems they do not divulge how this is exactly done, but they do provide additional information about those surveys and how they are conducted [url=<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/how-we-do-it.aspx]here[/url”>Surveying Students: How It Works | The Princeton Review]here[/url</a>] and [url=<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/college/college-rankings.aspx]here[/url”>College Search | Find Colleges | The Princeton Review]here[/url</a>].</p>

<p>Discrepancies between college with seemingly similar environments, I would imagine, are due to results of student life survey rankings which seem to make up the bulk of the the quality of life score. The academic ratings are said to include both statistical information and survey results, while the selectivity rating relies completely on statistical information (CDS).</p>

18

<p>Not that it matters, but I just notice that the link to the average of international rankings in my original post was wrong. [This</a> is the correct link](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/999865-international-rankings-universities.html?highlight=munich]This”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/999865-international-rankings-universities.html?highlight=munich).</p>