The measures of the strength of a college are:
Large endowment/student
Low average tuition
High student choice rank
High SAT average score
The plot shows these measures for American and Canadian colleges. Colleges that are in peril of failing are to the upper left, and are in small red font.
MIT is the most dominant college for student choice and SAT score. Student choice rankings come from parchment.com.
The following plot shows the dominant STEM colleges.
Student choice rankings are not well correlated with the USNews rankings.
Core requirements:
Caltech MIT U. Chicago CUNY Harvard Juilliard MSM Biology * * * * * Lab * * * * * Mathematics * * * * * Calculus * * * Chemistry * * Multivariable Calculus * * Mechanics (with Calculus) * * Electromag (with Calculus) * * Sports * * Differential equations * Quantum Mechanics * Thermodynamics *
Teachers Administrators Administrators per student per student per teacher Public .064 .073 1.14 Private .07 .102 1.46Data from the "Delta Cost Project".
Numbers indicate fraction of the budget.
Teachers Admins Aid Students Operating University of California .38 .30 .14 Santa Clara University .26 .25 .16 .018 .17 University of Montana .48 .13 .09Caltech expenses:
Teaching 42% Research 40% Admin 13% Auxiliary 5%Caltech revenue:
Grants 56% Endowment 17% Gifts 8% Tuition 6% Other 13%
# M$ k$ per Frac of Frac classes person spending taught Students 26606 - - Full time teachers 534 48.2 90.3 .43 .488 Part time teachers 1054 21.2 20.1 .19 .512 Full time non-teachers 703 42.4 60.3 .38 .0 Total 28897 111.8 - 1.00 1.00 Students / Teachers = 16.8 Students / Full time teachers = 49.8 Course cost = 265 $/credit In state tuition = 5169 $ Out of state tuition = 9969 $ Classes offered per semester = 5300
Millions of $ Federal 370 Non-profit 115.3 State 108 Industry 63.3 U.C. 17.3 Total 673.9Data for 2015-16
Harvard 1 Cornell 21 U. Queensland 52 Erasmus U. Rot. 82 MIT 2 U.Col. London 22 McGill 53 Monash U. 84 UC Berkeley 3 UCSF 23 U. Munich 53 Kyoto U. 86 Stanford 4 UCSB 24 U. Manchester 56 U. Paris-Sud 88 Oxford 5 Northwestern 25 EPF Lausanne 58 U. Barcelona 90 Cambridge 6 Wisconsin 26 Tsinghua 59 U. New S. Wales 90 Caltech 7 Swiss Tech 27 King's College 61 U. Groningen 93 UCLA 8 UNC 28 U. Copenhagen 61 Mayo Clinic 94 Columbia 9 Minnesota 29 Tech U. Munich 64 Fudan U. 96 Chicago 10 Texas 30 U. Hong Kong 64 Ghent U. 97 U. Wash 11 U. Tokyo 31 Humbolt Berlin 68 Lund U. 97 Johns Hopkins 12 U. Brit Colum 33 Utrecht U. 69 U. Freiburg 99 Princeton 13 Heidelberg U. 37 Karolinska Inst. 72 U. Helsinki 101 U. Penn 14 U. Eidenburgh 37 Nanyang Tech 74 U. Glasgow 102 Yale 14 U. Melbourne 40 U. Bristol 74 VU U. Amsterdam 102 Toronto 16 Peking U. 41 Leiden U. 77 U. Geneva 104 Michigan 17 KU Leuven 42 U. Zurich 77 Seoul Nat. U. 105 Imperial Col. 18 N. U. Singap. 49 U. Amsterdam 79 U. Alberta 106 UCSD 19 Curie U. 49 Australian Nat U 80 Zhejiang U. 106 Duke 20 U. Sydney 51 Free U. Berlin 81 U Paris Diderot 109U.S. News
6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Singapore 19.0 21.0 22.0 17.5 12.2 6.1 2.2 Taiwan 18.0 19.2 19.7 17.1 13.1 8.3 4.5 Hong Kong 12.3 21.4 26.1 19.7 12.0 5.9 2.6 S. Korea 12.1 18.8 23.9 21.4 14.7 6.4 2.7 Japan 7.6 16.0 23.7 24.7 16.9 7.9 3.2 Lichten. 7.4 17.4 23.2 22.7 15.2 10.6 3.5 Switz. 6.8 14.6 23.9 24.5 17.8 8.9 3.6 Belgium 6.1 13.4 20.6 22.4 18.4 12.0 7.0 Poland 5.0 11.7 21.3 25.5 22.1 11.1 3.3 Germany 4.7 12.8 21.7 23.7 19.4 12.2 5.5 Canada 4.3 12.1 22.4 26.4 21.0 10.2 3.6 Finland 3.5 11.7 23.2 28.8 20.5 8.9 3.3 France 3.1 9.8 18.9 23.8 22.1 13.6 8.7 UK 2.9 9.0 18.4 24.8 23.2 14.0 7.8 Italy 2.2 7.8 16.7 24.6 24.1 16.1 8.5 USA 2.2 6.6 15.8 23.3 26.3 17.9 8.0 Hungary 2.1 7.1 14.4 23.0 25.3 18.2 9.9 Brazil 0 .7 2.9 8.9 20.4 31.9 35.2 Mexico 0 .6 3.7 13.1 27.8 31.9 22.8 Argentina 0 .3 1.8 9.2 22.2 31.6 34.9Columns indicate level of mathematical proficiency, 6 being highest.
Bias at elite universities:
The bias is larger than the difference in score. For example, Asians outscore
Blacks on average by 377 points, and Harvard favors Blacks over Asians by 450 points.
The Asian American Coalition
for Education has filed a complaint with the Department of Education requesting
that they investigate Harvard admissions.
A group of individuals is running for Harvard's Board of Overseers with the
platform of making Harvard admissions more fair. The candidates are
Ralph Nader, Ron Unz, Stephen Hsu, Stuart Taylor, and Lee Cheng.
Article
One of the few schools with race-blind admissions is Caltech, and it is reflected
by the fact that they have the best SAT scores.
Physics Math Putnam math Science Science talent Siemens
Olympiad Olympiad winners Olympiad search finalists Competition
winners (%) team (%) (%) winners
Asian 81 72 50 50 64 61
White 19 28 50 50 36 39
Other <1 <1 <1 0 0 0
Data
Bachelor Master PhD SAT SAT SAT SAT SAT SAT Mean tax Frac paying Public education $
math read write total math>750 change per person zero tax spent per student
% % % % 2006-2015 k$ % k$
Asian 51.0 20.4 6.4 598 525 531 1654 14 54 50 35.5 11.5
White 32.6 11.5 3.1 534 529 513 1576 2 -6 35 37.6 10.8
Hispanic 13.3 3.9 1.0 457 448 438 1343 1 -28 18 52.0 11.0
Black 19.8 6.2 1.3 428 431 418 1277 .5 -14 17 50.7 11.4
Am. Indian 14.8 5.0 1.4 482 481 460 1423 -17
Indian 70
S. Korean 53
Chinese 51
Filipino 47
Japanese 46
Vietnamese 26
SAT data
    
Public education spending data
    
Income data  
Data  
Data
SAT SAT ACT SAT relative
average bias bias to White
Asian 1654 -140 -3.4 78
White 1576 0 0 0
Hispanic 1423 +130 +0.3 -153
Black 1277 +310 +3.8 -299
Wall Street Journal article on SAT bias.
Asian White Hispanic Black International
Caltech 44 28 6 1 9
MIT 30 34 15 10
U. Chicago 17.0 42.8 9.0 4.5 9.7
Princeton 20 46 9 6 11
Penn 19.7 44.7 10.3 7.1 11.3
Columbia 17.1 38.1 12.8 7.2
Cornell 16
Harvard 17
Dartmouth 14
Brown 12
Numbers are percentages.
© Jason Maron, all rights reserved.
Data from Wikipedia unless otherwise specified.