Washington Monthly recently published their college rankings – but their methodology was a bit more interesting (and realistic) than that of say, Princeton Review.
Check this out:
The social mobility score is more complicated. We have data that tells us the percentage of a school’s students on Pell Grants, which is a good measure of a school’s commitment to educating lower-income kids. But, while we’d also like to know how many of these students graduate, schools aren’t required to track those figures. Still, because lower-income students at any school are less likely to graduate than wealthier ones, the percentage of Pell Grant recipients is a meaningful indicator in and of itself. If a campus has a large percentage of Pell Grant students—that is to say, if its student body is disproportionately poor—it will tend to diminish the school’s overall graduation rate.
We have a formula that predicts the graduation rate of the average school given its percentage of Pell students and its average SAT score. (Since most schools only provide the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile of scores, we took the mean of the two.) Schools with graduation rates that are higher than the “average” school with similar stats score better than schools that match or, worse, undershoot the mark. Four schools had comparatively low Pell Grant rates and comparatively high SAT scores, and had predicted graduation rates of over 100 percent. We left these results alone to keep the metric consistent. In addition, we used a second metric that predicted the percentage of students on Pell Grants based on SAT scores. This indicated which selective universities (since selectivity is highly correlated with SAT scores) are making the effort to enroll low-income students. The two formulas were weighted equally.
How fantastic! Check out the interesting results HERE!
Here’s a report CBS did about the college rankings:
Also, to see more on college access – check out Teenedge’s own College Access Report!
Filed under: education, human rights | Tagged: college access, college rankings, education, low income
[...] frank wang wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptWe have a formula that predicts the graduation rate of the average school given its percentage of Pell students and its average SAT score. (Since most schools only provide the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile of scores, … [...]