Higher Ed Cop Out #4

Today's topic: Defining a college's "popularity" by its admissions yield.

I know, it's fun to try and assign schools and colleges a status according to how cool and popular they are-- it's just like the little social games we play in grade school.

But a common method for assessing the popularity of colleges-- by using the admissions yield (% of accepted applicants who enroll), is just plain stupid.

This is practice employed not only by popular publications like the U.S. News and World Report but also by many academic researchers. Take this list of the most popular national universities:

1. Harvard
2. Brigham Young
3. University of Nebraska-Lincoln
4. Stanford
5. MIT
6. Yale
7. Princeton
8. U. Pennsylvania
9. Yeshiva
10. U. Florida

This is silly. Here are just a sample of the myriad reasons why a college can have a high yield, for reasons having nothing to do with popularity:

1. A pool of applicants that didn't apply to lots of colleges. Applications are expensive-- each application carries a fee, and while waivers are available, many students don't know about them.

2. A pool of less-qualified applicants-- those that manage to get in have fewer options at other places.

3. Location. Is the college located near lots of other colleges, or in an area where a place-bound applicant pool would have few alternatives? (notice the presence of University of Nebraska, Lincoln for example)

4. Admissions criteria. Desire to attend a college, a sense of "match", if used in deciding who to admit, will maximize yield. This doesn't mean the school is more popular, only that it admits students who like it more. (this is probably contributing to the ranking of the Ivies- above-- these schools are inclined to admit those students who express a preference for their school over others- maybe because their parents are alums?)

5. Specialties of the college. If the college is among the only that offers a certain mission, it automatically makes it the school of choice for those that want that mission. That's not popularity, it's a niche. (witness Brigham Young and Yeshiva)

Instead of yield, how about considering the use of "revealed preference rankings" such as those proposed by Carolyn Hoxby and Christopher Avery?

Or, better yet-- how about simply deciding that "popularity" isn't a good reason to choose a college? Stop drinking the KoolAid folks....

When Only the Best Will Do....

I suppose my mom knew something about education after all (not that you'd have known it from how GWU treated her as a lecturer way back when)....

Apparently, I graduated from "the very best high school" in the whole darn country.

100% of the kids are said to be "college ready"? Well then how come lil ol' me, with my 1400+ SAT, and 4 AP classes, was counseled to attend Northern VA Community College, as I was pretty much Josie-average at that school? I was told that was the best fit for me. They were a little confused when I got into William & Mary....

That place was hard. Hard hard hard. Harder than grad school at U. Penn, and wayyyy harder than GWU. Sure, I work longer hours now-- but I'm also paid. In high school I woke at 6 am, stayed up past 1 or 2 doing homework, and studied constantly. Very little partying, play, and such.

I don't know-- it was a special place, for sure. It probably helped me 'get where I am today' (for more on where that is, see tomorrow's press release from UW-Madison). But wouldn't I have done the same with or without TJ? I wish someone would do a good study and get me the answer to that one....