Thank you.
I find that a clearer explanation of your concerns.
For the most part, I think those are fair and legitimate concerns … except:
- I’m not sure we’d agree on the significance of all the issues you raise
- You still can’t resist closing your post with innuendo
How would you even know what is my “favorite school”?
I’ve attended several. A couple of my favorites (such as Reed College) don’t even make the list.
I can appreciate the logic of excluding colleges that have not published CDS documents.
It might make sense to exclude them, or to include them with comments. We’ve now identified schools that don’t post CDS documents (see post #33 and the comment at the top of post #56).
No, I am not. As far as I can recall, this is the first time I’ve seen your “746M and 746V” figures.
I used the “1440-1590” range cited in the US News “ranking indicators” (same source I used for other data, except as noted when such an SAT range was not listed and I went to the 2013-14 CDS, where available).
To that range, I applied the following MS Excel formula:
=AVERAGE(1440,1590)
Now, if I sum your 2 numbers together and enter 1492 into my spreadsheet … and introduce no other changes to the data … that does change the University of Chicago’s ranking. If I take the WARs to 1 decimal point, Chicago would be tied with Princeton for 5th position. If I express the WARs as integers (as in post #56) then Chicago falls into a tie with Princeton, Harvard, and Yale for 3rd position. If I change the weights to 65-25-10 … then Chicago, again, is either in 3rd or 5th position, depending on how we round the WARs and account for ties.
To me, the important thing is pull data for all colleges from the same source (to the extent possible), cite my sources, and be consistent in the calculation methods. I try to leave it to USNWR to arbitrate whether “NNNN-MMMM” has the same meaning for every school they report.
I’ve compared SAT ranges cited in USNWR “ranking indicators” to the corresponding ranges cited by several other sources.
I did this for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT.
I also did it for Chicago (except that for Chicago, there is no CDS).
Findings:
For HYPSM, the US News ranges (NNNN-MMMM) correspond to 25th-75th percentile median range numbers reported in:
collegeapps.about com,
collegedata.com
CDS section C9
Example: Harvard
my average 1505
my Excel formula =AVERAGE(1410,1600)
USNWR range ( 1410 , 1600 )
collegedata M ( 710 , 800 )
collegedata CR ( 700 , 800 )
collegeapps M ( 710 , 800 )
collegeapps CR ( 700 , 800 )
CDS C9 M ( 710 , 800 )
CDS C9 CR ( 700 , 800 )
For UChicago, the corresponding numbers line up in the same way … almost* :
my average 1515
my Excel formula =AVERAGE(1440,1590)
USNWR range ( 1440 , 1590 )
collegedata M ( 720 , 760 )
collegedata CR ( 720 , 800 )
collegeapps M ( 720 , 790* )
collegeapps CR ( 720 , 800 )
- The USNWR range corresponds to all but one of the points in the collegeapps and collegedata ranges.
collegedata.com reports the 75th percentile SAT-M score as 760;
collegedata.about.com and USNWR report it as 790.
I used the USNWR figure (as I did for the other colleges).
If I use the lower figure (AVERAGE(1440,1560)=1500, and resort the list, UChicago comes out #3, not #2 (if we express the WAR to one decimal) or in a 4-way tie for 3rd (if we express the WAR as a rounded integer).