"newengland" Vindicated by Academic Study

[Marshall]

"newengland" was a prolific, erudite and opinionated contributor to
this newsgroup in the 1990's. He hasn't posted here for many years
(and neither have I). But, when he did, he first proposed in about
1998 (and first posted it here) an alternative college ranking system
that he called "A New Ranking of American Colleges on Laissez-Faire
Principles."

He ranked colleges largely by student preference. More specifically,
he devised a system that awarded extra points to colleges that
outperformed their chief competitors in attracting desirable pools of
matriculated students. He relied mostly on Fiske's Guide for his
database, and his Ranking was republished on several websites. See:
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_rankings/LF_rank.htm .

His guiding philosophy was that colleges were communities that
attracted like-minded students, and that, therefore, following student
preferences was the best guide to college quality.

Eight years later, the New York Times has reported an academic study
that used essentially the same principles, but with access to much
greater statistical resources. The study is titled "A Revealed
Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities" and was written
by faculty from Harvard, B.U. and Wharton.

I see that not many people post here any more. I assume the traffic
has mostly moved on to the Web-based forums. But, out of nostalgia or
a sense of respect, I wanted to write about this here (where I spent
far too much time in the 1990's!).

NYT article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17leonhardt.html .

Academic study here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105#PaperDownload

[Ryn aka ScienceDriven.net]

Thank you, Marshall, for the reference to the validating academic study of newengland's eminently helpful rankings!

Since both you and newengland recognize the authentic utility and explicit underlying assumptions of newengland's college rankings, I am posting in hopes that one or both of you might be willing to have an offline, face-to-face conversation about my willingness to undertake a project to revive/evolve the college rankings in the public interest. All my contact info is on my web placeholder.

Because I am a cultivator, I envision growing US rankings gradually to become global. The business model, which must be open and sustainable, is what I would like to discuss with Marshall and/or newengland. I am confident that your anonymity can be preserved, if that is desirable.

Best,
Ryn

p/s My son and daughter are in their 20s; graduate school admissions is a very different beast. So this is the first time i've looked at soc.college.admissions since it became a Google group.