<p>"George Washington University has been submitting incorrect data on the class rank of new students. For the most recent class of new students, George Washington reported that 78 percent of new students were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. The actual proportion of such students is 58 percent.</p>
<p>The university found that for applicants whose high schools don’t calculate ranks (a growing trend among high schools), the university estimated the class rank, based on grades and other factors. That policy is not permitted by U.S. News. After finding out what had been going on with class rank, the university had an outside audit done of all admissions data that is reported (including SAT scores) and found no other problems."</p>
<p>I would guess there will be others to follow.</p>
<p>So much for the rankings! This story is noteworthy IMO more for the partial explanation of how colleges are ranked. The incoming student body selectivity (class rank, gpa, sat scores etc) has absolutely nothing to do with anything inherent in the university. The quality of the instruction, laboratories, living learning communities, study abroad options, co-op/interships, number and quality of companies coming to recruit, quality of service provided by career services department etc are what you are paying for to attend. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Go to xyz university and your peers may be really smart. But the freshman and sophmore introductory classes are still lectures in auditoriums. The labs are outdated, the career services are abysmal, and the food stinks. Why is this university so highly ranked?</p></li>
<li><p>In contrast, low ranked public university accepts many good students none of whom have patent applications and few with max SAT scores. The university has state of the art labs because the state made that a priority and local companys (in the know) recruit heavily at the school. All of the professors are selected mainly based upon their ability to teach so students at the school actually improve upon their existing knowlege instead of just passing time.</p></li>
<li><p>GWU had to estimate class rank because so many HS do not provide the information. If they don’t report the non-existant information their rank could drop.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Just about every school my daughter investigated during her search process claimed that an overwhelming majority of its students were ranked in the top tenth of their high school graduating classes. It just seemed improbable to me. I couldn’t figure out where the second tenth of the class was supposed to go. Ironically, one of the few that seemed to have quite a good chunk of students from the second decile, at the time, was GW! I came to the conclusion that GW was the school for the second decile. I guess they didn’t like having people think that.</p>
<p>I think the title of this thread is somewhat misleading. The word ‘fabricating’ in this context sounds to me like making something up in a malicious way - i.e. purposely lying. From the article it doesn’t sound like that’s what they did. Some administrator(s) inferred the class rank from the grades/GPA. Whoever did that may have felt it was a valid method to use (even though it’s not) and wasn’t trying to ‘fabricate data’ in an effort to bump up the stats as some colleges have done (by purposely submitting higher SAT scores than the incoming class actually had for example).</p>
<p>It’s also good to hear that the Uni itself figured out the error and immediately corrected it by using third party auditors and then instituting changes to prevent it from happening again.</p>
Same here. It just seemed impossible and I think that this situation as well as the Villanova Law School, Claremiont-McKenna and Emory revelations ( as well as others- just those off the top of my head) will make college review their reporting and less llikely to ‘infer’ or estimate their rankings.
All I thought of was Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon where everyone is above average…</p>
<p>My post did not appear so I will retype, realizing that perhaps it will appear as a dupe later. Somewhat new to this forum or any forum.</p>
<p>GGD–I realized that my choice of the word fabricate was perhaps not ideal, but I do not know what I should have used instead. Miscalculate? Overstated? Since GW claims that they do not know who started this approach ten years ago, I don’t think we can say there was or was not intent to deceive. But, it was not my intent to imply that they lied on purpose. It may very well have been simply the action of one person, perpetuated these past ten years. That is a plausible explanation, and it is good that they have come forward.</p>
<p>I agree that USNWR rankings do not matter, but the reason I think this stat is important is b/c it is reported in the CDS, and the PR best college book seems to lift their sidebar stats directly from the CDS. Line C10 of the CDS reports the percentage of enrolled freshmen who submitted their class rank. (And GW’s report includes a note that states that class rank percentages were revised as of Nov 8th.)</p>
<p>I have had the same question as DeskPotato: how could all of these schools have such a high percentage of their enrollees as the top 10% of their HS classes, especially without correspondingly high SAT scores? I am guessing that GW is not alone in this inaccurate reporting, be it of class rank or SAT scores of accepted vs. applied vs. enrolled students. I hope that other schools look at their reporting practices and revise the CDS as appropriate. </p>
<p>My HS’s Naviance data is the only data I truly rely on but even that is skewed by athletic recruits.</p>