<p>I think those criteria are actually very good, and probably some of the best criteria for a rising high school senior to look at - unless you’d rather have high school students base their college judgements on people’s random opinions.</p>
<p>These aren’t entirely objective, but you can attempt to objectify atleast 1) and 4). </p>
<p>For 1) Quality of Students - SATs, National Merit Scholars, Other types of scholars, class rank - stronger students = smarter peers. Sorry, but I’m assuming people who perform better academically are smarter, and feel thats a somewhat decent assumption to make.</p>
<p>2) Class Size - though I don’t agree smaller is always better, still I feel like it is generally a good rule. How many seminars, how much close contact with a big shot professor. How many undergraduate research opportunities. This is all measurable.</p>
<p>3) This is totally subjective. However, assuming good teaching leads to strong students, maybe how many students end up going to top law/med/biz schools (since there is a ranking for that) or go onto win prestigious scholarships. This is a rough correlation though.</p>
<p>4) Institutional resources - somewhat measurable by these rankings, and also by figures such as endowment per capita etc. (though I believe there is an increasing returns to scale)</p>
<p><a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf[/url]”>http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf</a> </p>
<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?primary=3&secondary=32&bycat=Go[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?primary=3&secondary=32&bycat=Go</a></p>