<p>A suggestion on my previous poll to make it more relevant to “college search & selection” was to choose criteria and assign weightings based on what CCers have said they look for in a university. Here are the results!</p>
<p>Factor, Weighting based on poll votes, Measured by
Academic Strength in My Department, 29.35%, NRC departmental rankings
Prestige, 22.68%, USNWR PA score
Good Vibes, 19.19%, Students Review “Would Choose Again” %
Tution/Cost, 12.56%, Average Debt upon graduation, according to USNWR (Less better)
Location, 12.25%, Students Review Location score (Sum of Campus Aesthetics and Surrounding City)
Climate, 3.9%, Average temperature in February (Higher temp is better)</p>
<p>Potential Problems: Students Review tended to give unusually negative ratings to UNC and Columbia, and to a lesser extent Harvard, which may lead to them being underranked. Brown and Penn also received unusually positive feedback. WashU did not report debt upon graduation so it was assumed to be 22,000 based on similar private schools of its cost and endowment. Obviously warmer schools and California schools were helped by the location and climate categories, even though to some students that may not be the preferred climate. And the standard bias against schools without strong research or graduate programs and towards schools with high endowments. </p>
<p>If anybody knows of any better measures of the college confidential criteria that are readily available for the 28 ranked schools, I’d be happy to run it again. Comment away!</p>
<p>He did it by percentile in comparison to the rest of the top 28. So if we were to rank only HYPS, Harvard would have a percentile around zero, but it’s numeric score probably isn’t far away from Princeton’s. Don’t get too hung up on the numbers, that confused me too at first. The sources though are questionable. And I would remove some of the ranking criteria like climate, even though it helps my school.</p>
<p>We have unusually positive feedback because students are very happy at Brown. On the one measure that people really can’t complain about in Princeton Review, student happiness, where a self-reported survey is as good ast it gets, Brown has been the most consistently ranked top university over the last 10 or so years.</p>
<p>Yes Mosmorde has it right. The numbers were simply added to show relative spacing between schools by the criteria. For example, in this ranking UVA just tops out Michigan and Duke just beats Hopkins. But if as one suggested the climate criteria was eliminated, both scenarios would be reversed.</p>
<p>interesting stuff. i was wondering whether somebody would create a list partially based on the sentiments of applicants and students on these discussion boards.</p>
<p>The survey’s were taken from students review . com, a website where… students review a school they’ve attended or are attending and rate them in various categories. I’d give it more credence than, say, rate my professors .com, because many times students provide more in-depth rationales of their choices, and ratings in the various categories tended to be more consistent.</p>