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<p>LOL. I notice Bowdoin, Wesleyan, and CMC have suddenly dropped out of the discussion.</p>
<p>Well, in the first place, these aren’t MY numbers. I’m just going by the numbers US News uses, and trying to explain why, using US News’ formula, Wellesley comes out ahead of schools like Pomona and others. Admittedly, Pomona’s a more puzzling case because of its wealth. In the case of Wesleyan and CMC the funding disparities are clear, and strongly in Wellesley’s favor. That’s also true for Bowdoin, albeit by a smaller margin. It would be interesting to see these figures over the course of several years, but I don’t have easy access to that data, or the means to manipulate it. I think it’s improbable that “faculty resources” wouldn’t affect a school’s US News ranking, however, given that US News says it makes up 20% of the total ranking----considerably more than PA, which you seem to obsess about.</p>
<p>Just looking over US News’ figures, it looks like Pomona got dinged pretty badly in “faculty resources” the last go-round, coming it at #25 among LACs, v. #9 for Wellesley—not a poor school by any means, but admittedly not as fabulously wealthy as Pomona. How could it happen that a school with so much money made such a poor showing in “faculty resources”?</p>
<p>There are 5 components to “faculty resources.” Faculty compensation accounts for a large chunk, 35% of the total. We don’t know much about this, but we do know that according to the AAUP survey average faculty salaries are higher at Wellesley than at Pomona. We don’t know what kind of cost-of-living factor US News uses to adjust those raw figures. The San Gabriel Valley isn’t cheap, but it could be that faculty salaries between these schools even out once cost-of-living is accounted for. Or not. But it could be partly that Pomona was hurt in this category. Easy remedy: give the faculty a raise, and Pomona’s US News ranking will go up.</p>
<p>Next, percent of faculty with top terminal degree in their field accounts for 15%. I could see how this might shift a bit over time, but Pomona’s figure is very high at 98%, actually slightly higher than Wellesley’s 96%. </p>
<p>S/f ratio accounts for 5%. Here, too, Pomona has a slight edge, at 7:1 v. 8:1 for Wellesley. </p>
<p>Class size 1-19 students accounts for 40%, the largest chunk of all. Here Pomona gets hurt badly relative to other top LACs. Its 66.5% figure sounds pretty good to me (though US News labels it “medium”); but it’s not as good as Wellesley’s 67.7% In fact, Pomona’s figure is 17th out of the top 25 LACs. This just clobbers them. </p>
<p>Last, class size 50+ students is worth 10%. Pomona is at 2%, which again doesn’t sound so bad, but US News rates it as “medium.” Wellesley is at 1%.</p>
<p>Result: “faculty resources” score is Wellesley 9, Pomona 25. And remember, that’s 20% of the total US News ranking. I submit that, more than anything, is why Pomona ranks below Wellesley in the current US News ranking.</p>
<p>Just look at where Pomona stacks up on the various components of the overall US News ranking:</p>
<p>Faculty resources (20%): Pomona #25
Graduation & retention (20%): Pomona #3
PA (15%): Pomona 4.2, #9
Selectivity (admit rate, SATs, class rank)(15%): Pomona #1
Financial resources (10%): Pomona #6
Graduation rate performance (7.5%): Pomona +4, #2
HS counselor rating (7.5%): Pomona 4.5, #4
Alumni giving (5%): Pomona #11 </p>
<p>Now I can’t speak for past years because I don’t have the data, and in any event some of these categories were weighted differently or didn’t even exist. But for the 2011 ranking, now that PA has been downgraded by 40%, you tell me: which of these figures most hurt Pomona in its effort to vault past Middlebury and Wellesley into the #4 spot (or higher) among LACs: PA which accounts for 15% of the total, where Pomona ranked #9, or Faculty Resources which accounts for 20%, where Pomona ranked #25? I think the answer to that is pretty self-evident.</p>
<p>It’s NOT all about PA.</p>