(11-03-2011 09:40 AM)AtlanticLeague Wrote: Research funding only accounts for ~10% of the USNews rankings so it will probably only move UMD 4 or 5 spots.
It's not exactly a straight 10% on the research. ""Financial resources are measured by the average spending per full-time-equivalent student on instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services and institutional support during the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years. The number of full-time-equivalent students is equal to the number of full-time students plus one third of the number of part-time students. (Note: This includes both undergraduate and graduate students.)
We first scaled the public service and research values by the percentage of full-time-equivalent undergraduate students attending the school. Next, we added in total instruction, academic support, student services, institutional support, and operations and maintenance (for public institutions only) and then divided by the number of full-time-equivalent students. After calculating this value, we applied a logarithmic transformation to the spending per full-time-equivalent student, prior to standardizing the value. This calculation process was done for all schools."
Here's its criteria (with % weight).
source.
*Undergraduate reputation surveys (43% response rate) from peer reviews (15%)
*6-year graduation rate (16%)
*financial resources, average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures NOT including sports, dorms, and hospitals (10%)
*Undergraduate reputation surveys (13.4% response rate) from high school guidance counselors (7.5%)
*SAT (CR+M)/ACT Composite score (7.5%)
*performance on predicted six year graduate rate (7.5%)
*faculty salary, adjusted for cost of living (7%)
*proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (6%)
*freshman in to 10% of high school class (6%)
*alumni giving rate (5%)
*freshman retention rate (4%)
*proportion of professors with highest degrees (3%)
*proportion of classes with 50 or more students (2%)
*applicant acceptance rate (1.5%)
*student faculty ratio (1%)
*proportion of faculty who are full time (1%)
Always know the methodology. And these weights are completely arbitrary. Are student:faculty ratio and the proportion of full time faculty really five times less important than what % of alumni donate? How do you even justify that? And it is fairly obvious why they started giving so much weight to high school guidance counselors last year.