Reply to Top 15 List: Schools that have produced the most Rhodes Scholars

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1	Harvard   369
2	Yale   252
3	Princeton   215
4	Stanford   102
5	US Military Academy   94
6	Dartmouth   63
7	Brown   57
8	UVA   54
9	MIT   52
10	U Chicago   51
11	US Naval Academy   48
12	Duke   47
13	UNC   44
14	US Air Force Academy   41
15	U Washington   37

https://www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/media/44935/2020-rs_number-of-winners-by-institution.pdf

Other "regionals" of note:

Georgetown   25
Johns Hopkins   21
Washington & Lee   17
VMI   9
Howard  3
U Maryland   2
Virginia Tech   2
UMBC   1
GWU   1

[/quote]

Most surprising absences?

UPenn
Columbia
Michigan 
UC Berkeley
Cornell

[/quote]

Cornell - 31
Michigan - 27
Columbia - 27
Berkeley - 24
Penn - 23
[/quote]

[b]"Regional" Washington & Lee has produced 17 Rhodes Scholars to "National" UVA's 55.  But wait!  UVA has 9.3X as many undergraduate students.  On a per capita basis, W&L has produced about 3X as many Rhodes Scholars as UVA.  The miracles of math. . .[/quote][/b]

[b]You can't use stats. in that fashion in this instance.[/b]  First, women weren't even included until 1977 (Rhodes program started in 1903, but had a sporadic start).  I know because I competed that year.  Second both UVA and Washington & Lee are in District 9 for the Regional competition which means their students compete directly against one another.  The stats and recent reports indicate that UVA is producing a Rhodes Scholar every year now.  Washington & Lee didn't produce its first until 1954 and recently snagged one in 2016 and 2020.  It's performance is erratic which is not uncommon for the smaller SLACs.[/quote]

Normalization is common practice in statistics.

UVA didn't have women undergraduates until 1970, with a reduced quota maintained through 1972.  W&L's "erratic" performance is a function of having far fewer undergraduates.  If W&L produced one Rhodes Scholar for every one UVA produces, it would be producing them at a rate 9.3X higher based on relative enrollments.

Note that you could apply this approach to other schools to get a normalized view.   Take Brown, for instance.  UVA (54) is just barely behind Brown (57) on the list.  But UVA actually has about 2.4X as many undergraduates as Brown, so Brown actually has produced 2.5X as many Rhodes Scholars on a per capita basis.   UVA leads Duke, 54 to 47 (not sure if this count is current - Duke had 2 this year and UVA 1), but UVA has 2.6X as many undergraduates, so on a per capita basis, Duke is far ahead.  Schools like Davidson (23 Rhodes Scholars with 1,950 undergraduates) are also far ahead of UVA on a per capita basis.[/quote]

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