<p>Although I think revealed preferences are not a bad way to do college rankings, the Avery study is unfortunately quite outdated. I think the data is something like 15 years old. The Avery study also had a rather small sample and was primarily designed to show that such a ranking could be done and was reasonable instead of being an authoritative study. Hence, it was published in an economics journal and not as a college ranking. I also question your use of the revealed preference study as you claim “(Harvard beats everybody, YPS beats the rest convincingly)”. Yet, according to the study, Caltech is #2 and MIT is #4 [Admittedly, HPYSMC beat everyone else convincingly]… </p>
<p>As many other commentators have pointed out, some of the rankings you use are totally worthless. It’s also unclear how you compiled your ranking from those sources but I suspect such aspects such as a well defined methodology do not exist for this ranking.</p>