<p>Does anyone have any idea what these people are measuring? I looked at the link labeled "learn more about our [ranking] system" and it didn't tell me a thing, except to mention a few factors including SAT/ACT scores (presumably high=good), student retention (presumably high=good), faculty salaries (presumably high=good, but is this indexed for cost-of-living?), and student/faculty ratio (presumably low=good). But there must be more to it than that or you wouldn't end up with Yale and Harvard down at #22 and #23 respectively, as they'd score extremely high on all of those metrics.</p>
<p>Uh.... a community college in Oregon is ranked 102 spots higher than the Air Force Academy??? Hahahaha, wow, this list is garbage.</p>
<p>Yes! These rankings are awesome, no one ever gives such top tier schools like Cornell, Stanford, MIT, and Amherst the respect they deserve, they always look to the other Ivys. I love this!</p>
<p>
[quote]
how much of sat scores ARE attributable to wealth is a legitimate question, but the answer is quite clearly less than 80 points.
[/quote]
Don't confuse correlation and causation. It is just as likely that wealth is attributable to intelligence.</p>
<p>people with higher paying jobs = more intelligent = smart kids= higher SAT scores</p>
<p>Hunt makes a distinction a lot of high schoolers on CC forget all the time when it comes to social science research-- causation and correlation are drastically different and mixing the two is how we come to a lot of extremely tenuous conclusions.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins @ #11 WOOT.</p>
<p>:D</p>
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Don't confuse correlation and causation. It is just as likely that wealth is attributable to intelligence.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>i think you need to re-read my final sentence as i dont think i am the one who is confused.</p>
<p>your hypothesis is precisely why i indicated that the amount of sat-score differential attributable to wealth (both directly and indirectly) is a legitimate point of debate and, further, that it is almost certainly LESS THAN the 80 point spread in the scores of the two cohorts in question.</p>
<p>had i felt that the data made it clear that wealth was the sole cause of the 80 points in question, there would be no room for debate as it would be responsible for the entire differential.</p>
<p>anyway, to further clarify my point, intelligence does impact wealth as well as the intelligence of offspring. as such, it should be expected that students from high-income families, all else equal, should do somewhat better on the sat than those from low income families. that said, there is significant room for debate as to HOW MANY of the 80 points in question are a result of higher levels of inherited intelligence, how many are a result of greater knowledge bases as a result of better schooling (an indirect byproduct of wealth) or improved educational opportunity/stimulation at home, and how many follow from direct wealth-related activities like prep classes.</p>
<p>...unless one actually wants to argue that increased marginal wealth (except at basic levels where issues like malnutrition come into play) has the ability to facilitate actual intelligence (and not simply increase knowledge), that is.</p>
<p>Haverford seems to be missing ...</p>
<p>Very inconsistent. Even among just research universities, there seems to be some very bizare outcomes. Harvard and Yale, for example, aren't ranked in the top 10. Columbia is ranked out of the top 25. Penn is not even ranked among the top 30. Cal barely register among the top 50. UVa is MIA!</p>
<p>1 Stanford University 100.0
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 99.4
3 Princeton University 99.2
4 Cornell University 98.9
5 California Institute of Technology 98.8
6 Rice University 98.6
7 Brown University 98.4
8 Johns Hopkins University 98.4
9 Duke University 98.3
10 University of Notre Dame 98.0
11 Northwestern University 97.7
12 Dartmouth College 97.6
13 Yale University 97.4
14 Harvard University 97.3
15 University of Chicago 97.1
16 Carnegie Mellon University 97.1
17 College of William and Mary 97.1
18 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 96.6
19 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 96.1
20 Brandeis University 95.9
21 Vanderbilt University 95.9
22 Georgetown University 95.9
23 University of Rochester 95.6
24 University of Connecticut 95.6
25 Case Western Reserve University 95.5
26 Washington University in St Louis 95.4
27 Wake Forest University 95.2
28 Villanova University 95.2
29 Columbia University in the City of New York 95.2
30 Tufts University 95.1
31 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus 94.7
32 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 94.3
33 University of Pennsylvania 94.2
34 The University of Texas at Austin 94.2
35 University of Washington-Seattle Campus 94.2
36 University of Georgia 94.1
37 Emory University 94.0
38 Texas A & M University 93.7
39 University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus 93.5
40 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 93.5
41 Texas State Technical College-Waco 93.5
42 University of California-Los Angeles 93.3
43 Clemson University 93.3
44 University of Florida 93.1
45 Boston College 93.0
46 Michigan State University 93.0
47 University of Miami 93.0
48 University of Southern California 92.9
49 University of California-Berkeley 92.8
50 Howard University 92.6</p>
<p>^I don't see Pomona, Carleton, Colgate, Bucknell either.</p>
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Any ranking purporting to be entirely objective followed by extreme vagaries about how they constructed this "objective metric" is extremely suspect to me.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yep.</p>
<p>Also, people confuse objectivity with validity. "Objective" means that there were no personal interpretations or biases involved on the part of the people creating the rankings...in this case, I think it's being used to mean that their ranking is based on quantitative measures. That doesn't make their ranking a good metric. If I produce a list of the "top" 100 colleges based on the average height of their student body, that's a quantitative measure too, but nobody would claim that it's a valid metric for assessing the quality of a college.</p>
<p>In any case, I don't even agree that their rankings are "totally objective". The factors that they list are objective factors, but their choice of which factors were important and how to weight them was determined by their own biases about different factors' relative importance.</p>
<p>Edited to add: That doesn't mean that this is necessarily a bad ranking. If you value the same factors that they do, to roughly the same degree, it's a good ranking for you, and if you don't, it's not, just like with every other ranking. I just take issue with the idea that it's somehow an inherently better ranking because it uses the word "objective".</p>
<p>Correct, jessie. I understand they mean objective in the sense that each individual number is an objective number, but of course, they forget that choosing which numbers to count and how to count them is 90% of the subjectivity in any sort of ranking game.</p>
<p>
[quote]
they forget that choosing which numbers to count and how to count them is 90% of the subjectivity in any sort of ranking game.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, it is quite amusing to see proponents of different ranking schemes make claims for the different criteria they favor.</p>
<p>I do so not GET some of the info in this database. How, just as an arbitrary example, do they conclude that for Middlebury, the total cost of attendence for year is only $3,250?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I do so not GET some of the info in this database. How, just as an arbitrary example, do they conclude that for Middlebury, the total cost of attendence for year is only $3,250?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Looks like a typo to me.</p>
<p>Apparently, the ranking used data that schools are required to provide to governmental agencies. Schools were not asked to supply any data. In the case of Carleton, StateUniversity.com failed to input the percentage of full-time faculty, so the college ranking wasn't computed. I suspect similar errors resulted in many of the oddities noted in this thread. Sure is nice for folks who like some of the schools that showed up higher than they usually do, though</p>
<p>Where is UVA???? Penn State and Georgia Tech above The University of Virginia??</p>
<p>I don't think so.</p>
<p>don't worry if your school is not ranked (read the advisory). lastly - as a lot have hit the nail on the head, the researchers 'chose' to include some data and not all. it is not an accurate or valid study, but one worth further study. what i can also say from looking at it, the data seems to be pretty old to the school i went to (columbia) especially around cost. </p>
<p>but the bigger thing with everyone saying "oh my school is better than the one it is below." maybe it is, but that is the purpose of a ranking system. it is ranking adherence to its methodology, and not some abstract notion of prestige or value. you are what you make yourself out to be, some universities give you a bigger or smaller head start depending on some factors (quality of education, the experience, outside opportunities, networking), but a university doesn't make you - you make yourself.</p>
<p>Rankings are hilarious.</p>
<p>It seems like the more objective they claim it is, the less it has anything to do with regular, everyday reality.</p>
<p>And I haven't seen a ranking that didn't have a page and a half of self-aggrandizing drivel swearing that it's the final word in college rankings.</p>