| Davida1,
You are discovering that anything posted that purports to be a ranking will be flamed by those whose favorite colleges are not at the top.
Of course, methodological issues aside, a PERFECT run at this question would yield the same complaints. If you did have complete data on the undergraduate institutions of every student at all top 15 professional schools, some colleges would have higher percent representation than others. It is silly to claim otherwise.
The more interesting question is what to do with such perfect data?
The answer would indicate how much, and what kind of, attention to pay to this incomplete attempt at estimating what the complete data set would show. That is, for a given student does (s)he improve chances of attending a top professional school by going to College A vs College B?
I am firmly with those who would say "No. The differences to be found in the perfect data set would reflect the ability of the students who enroll in each college (the strongest effect), their goals and orientation (explaining most of the rest), and to a small extent socialization towards or away from professional school that occurs during the college experience."
If these are the factors that dominate the professional school enrollment of students, then ranking the colleges becomes more a description of where their students end up, rather than an indication of relative quality.
Look, the vast majority of successful people in the US did not go to professional school at all, and only a small fraction of, say, doctors, attended a top 15 medical school. To "grade" colleges by how many of their graduates did this is silly.
Very few Caltech students go to law school. Does that make it a bad college? A much larger proportion of Caltech than Harvard students get PhD's. Does that make it a much better college than Harvard? Of course neither is true. Both are great places to get an undergrad education FOR SOME STUDENTS. A description of what are typical career paths for Caltech vs Harvard students could be very useful for high school students considering college. A ranking that claimed "going to professional school is good, but going to grad school, or entering the workforce, are bad" is useless.
Here's one. Do a ranking of the proportion of college grads who are military officers two years out. The service academies will dominate the top of the list. Does this mean students should forget about HYPSMC and all apply to West Point? Well, those who want careers in the Army should certainly consider West Point. Those who do not want to join the military probably should stay away.
You cannot apply a single criterion to rank the appropriateness of a set of colleges for everyone. Different people have different goals, so they SHOULD attend colleges that emphasize, and enroll students who are interested in, different things. |