Profs. propose rating colleges on students' choices

A new college-ranking system could rival conventional ones by using a different criterion than usual: why students choose the university they attend compared to others they are accepted to.

The four college professors who developed the December 2005 study, "A Revealed Preference Rankings of U.S. Colleges and Universities," wanted to develop what they said is a fairer ranking system.

"Part of the reason that the study came about in the first place is that some of the common methods to rank schools are subject to manipulation," said Boston University health services professor Mark Glickman, one of the study's authors.

Boston University ranked 57th in the U.S. News and World Report rankings for 2008, but it ranked 90th, 83rd and 76th based on different statistical analyses in the study.

Although the study's data is out of date, Glickman said the method is the important issue because the information-collection methods are still sound and could be implemented again.

The study was developed to analyze a ranking system based on colleges chosen by 3,240 high school students after they were accepted to more than one school, according to the study's abstract.

"When a student makes his matriculation decision among colleges that have admitted him, he chooses which college 'wins' in head-to-head competition," the abstract notes. "The model exploits the information contained in thousands of these wins and losses."

The study incorporated different factors that might affect a student's decision, such as tuition and room and board fees.

"Schools can manipulate the variables and form their ranks by being selective about how they choose students, and matriculation rates can modify some of those pieces of information," Glickman said.

By accepting more students on an early-decision basis, some colleges can reject more students during the normal acceptance period and make their acceptance rates appear more selective than they actually are, Glickman said.

"U.S. News and World Report put some weight on judging colleges as being more selective or less selective, and they yield what percentage of students who apply are admitted," said Harvard University public policy professor Christopher Avery, another project author.

Students who apply later, but may be more qualified, are more likely to be rejected if this method is used, the professors said.

BU spokesman Colin Riley said students and parents should look beyond rankings and instead visit schools to find out if they are a good fit.

"The whole [U.S. News and World Report] ranking system is a formula looking at some statistical quantitative data but not looking at qualitative data or things that are more appropriate to a particular individual," Riley said.

"Americans like to rank things," he continued. "You'd be able to take all the fruits and have Americans rank them. The plum is a good fruit, but it may not be in the top 10."

The study's authors said it is unlikely their ranking system will replace U.S. News and World Report rankings, but Avery said he hopes with through the Internet, a centralized organization will collect information from students on an annual basis.

"I don't think we have the commercial machinery behind our method, and we don't have the inertia of people," Glickman said. "U.S. News and World Report are pretty good at advertising their system, and our hope is that our method might catch on and that people with a lot of resources might implement it."