<p>Sorry to ask but I can’t seem to find the answer. What does this category refer to in the USN&WR rankings?</p>
<p>It refers to graduation rates. US News has a formula (“multiple regression”) for predicting what the graduation rate SHOULD be based on student SATs, high school rank, educational expenditures per student, and so on. Underperformance and overperformance refer to whether the actual graduation rate is higher or lower than you would expect given the caliber of students and the amount of money spent on them.</p>
<p>By the way, engineering and science students have a lot of money spent on them and they tend to have higher SATs but their programs are exceptionally difficult, so there are offsetting factors to be considered.</p>
<p>Underperformance/overperformance is a meaningful statistic that indicates how well a college does with the students it enrolls. Graduation rates are closely related to average student SAT scores. </p>
<p>The one shortcoming is that the same formula is applied to schools with a high percentage of engineering/science, thereby overestimating their expected graduation rate (e.g. Harvey Mudd. Georgia Tech).</p>