CC does well in ‘student preference’ rankings

A team of economists has created a college ranking system based on student preference: the enrollment decisions ultimately made by those who are admitted to the nation’s top colleges and universities.

Connecticut College placed 59th on their list of 101 schools of all types and sizes — ahead of several other liberal arts colleges. Martha Merrill ’84, dean of admission and financial aid, was pleased to see CC’s rank was strong relative to some of its peers. But she cautioned against giving too much weight to any method of ranking colleges.

“This study measures just one set of values and not the quality of education our students receive or the quality of our faculty,” she said. “Part of the college selection process is perceived quality, that’s true, but we need to view these and other rankings with a bit of skepticism.”

The study, “A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities,” was written by four researchers at Harvard, Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania. It was published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“When a student makes his matriculation decision among colleges that have admitted him, he chooses which college ‘wins’ in head-to-head competition. [Our] model exploits the information contained in thousands of these wins and losses,” the authors wrote. They said their method of evaluating colleges is more relevant than the methods commonly used for such rankings as those done by U.S. News and World Report.

“Our method produces a ranking that would be difficult for a college to manipulate,” the authors wrote. “In contrast, it is easy to manipulate the matriculation rate and the admission rate, which are the common measures of preference that receive substantial weight in highly publicized college rating systems.”

The researchers analyzed college choices made by more than 3,240 high-achieving high school seniors in the class of 2000.