Reply to Academic strength of Sidwell and Landon

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[quote=SAM2][quote=Anonymous]This is where you're running into some problems with your methodology, and it's a shame after all this hard work.  I think most people would be [i]more[/i] interested in what percentage of students actually attend top colleges, but you're admitting that your final percentage "is not really a reflection of that."  Moreover, Matriculationstats is not trying to make [i]any [/i]judgments as to which colleges are top colleges, it is merely relying on the gold standard that everyone uses, US News & World Report.  As you've admitted, you're looking at what percentage attended [i]certain[/i] top colleges, and [i]that[/i] comes from a "blend" where two of your three surveys are one-year snapshots from 3-6 years ago!  You're far better off copying the Matriculationstats methodology .... and then draw inferences on the matriculations to these same top colleges from the 3-4 local private schools that choose not to share matriculation data.  Where you can't draw inferences, you're probably better off leaving those cells blank for "insufficient data."  [/quote]
Well, if I wanted to follow the exact same methodology at Matriculationstats, I wouldn't have wasted any time doing this work, and I'd instead just link to his analysis. I'm more from the Baskin-Robbins school of thought, where you can pick whichever flavor of analysis suits your tastes. If you're the type to credit the WSJ/Worth methodology, then you might subscribe to my analysis, because it's just an extension of the same approach that makes it more robust. Alternatively, if you want a bigger palette of colleges, but fewer high schools and fewer years of data, then you'll likely subscribe to Matriculationstats. I'd ultimately hope that people will look at [i]both[/i] approaches and consider them as two different but informative perspectives on the same subject.

In the end, I suspect that for most people on DCUM, where you stand depends on where you sit. Those that vehemently insist on one methodology over another are likely the ones whose favorite school scores higher under one methodology than another. Like I said before though, I think someone looking at schools would be best served by thinking of each methodology as a different porthole for viewing the same target.[/quote]

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