Ivy-equivalents

College Search & Lists
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<p>As I mentioned in another thread, I Iike to use outcomes-based rankings to determine tiers of schools (mostly for bragging rights; for different career paths, like Wall Street vs. engineering vs. CS vs. pre-med vs. pre-law, etc., I’d actually recommend different combinations of school options that don’t neatly fit in to these tiers).</p>

<p>However, someone asked how I’d rank. </p>

<p>I haven’t come up with a full ranking yet, but for this exercise, I wanted to determine which schools are true Ivy-equivalents, which I define as being above at least 1 Ivy in all/most of the outcomes-based rankings I looked at (the Forbes subcategories of “American Leaders”, prestigious student awards won per capita, and PhDs as well as an old WSJ ranking of feeders in to elite professional schools*):
<a href=“http://inpathways.net/ipcnlibrary/ViewBiblio.aspx?aid=1577”>http://inpathways.net/ipcnlibrary/ViewBiblio.aspx?aid=1577&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“CollegeLifeHelper.com - Helping College Students Online!”>CollegeLifeHelper.com - Helping College Students Online!;

<p>The worst Ivy in each ranking is Cornell at 25th in the ranking by percentage in elite pre-professional schools, Columbia at 19th in the “American Leaders” ranking (which is a ranking of leaders in business, government, and the arts), and UPenn at 65th in the per capita Prestigious Awards and 72nd in the per capita PhDs ranking.</p>

<p>Stanford, MIT, and Northwestern are the only research universities who are above at least one Ivy in all 4 rankings (as well as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown). Among LACs, Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore accomplish that feat. 6 Ivy-equivalents (3 RUs and 3 LACs) and 5 Ivies.</p>

<p>CalTech, Duke, Chicago, Rice, JHU, Cal, Pomona, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Haverford, Bowdoin, Barnard, Oberlin, & Middlebury (as well as Cornell and Columbia) outrank at least 1 Ivy in 3 out of the 4 categories. 14 that can be considered Ivy-equivalents (6 RUs and 8 LACs) and 2 Ivies.</p>

<p>UPenn is last among Ivies in 2 categories so only outranks another Ivy in only 2 categories.</p>

<p>BTW, if you do this same exercise for HYPSM, no school outranks at least one of those schools in all 4 categories (HYPSM really dominate the professional success rankings). Williams and Swarthmore are the only schools who outrank at least 1 of HYPSM in 3 out of 4 categories (Amherst barely misses the cut).</p>

<ul>
<li>Though notice that there is a heavy East Coast bias in the grad schools deemed elite by WSJ, with 12 on the East Coast, 2 in the Midwest, and 1 on the West Coast. Compare with the composition of M7 b-schools + T6 law schools, which is 8 on the East Coast, 3 in the Midwest, and 2 on the West Coast. If you add the top 2 med schools according to USN to get to 15, it comes 9-3-3 (2 med schools is probably enough because unlike b-school and law school, what med school you go to likely won’t have a big effect on earnings). Still, this is the best ranking we have to admittance to elite professional schools.</li>
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<p>This in interesting. </p>

<p>Are you are only evaluating undergraduate outcomes? It looks like the graduate schools, which is most of the students at many of these schools, are excluded.</p>

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<p>@Much2learn:</p>

<p>Yep, these rankings are only of undergrad outcomes.</p>

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<p>Is there a way to factor in employment percentages and salaries? </p>

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<p>@Much2learn:</p>

<p>Payscale has average salary rankings, and Forbes has them as a subranking, but they’re heavily influenced by the mix of majors. A school that has a heavy concentration in the arts/communications/theatre just won’t have high average salaries compared to a school that has kids going mostly in to engineering and business, even if the engineers from the first school make as much or more as the engineers from the second school.</p>

<p>As for employment percentages, they’re self-reported, so can be unreliable.</p>

<p>The thing you will realize is that companies hire individuals, not schools. The name or network of some schools may give a lift, but ultimately, it comes down to the individual, regardless of school. Obviously, the schools in the higher tier will generally have more impressive individuals, but that doesn’t necessarily help you as a person (other than for bragging rights). Well, maybe for networking later on, though you can build networks multiple ways, and some people are simply good at that while others can’t really take advantage. If you’re interested in an industry, do look to research who comes on campus to interview, however.</p>

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<p>@Much2learn‌ :</p>

<p>BTW, if your child is smart and driven/motivated, studies have shown that if they do not come from a disadvantaged/URM background, if they have what it takes to get in to an elite school (or maybe even apply to one), it doesn’t much matter where they go to school for undergrad.</p>

<p>Also, another study showed that that finding was <em>not</em> true when it comes to getting your MBA. So where you go to b-school definitely does matter:</p>

<p><a href=“http://web.lemoyne.edu/grovewa/payoff%20to%20school%20selectivity%20application%20dale%20and%20krueger%20chen%20grove%20hussey%20el%202012.pdf”>http://web.lemoyne.edu/grovewa/payoff%20to%20school%20selectivity%20application%20dale%20and%20krueger%20chen%20grove%20hussey%20el%202012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>That’s very likely the case when it comes to law schools as well (though I would advise against law school in any case).</p>

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<p>Hmmm, but how would the rankings look after adjusting for entrance selectivity? If a school admits only top-end students who are already highly likely to go on to a top PhD program or professional school, or have other high level career success, then how much of that future success really due to the school?</p>

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<p>^ I’ve tried adjusting PhD production rates by entering SAT scores.
I started with the NSF’s list of top 50 U.S. baccalaureate-origin institutions of 2002–11 S&E doctorate recipients, by institutional-yield ratio (<a href=“nsf.gov - NCSES Baccalaureate Origins of U.S.-trained S&E Doctorate Recipients - US National Science Foundation (NSF)”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/&lt;/a&gt;, table 4). I then divided the NSF “institutional yield ratio” by the percentage of incoming freshmen with SAT-M scores in the 700-800 range (per CDS section C9). For example, for Reed College, the NSF institutional yield ratio is 14.2; the percentage of incoming freshmen with SAT-M scores in that range is 35%. So my adjusted score for Reed College is 14.2/.35=41. I re-ranked the NSF top 50 by this number. Results (w/highest-scoring schools on top):</p>

<p>Allegheny College
NM Institute of Mining and Technology
Earlham C.
Hendrix C.
Reed C.
Caltech
Kalamazoo C.
Harvey Mudd C.
Whitman C.
Grinnell C.
Oberlin C.
Bryn Mawr C.
Occidental C.
Swarthmore C.
Carleton C.
Lawrence U.
Macalester C.
Haverford C.
Franklin and Marshall C.
Mount Holyoke C.
MIT
Rice U.
Williams C.
Case Western Reserve U.
C. of William and Mary
Brandeis U.
CO School of Mines
Vassar C.
Pomona C.
Princeton U.
Wellesley C.
Brown U.
Cornell U.
Amherst C.
Wesleyan U.
Johns Hopkins U.
Carnegie Mellon U.
Stanford U.
U. CA, Berkeley
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Yale U.
Bowdoin C.
Dartmouth C.</p>

<p>I did not have complete information for UChicago, Harvard, Hillsdale, Duke, Rochester, Cooper Union, or Columbia, so they are not on this list. I think the most important thing is not the ranking of any individual school but the overall pattern. What kinds of colleges seem to do the best job of generating S&E doctorates, after adjusting for the number of high-scoring students they admit?
This list appears to be dominated by “Colleges That Change Lives”, other LACs, and technical institutes.</p>

<p>Self-selection must be a big factor here. I would not conclude that Dartmouth has weaker science programs than Allegheny. Allegheny may do a better job of motivating its best students to pursue doctorates. On the other hand, Dartmouth students presumably have more lucrative career opportunities that don’t require doctorates.</p>

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<p>@ucbalumnus:</p>

<p>Well, I don’t purport to rank by how much a college <em>increases</em> someone’s ability to succeed post-grad.</p>

<p>Obviously, alumni success is due mostly to 2 factors:

  1. The school.
  2. The inputs.</p>

<p>That’s why I said I would recommend different schools (that do not match these tiers, really) for different career paths*. However, if all else is equal, having a more accomplished network is usually better, so if a school is good at either 1 or 2, I can’t see how that is bad.</p>

<p>*Harvard may be the only school that is in the top tier for all career paths, BTW.</p>

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<p>Conceptually, it seems that in order to establish an outcome based ranking, one would need to first establish what the desired outcomes are. </p>

<p>Examples could include:
Employment, Salary/Income, Graduate School Admissions, Graduate Degrees, Published Research, Nobel Prizes, etc.</p>

<p>Have you considered beginning by trying to establish what constitutes a successful outcome? Then you could try to decide how each of those could be assessed.</p>

<p>Perhaps it is just not feasible to do it this way? idk</p>

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<p>Presumably you are not including those strongly associated with majors or subjects which Harvard does not offer or has limited offerings in?</p>

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<p>@ucbalumnus:</p>

<p>This is true. I should say for those career paths that I (and most people who apply to Harvard) consider.</p>

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<p>@Much2learn‌:</p>

<p>As I mentioned, getting useful salary and employment data (for your major, which is what matters) is problematic. The last 4 are measured by various subrankings, but I expect them to be highly correlated.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>One view of how it could be “bad” (or at least, not consistently good for all students) is Malcolm Gladwell’s theory on the advantages of being a big fish in a small academic pond (<a href=“Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath”>Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath). That theory might account for the position of some schools in my SAT-adjusted ranking above.
A very high-scoring student who attends an Earlham or a Whitman is rather likely to be a big fish. At Dartmouth or Yale, he likely will not be. So a higher percentage of high-scoring Earlham or Whitman students go on to earn the highest degrees.</p>

<p>(Dunno that I buy that theory, but it’s out there.)</p>

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<p>@tk21769:</p>

<p>Ah true, there is that. So I think that for a bright, motivated, confident kid from a middle-class or higher background, it reallly doesn’t matter where you go to school. Higher-ranked schools do give you easier access to opportunities (and bragging rights).</p>

<p>For a bright kid who’s not as confident, a LAC might be best.</p>

<p>Note, though, that many LACs excel in the academic measures (PhD production and student awards), but only a handful do well in the preprofessional categories (elite professional schools and American Leaders). That’s why you only see 11 LACs up there (compared to 17 RUs) and only WAS is above at least 1 Ivy in all 4 categories (compared to 8 RUs).</p>

<p>BTW, you can do the same thing with the WSJ elite professional schools feeders ranking. Evidently, WSJ had one of the top 50 publics as well, but I can’t find it online.</p>

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<p>On thing that I get from this is that must people put a lot of effort into choosing a college, but making a well informed decision about your Major is probably more critical.</p>

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<p>@Much2learn‌: </p>

<p>In general, I agree. Less so for the very top schools. English and engineering majors from Harvard are both likely to do well, but engineering majors from UIUC will have much higher average salaries than English majors from UIUC.</p>

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<p>This recent article describes a study using the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) as another measure of outcomes. My apologies if this has been hashed to death elsewhere. </p>

<p>The concept is simple: take the test on arrival, and again at graduation, and measure the change. I haven’t read the studies or books, but the article claims the test covers “critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and communication skills”. </p>

<p><a href=“The Economic Price of Colleges’ Failures - The New York Times”>The Economic Price of Colleges’ Failures - The New York Times;

<p>Some interesting take-aways from the article (which may be coming at it with a particular point of view, I realize) are that students didn’t improve very much, that the students actually think they learned significantly (chalk one up for marketing), and that those who left college with low scores were twice as likely to lose their jobs. </p>

<p>My expectation is that this type of study wouldn’t change the rankings very much; top schools admit top students, who come in and leave with high CLA scores. Johnny Harvard probably doesn’t have much headroom for improvement so I wouldn’t expect much change. Where one would expect improvement would be at schools that admit lower-performing students; unfortunately the article suggests they tend to stay there.</p>

<p>What this could reveal is whether there are some gems that do a better job of raising the CLA scores of their students (if in fact CLA is a relevant measurement). For the non-superstar student that could help identify some good choices. It would be interesting to see the school-specific data on this.</p>

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<p>The WSJ feeder school data is about 10 years old and the methodology was discredited shortly after it came out. There are old threads on it. </p>

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<p>While that may be the case for job prospects and pay levels, career choices that may be influence by choice of major can also be more or less suitable based on the person’s interest. E.g. an English degree from Harvard may get one into an elite consulting job, but won’t help someone get an engineering job if s/he decides that engineering is what s/he is really interested in.</p>

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<p>There was another thread about it at <a href=“The Economic Price of Colleges’ Failures - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1683035-the-economic-price-of-colleges-failures.html&lt;/a&gt; . Some other articles relating to this study indicate that CLA score improvements were greatest at the least competitive colleges, but the senior year CLA scores at the least competitive colleges were still lower than the senior year CLA scores at the most competitive colleges.</p>