How to really research a school

Lergnom
Fri, 01 May 2009 15:46:13 +0000

Put rankings and guidebooks aside, every school has to report data. Most of this stuff is a google search away and the rest can be found by digging through the school websites.

Here are a few examples:

The Common Data Set. Each school MUST submit the CDS. Google the school name and Common Data Set and you’ll find the report. It includes a ton of information, from basics about numbers of applicants, where they’re from, etc. to retention rates, graduation rates and then even to how much money they give in financial aid and even the kind of student who receives aid (financial and merit). Much of the stuff you read in the guidebooks is merely CDS material that’s been copied and retyped to fit the guidebook format. It’s much better to read the actual report.


You can see for example that BU gave $154M in need based aid and $32M in merit aid.

ASEE, the American Society for Engineering Education, collects data on how much a school gets in external grant funding by engineering department. You can see that school x gets a lot of money for polymer research, school y gets none but gets a lot for chemical engineering, etc. This directly reflects the strength of that school’s various graduate departments, opportunities for research and maybe even the quality of the faculty. At a minimum, it reflects the resources put into each area. The site is not intuitive but go to [this page](http://asee.org/publications/profiles/index.cfm) to start.


You can see, for example, that BU received $33.5M in external grants for engineering research and that it’s apparent strengths are biomed (over $16M), electrical & computer ($11M) and mechanical ($6+M).

Many schools and basically all state schools deliver a vast array of reports. These are usually buried somewhere on their websites. A typical report analyzes enrollment by major and then year by year in the major and even shows the admissions statistics for each major. This is great stuff because you can see how many people are in each major and which majors (and schools or colleges within the school) have higher or lower requirements.


Read full thread