There is an article in yesterday’s (February 5) USA TODAY about the The Princeton Review’s list of “…150 schools that offer the best bang for the buck…”
The article explains how the schools were picked by the Princeton Review. It says that “…they are demanding academically…” which is defined in the article (and, thus, I assume by The Princeton Review) as, on average, admitting fewer than half of their applicants.
The one measure that The Princeton Review doesn’t use – one of the most important measures of all – is salary and/or placement of graduates. I have made a back of the envelope comparison using data from http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/full-list-of-schools and
http://www.payscale.com/college-education-value and http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles
Here is what I got by just comparing two universities: (I picked these two because they are both research universities in the same state. I could have picked much more dramatic comparisons.)
| College | ROI with aid (30yrs) | %ROI with aid (30yrs) | Starting Salary | Mid-Career Salary | SAT | ||
| Reading | Writing | Math | |||||
| Northwestern University | $435,300 | 9.20% | $49,000 | $88,200 | 680/750 | 680/770 | 700/780 |
| University of Illinois UIUC | $654,200 | 12.50% | $51,400 | $95,900 | 540/660 | 590/680 | 690/780 |
What a business to be in! People pay you a lot of money if people pay you a lot of money! That is, if you can show that your input (in this case, student SAT’s, etc…) is of high quality, people will pay your more because they will assume that your output must be high. (See what Bill Gates has to say about that in my Informative Links tab above.)
Note: I will soon post comments on college rankings.
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