<p>In the US News ‘America’s Best Colleges’ magazine, one of the statistics for colleges is “Over-Performance (+) Under-Performance (-)”</p>
<p>Princeton, Yale, U Penn, Dartmouth, and John Hopkins have zero or no over/under-performance</p>
<p>While Pennsylvania State U. has +20.</p>
<p>What does this mean?</p>
<p>To be honest, I think it means that Penn State is manipulating their graduation rates. Or, it could mean that Penn State has huge grade inflation. Either way, something is not right with the Penn State data.</p>
<p>Over- and Under-performance refers to how much a school’s graduation rate deviates from what you would expect based on the quality of their student body (SATs etc.).</p>
<p>So a positive value is grade inflation and negatives are deflation?
That would make sense then because Harvey Mudd College has a under-performance of -10, and it is known for its GPA deflation.</p>
<p>its one of many factors that should be eliminated from the rankings.</p>
<p>Over- and under-performance is one of the most useful pieces of information in US News because it indicates the performance of the school itself controlling for the quality of the students when they enter.</p>
<p>it’s not. lets keep on playing this.</p>