US News Ranking - Alumni Giving Discrepancy

College Search & Selection
1

I had heard that there was some variability in how schools chose to measure the alumni giving number reported to US News for use in their ranking.

So, just out of curiosity, I decided to compare the Alumni Giving rates reported in the US News Ranking to the Alumni Giving rates reported in a separate Forbes ranking.

Interestingly, for all the schools I looked at, the US News number was higher, sometimes by as much as 25%. The biggest discrepancies tended to be in the schools at the top of the US News Ranking.

Public schools were not included in the Forbes ranking, so they could not be compared.

Here are the results for the US News top 30 schools.

The “difference” column was calculated by subtracting the value reported in Forbes from the value reported in US News.

…… School……….Difference
1 Princeton……19.2
2 Harvard…………15.8
3 U Chicago……19.3
3 Yale……………… 5.7
5 Columbia……18.7
5 MIT………………11.9
7 Stanford………7.2
8 Penn…………. …12.3
9 Duke……………5.9
10 C Tech…………5.0
11 Dartmouth…2.6
11 Hopkins………24.9
11 N Western……13.0
14 Brown…………7.0
14 Cornell…………8.3
16 Rice……………8.2
17 Vanderbilt……6.4
18 Notre Dame…5.7
18 Wash U……… …2.5
20 Georgetown…14.7
21 Emory………… …6.9
21 UCB………………NA
21 UCLA……………NA
21 USC………………15.9
25 CMU………………0.8
25 U Virginia……NA
27 Wake Forest…5.7
28 Michigan………NA
29 Tufts……………2.9
30 NYU………………4.0

2

Interesting. Did you read anything in the methodology of the two rankings that could account for this difference?

Maybe Forbes counts both undergrad and grad alumni giving rate while USNews counts only undergrad? I think undergrad giving rate would be quite higher than overall or just grad giving rate for any university.

3

@Penn95 - I just looked into the methodologies.

The Forbes number is from the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) and is averaged over 3 years.

http://cae.org/about-cae/what-we-do/

Looking at CAE’s guide for filling out their survey, they define “alumni” as anyone who has taken courses (graduate or undergraduate) even if they have not earned a degree. Those that give through a foundation, donor advised fund, company, or other indirect method are not considered.

The US News number is directly reported by the university and is averaged over 2 years. It is for “alumni with bachelor’s degrees”. No other details specified.

4

Ok this makes sense then. If you just include undergraduate alumni the rate is bound to be quite higher than if you include all alumni. Graduate alumni are not as likely to give as undergrad alumni.