FrothyShake

Love the tool. I have some questions about how the graduation rate match is caclulated.

For example, for James Madison University, the grad rate is 82% which is definitely most students. Yet on the breakdown the match is 64% which seems a low/medium match to me. How is that calculated?

Also, no matter if I select kind of, very, or must have, the breakdown percentage remains 64% but the overall school match percentage changes. How does the overall percentage change when no breakdown percentage changes? What is that telling me?

Thanks.

Chesh1

Glad you like the tool! I don't want to publicly disclose matching algorithms, but here's what I can say... Since you are checking an option saying "It's important to me to attend a school where most students graduate", we are looking for the schools with the very best grad rates, so it's pretty selective. 64% is not a bad score for that matching criterion at all. In fact, I believe the majority of schools have a graduation rate below 55% or so and would score a single-digit or even 0% match for this criterion.

Selecting an importance factor for the matching criterion does not change how the score for that particular criterion is calculated. It just affects how a school's score for each of your selected criteria are combined into an overall matching score for the school. So "must have" criteria are given more weight than "very" criteria, which are given more weight than "kinda" criteria.

Hope that helps!