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Sweet. I love Elo points a lot (so much so that they are how my startup ranks U.S. colleges: http://college.mychances.net/college-rankings.php http://college.my

Sweet. I love Elo points a lot (so much so that they are how my startup ranks U.S. colleges: http://college.mychances.net/college-rankings.php http://college.mychances.net/college-rankings.php ). The author poses the following question: "[...] like the economy, are Elo ratings subject to bouts of inflation?" Since the amount of points available depends on the number of individuals participating, Elo points should indeed be subject to inflation.

grasshoper 16y ago
Cool site. I knew Harvard's yield was higher than the other schools, but I didn't expect Stanford and Yale to have higher yields so much higher than Princeton. I don't think this was true a few years ago when I was applying to schools. How are you gathering information about where students were accepted? And where is Caltech in all this? Also, you know that you can't just add the 25th/75th percentiles for individual SAT sections and come up with overall results, right?
- carbocation 16y ago
  Thanks. Re: Caltech - if I recall correctly, there wasn't enough data for it to produce results when I ran the algorithm last year. I suspect we'll have enough this year (I'll probably re-run the algorithm in a few weeks). Basically the entire site is dedicated to gathering information from students, and then transforming that data into something useful for them. So I gather the info directly (over 250,000 college apps from 50,000 different people are in the system by now). I honestly have no idea why I thought I could get away with adding together the 25th and 75th percentiles for SAT subscores on that page; it's not something I do elsewhere on the site. (I'm using "I" here since I'm sure this is my fault alone.) Thanks for pointing that out! Edit: I forgot about Princeton. The Elo points can be a bit hard to decipher on the fly; for example, Yale should only beat Princeton in 59:41 fashion - not exactly a drubbing. Here's an Ivy+Stanford+MIT cross-admit comparison based on this data - http://college.mychances.net/tools/college-choice-matrix.php?list[]=342&list[]=544&list[]=3&list[]=1737&list[]=1519&list[]=165&list[]=1034&list[]=319&list[]=762&list[]=361 http://college.mychances.net/tools/college-choice-matrix.php...
jsyedidia 16y ago
Your rankings of colleges by revealed student preferences seem seriously out of line, especially for MIT and Caltech, compared to the academic paper by Avery et.al. that you cite on your web-site. They give a ranking of 1. Harvard 2. Caltech 3. Yale 4. MIT 5. Stanford 6. Princeton 7. Brown 8. Columbia 9. Amherst 10. Dartmouth while you give 1. Harvard 2. Yale 3. Stanford 4. Princeton 5. Dartmouth 6. Penn 7. Notre Dame 8. Columbia 9. Georgetown 10. Berkeley (and MIT only #12, and Caltech not even on the list!). For example according to your Elo points (Dartmouth 1767, MIT 1688), Dartmouth would be expected to "win" over MIT in more than 60% of their battles for students (something I have a hard time believing, with all due respect to Dartmouth), while according to Avery et.al.'s paper, MIT has a significant edge over Dartmouth in their competition for students. Based on my anecdotal experiences, the Avery et.al. paper seems to give a much more reasonable account of student preferences. Where are you getting your data?
- carbocation 16y ago
  Out of line - really? I was initially floored at how similar they were, given the vast differences in survey methodology and time between the two surveys. We even see the same blips (exaggerated preference for Notre Dame, for example) that they see. The Avery data is from 1999. They collected theirs by sending out surveys to dozens of "elite" high schools and asking them to hand the surveys to their top 10% (this is from memory, probably not 100% accurate but close). My data is collected from the 50,000 students who have used my site to track their ~250,000 applications to college -- the bulk of which are from 2009 & 2010. It's not surprising to me that my results look a bit more, shall we say, "democratic" than those from Avery. I say this because of their selection methodology vs ours (elites vs all-comers). Also, it seems that Caltech is seriously over-favored (relative to the preference of current college applicants) in their survey. I say this only based on Caltech's current acceptance rate (17%) and yield (34.4%). Whereas Avery put Caltech above MIT back in 1999, the modern (official) statistics hint at a different picture. Now, MIT still has an extremely impressive 66% yield (and 12% acceptance rate). Their 66% yield trumps Caltech's 34%, especially if you consider geographic rivals such as the entire Ivy league (for MIT) vs, largely, Stanford and Berkeley (for Caltech). (I'm using yield here because it gives a broad-strokes hint of revealed preference when no better data is available. I don't have data from 1999, and Avery don't have data from 2010, so there is no direct way to do this comparison.) I'm not sure that there is much to learn from trying to compare preference for Dartmouth vs MIT, frankly. MIT (perhaps along with Caltech) holds a special place in educational mythology. For quantitative people, it's sacred. For some others, it's probably not even on the radar. I don't know how much direct overlap they have in real life, but on our site we don't even have enough direct cross-admits to make a statement about preference: http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Dartmouth&with=MIT http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-adm... Edit: As an aside, Caltech is not on this list because it didn't have enough applicants to give us a fair sense of its ranking. Given that only 4,000 people a year apply there, this wasn't that surprising to me. I think we'll have enough data to rank it this year. Edit 2: If you have any methodological suggestions, I'd absolutely be eager to hear your thoughts.
datageek 16y ago
Cool site!
- carbocation 16y ago
  Thanks a bunch! Great HN username, btw :-)

grasshoper 16y ago

Cool site. I knew Harvard's yield was higher than the other schools, but I didn't expect Stanford and Yale to have higher yields so much higher than Princeton. I don't think this was true a few years ago when I was applying to schools. How are you gathering information about where students were accepted? And where is Caltech in all this? Also, you know that you can't just add the 25th/75th percentiles for individual SAT sections and come up with overall results, right?

carbocation 16y ago
Thanks. Re: Caltech - if I recall correctly, there wasn't enough data for it to produce results when I ran the algorithm last year. I suspect we'll have enough this year (I'll probably re-run the algorithm in a few weeks). Basically the entire site is dedicated to gathering information from students, and then transforming that data into something useful for them. So I gather the info directly (over 250,000 college apps from 50,000 different people are in the system by now). I honestly have no idea why I thought I could get away with adding together the 25th and 75th percentiles for SAT subscores on that page; it's not something I do elsewhere on the site. (I'm using "I" here since I'm sure this is my fault alone.) Thanks for pointing that out! Edit: I forgot about Princeton. The Elo points can be a bit hard to decipher on the fly; for example, Yale should only beat Princeton in 59:41 fashion - not exactly a drubbing. Here's an Ivy+Stanford+MIT cross-admit comparison based on this data - http://college.mychances.net/tools/college-choice-matrix.php?list[]=342&list[]=544&list[]=3&list[]=1737&list[]=1519&list[]=165&list[]=1034&list[]=319&list[]=762&list[]=361 http://college.mychances.net/tools/college-choice-matrix.php...

jsyedidia 16y ago

Your rankings of colleges by revealed student preferences seem seriously out of line, especially for MIT and Caltech, compared to the academic paper by Avery et.al. that you cite on your web-site. They give a ranking of 1. Harvard 2. Caltech 3. Yale 4. MIT 5. Stanford 6. Princeton 7. Brown 8. Columbia 9. Amherst 10. Dartmouth while you give 1. Harvard 2. Yale 3. Stanford 4. Princeton 5. Dartmouth 6. Penn 7. Notre Dame 8. Columbia 9. Georgetown 10. Berkeley (and MIT only #12, and Caltech not even on the list!). For example according to your Elo points (Dartmouth 1767, MIT 1688), Dartmouth would be expected to "win" over MIT in more than 60% of their battles for students (something I have a hard time believing, with all due respect to Dartmouth), while according to Avery et.al.'s paper, MIT has a significant edge over Dartmouth in their competition for students. Based on my anecdotal experiences, the Avery et.al. paper seems to give a much more reasonable account of student preferences. Where are you getting your data?

carbocation 16y ago
Out of line - really? I was initially floored at how similar they were, given the vast differences in survey methodology and time between the two surveys. We even see the same blips (exaggerated preference for Notre Dame, for example) that they see. The Avery data is from 1999. They collected theirs by sending out surveys to dozens of "elite" high schools and asking them to hand the surveys to their top 10% (this is from memory, probably not 100% accurate but close). My data is collected from the 50,000 students who have used my site to track their ~250,000 applications to college -- the bulk of which are from 2009 & 2010. It's not surprising to me that my results look a bit more, shall we say, "democratic" than those from Avery. I say this because of their selection methodology vs ours (elites vs all-comers). Also, it seems that Caltech is seriously over-favored (relative to the preference of current college applicants) in their survey. I say this only based on Caltech's current acceptance rate (17%) and yield (34.4%). Whereas Avery put Caltech above MIT back in 1999, the modern (official) statistics hint at a different picture. Now, MIT still has an extremely impressive 66% yield (and 12% acceptance rate). Their 66% yield trumps Caltech's 34%, especially if you consider geographic rivals such as the entire Ivy league (for MIT) vs, largely, Stanford and Berkeley (for Caltech). (I'm using yield here because it gives a broad-strokes hint of revealed preference when no better data is available. I don't have data from 1999, and Avery don't have data from 2010, so there is no direct way to do this comparison.) I'm not sure that there is much to learn from trying to compare preference for Dartmouth vs MIT, frankly. MIT (perhaps along with Caltech) holds a special place in educational mythology. For quantitative people, it's sacred. For some others, it's probably not even on the radar. I don't know how much direct overlap they have in real life, but on our site we don't even have enough direct cross-admits to make a statement about preference: http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Dartmouth&with=MIT http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-adm... Edit: As an aside, Caltech is not on this list because it didn't have enough applicants to give us a fair sense of its ranking. Given that only 4,000 people a year apply there, this wasn't that surprising to me. I think we'll have enough data to rank it this year. Edit 2: If you have any methodological suggestions, I'd absolutely be eager to hear your thoughts.

datageek 16y ago

Cool site!

carbocation 16y ago
Thanks a bunch! Great HN username, btw :-)