That would be super helpful. Like some of Princeton reviews categories, but more comprehensive.
Or if the CA had a feature similar to Anazon’s “customers who purchased/looked at this item,” but instead it would be “students who applied here also applied to:…”
@usualhopeful : USNWR does actually offer a similar feature through their online profiles. For example, for Connecticut College “Students Also Applied To”:
Bates
Bowdoin
Hamilton
Skidmore
Wesleyan
I agree with your grouping idea. I don’t think, however, that 6 colleges would tie for 10th place and 21st place
@merc81 I’d forgotten about that! That’s a really undervalued tool, IMO.
(I didn’t actually apply to any of those, though I visited Wesleyan and considered some of the others.)
ETA: I checked and my only 2 schools which matched up according to USNWR were Trinity and Colby.
A more comprehensive list, probably easiest through CommonApp - like top 20 “peer schools” or something - could still be super helpful.
Students could group schools according to the fit variable (or variables) they felt were most important.
Want to know which schools are rural and have Mechanical Engineering?
Boom, here’s a list of 20 (or however many there are).
Then the kid could further filter that list by removing the schools with > 50% admit rate. Or, keep the list whole, and choose reaches/matches/safeties all from that list.
It would take time to set up the variables and assign all applicable schools to them, but I imagine it’s doable.
Many schools’ Naviances have that feature @prezbucky
@prezbucky The CB has a similar tool, but I think actual cross-application numbers could be helpful for grouping schools more subjectively with “vibe,” strong merit, and other things that are tough to figure out statistically but tend to attract the same students.
@merc81-
The “Students Also Applied To” feature is useful but with one caveat. The listings are almost exclusively aspirational; IOW the schools listed are at the same place or higher on the food chain than the school in question, so it’s not particularly helpful when trying to find match or likely schools after you’ve identified reaches.
I love this interactive graphic from The Chronicle of Higher Education ("Who does your college think its peers are?. It shows not only who your college marked as peers but also who listed them as a peer.
http://chronicle.com/interactives/peers-network
@Sue22 - Given that-profit schools like the University of Phoenix ranks Stanford as a peer, I’m not sure how that function is too useful.
@LoveThat Bard-
Yeah, U of Phoenix NJ and a couple of other schools get goofy and list every top college under the sun as a peer. The telling part, however, is that although U. Phoenix lists 74 colleges as their peers only 4 (all for-profit schools) have selected them as a peer.
I like the idea that by looking at the 3 lists (basically, “I chose you”, “You chose me” and “We both chose each other”) you can see which schools see themselves as rough equals and which schools colleges aspire to be like. For instance, if one was looking at Connecticut College as a reach it might be useful to see that Allegheny, Goucher and Rhodes have listed CC as an aspirational peer.
“Purporting to rank schools numerically is akin to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”
I think those two endeavors are quite different. 
Yes. One involves angels while the other involves colleges and universities; but that is a distinction without a difference in this case. Beyond making broad categorizations, which can be useful, ranking colleges numerically is a fool’s errand.
How is USNEWS handling the greater move to many high schools to stop ranking students and now some schools not reporting it on their common data set?
@BizWH. I think admissions decisions will soon come down to who has the most winning smile.
@Prof99, thank you, sir, for that clarification. As for me and mine, we will continue to stake everything on the differences between #9 and #14, #4 and #8 and, most importantly, #25 and #38.
That’s a really good point @BizWhiz
The Chronicle Peer tool is 4 years old and of course you get schools selecting aspirational schools. College Navigator through the NCES lets you build a comparison group if you use Selectivity, Enrollment range, SAT range, and a few other categories. Carnegie Classification site lets you do something similar, but I think within the same Carnegie grouping.
I suspect most every schools in the USNEWS rankings has their IR or Admissions offices use National Student Clearinghouse to track where their admitted, non-enrolled students wound up - instead of guessing, just ask the school. Any school that won’t provide the general answer should make you question how transparent they are in other areas.
I’m curious on the HS class rank; it’s not something like SAT where schools have the data (even test optional schools collect SAT, just don’t use it for admissions purposes and that score is controlled by the student/parent) or a good chunk of it and USNEWS has its algorithm to come up with an imputed value. When you are getting down to less a 25% reporting and it’s simply not used or controlled by the HS, that’s a bit harder to apply some formula.
HS GPA is so variable. I’m wondering if they could do something like a 5 year CAGR on applications (that eliminates the sheer scale difference and posits applications are a proxy for interest (although yes, schools can game that like other variables) or 4 year average on yield (differentiates schools in a world with more apps and generally declining selectivity who is able to seal the deal better).
I do think USNEWS should penalize schools for deferrals above some threshold - too many schools now game the system by deferring at risk students so they are not in the freshmen cohort (so don’t count toward retention and graduation stats) - if you are going to have a metrics that measure freshmen quality, you need a hammer for schools that game those stats.
If a ranking was to “group” I don’t believe it would be ten schools at s time. Perhaps 20. Maybe 25.
The College Navigator can be useful, but not always. It doesn’t seem to know how to handle the test-optional schools. I tried looking for peers for my alma mater, Bates, so I clicked all the right boxes and plugged in stats covering roughly 100 SAT points and 6 ACT points above and below the school’s averages for schools in New England and New York. Not only did Bowdoin (an obvious peer) not show up, although Colby did, but Bates itself wasn’t listed! Connecticut College, Wesleyan and Hamilton (not a test-optional school) were missing as well.
Maybe UNCG will move to past 187 if we get lucky this year. I’m just happy to have a rank honestly.