30 Ways to Rate a College

The lines below connect raters to each of the measures they take into account. Notice how few measures are shared by two or more raters. That indicates a lack of agreement among them on what defines quality. Much of the emphasis is on “input measures” such as student selectivity, faculty-student ratio, and retention of freshmen. Except for graduation rates, almost no “outcome measures,” such as whether a student comes out prepared to succeed in the work force, are used.

* Published in a partnership between these two organizations through 2009.
Note: In some cases, separate measures shown here are combined to create a single variable used for ranking colleges.