Here we are.
Well, right, a large endowment is very very very important. But Harvard has been raising and investing money for >350 years. Harvard and Yale are the 2 oldest schools, and they have the 2 largest endowments. These things go hand in hand -- they have a lot of money because they established excellence long long ago and have been benefiting from that for a long time.
We probably wouldn't expect anything wilder than a linear or exponential relationship between this type of data. I've also changed from school name to actual US News score, to account for "true" margins between schools for this type of analysis.
Based on R^2, Age is not a good direct predictor of US News Score.
Based on R^2, Endowment is not a great direct predictor of US News Score, but might be a slight indicator, if only because HYP are so so old.
[As for endowment hits, some got hit more than others, but I think all are down. I don't think that will have a clear effect on rankings here, as this "2010" ranking is really pulled from 2008 data. It will probably have more of an effect on schools with moderate endowments (which are more crucial than Yale's $22Bln ridiculousness of a source to tap) over the next few years if they can't fund professorships. That data will be interesting, but hard to draw conclusions from for another few years (and even then it will be hard to pinpoint effect).]
One more -- Endowment as a function of age.
Given a simple linear relationship, age is not a good predictor of endowment.
However, this is because endowments for the non-HYP schools are clumped and appear fairly independent of age. I maintain that HYP have such large endowments because a) they are really old and b) they were really prestigious a long time ago. These two factors have allowed them to acquire funds for a long time -- the rich get richer, if you will.
LOL at these "sophisticated statistical techniques"
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-...surprises.html
stunning, stunning insight!
The US News & WR ranking of colleges is, methodologically speaking, horse puckey. It was when we peaked, and it is now. Don't worry.
It should be obvious. We dropped in the standings, because Coach K is spending too much time as the Olympic coach.
Yea, sorry, the up trending blip in ranking was all my fault. Seriously, though, the boarding school I attended went from 7th to 3rd while I was there, then fell back to around 6 or 7 in the years after I left. Duke did the same thing. It was ranked around 10th when I was picking a college, went up into the top 5 while I was there, and now is leveling back down. I just seem to have that effect on schools. I'm just that . Joking, of course. I'm sure it was all just a big coincidence.
Dance, my little puppets! - Mort Z.