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Chedva
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 12:27 pm |
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| Correlation between drinking rates and students "hooking up"?
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mmaah
Member
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 02:32 pm |
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how about something related to alumni concordance/community persistence--eg giving rates and % students who marry classmates/alums, etc...
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 02:43 pm |
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Wow, inspired imaginations!
I assure you what I am trying to index here is nothing so esoteric. Elusive, yes, but not esoteric.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 08:47 pm |
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When are you going to spill the beans, Descartes?
(Although I must admit, I can't help thinking it would be fun to do a ranking system based solely on all of the factors we've all come up with! I bet there would be some very interesting results!)
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 08:57 pm |
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Only because you asked. 
In my opinion, the number seems to work as a preppiness index. .40 is a kind of threshold where some people start to indentify a "preppy" atmosphere to the school. By .50 many people seem to detect this quality.
But since this does not seem to have occurred to anyone else, I'll have to reconsider.
For now I'll just see how many flames that revelation draws before I reveal the formula behind it. (OK, on this board there usually are not flames but only respectful guffaws.)
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mmaah
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 09:23 pm |
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I will need to know how Whitman (oft accused of being too outdoorsy or granola) can fall above Middlebury or Yale, though. I"m curious what the variable is that would lead them to skew high among west coast schools. Oxy seems preppier to me than Whitman, though maybe it is more OC and Oxy definitely has unprep diversity. Middlebury seems to me to be thoroughly prepster (with skiing) for sure...so we will all love to see your selected subscales...
Last edited on Thu Jul 17th, 2008 09:24 pm by mmaah
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 11:20 pm |
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What factors did you include in the index, Descartes?
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kdmom
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Posted: Thu Jul 17th, 2008 11:29 pm |
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This was a brain-teaser, but finally I'm ready to venture a guess! I'm guessing that one of the factors in the index was the percentage of students that attended private high schools. Am I right? 
I'm actually surprised that Oral Roberts would come out so low in that case. I would think that many of their students would have gone to private Christian high schools. There must be other mitigating factors in the index. Do tell!
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Fri Jul 18th, 2008 02:19 am |
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kdmom wrote: This was a brain-teaser, but finally I'm ready to venture a guess! I'm guessing that one of the factors in the index was the percentage of students that attended private high schools. Am I right?
Absolutely - and (to my surprise) Oral Roberts did not report a particularly large number of these students.
Formula
( (% of Private School students) + (% of Greek students) )
X (%Caucasian + %Undeclared Ethnicity)
Hence a theoretical maximum of 2.00
I still say it worked fairly well, but, of course, with much less than perfect reliability.
Whitman does not have a lot of private school students but does have a fairly strong Greek participation. Middlebury has more privates but no Greeks. Oxy's number is, as was surmised, mitigated by diversity.
The comment I thought the data supported was the one that claimed Bates seemed less preppy than Colgate and Hamilton. The index correlates with that assertion.
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mmaah
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Posted: Fri Jul 18th, 2008 03:08 am |
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maybe we need to have a correction that subtracts % of grads that go into the Peace Corps or military??? I bet that would shift some around....
In any case, this has been fun. Maybe we should take nominations for other categories of "fit" that we find ourselves (or the young) contemplating.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Fri Jul 18th, 2008 04:20 am |
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In truth I have been casting about for a way of fine-tuning this value. I have explored % in "non-preppy" majors or careers (like engineering, for example) but haven't found anything yet that works well.
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limner
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Posted: Fri Jul 18th, 2008 02:40 pm |
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Descartes, what an interesting value! I actually think it would have helped my S when he was looking. He knew he didn't want a lot of Greek activity and the really rich crowd in his HS seemed to be the one group he was allergic to.
There's a thread somewhere on CC with a list of private schools and the number of graduates they send to each college (or what colleges). As might be expected, the Ivies had a large number of Exeter, Andover, etc. grads and so on. I noticed on that thread that Carleton's name appeared infrequently, and I think Carleton also says somewhere in its mailings its percentage of public vs. private school students.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Fri Jul 18th, 2008 02:59 pm |
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Carleton did have a relatively low number of private school students (27%) in the incoming class data I used, particularly for the highly selective LAC that it is. Most of the prestigious schools, including LAC's, had between 40-50% private school entries, which is far more concentrated than the 10% share privates have over the entire pool of high school graduates. Even the counter-culturally inclined LAC's like Reed and Oberlin were at about 40%.
I understand that one reason for this concentration is that private schools are more likely to have students committed to their educations than are publics and that the private schools' closer contacts with both the students and the colleges enhance the appliation process, but I can't help but feel that some of it is also due to colleges preferring to select entrants who come from families that have already demonstrated their willingness to pay for the privilege of a fine education.
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Northeastmom
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Posted: Fri Jul 18th, 2008 03:53 pm |
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| Descartes, that is pretty interesting. What is the easiest source for looking up % of students that attended private high schools?
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Fri Jul 18th, 2008 04:02 pm |
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I believe it is a part of the common data set but appears to be ignored by about 25% of the respondents, especially large publics.
You might be able to find it in US News data as well as others (not U-Can), but the site I relied on for my calculations was
https://www.collegedata.com/cs/search/college/college_search_tmpl.jhtml
You'll find it as an item on the "Admission" page, about midway down under "Profile of Fall 2006 Admission" (hopefully to be updated soon), on the line headed "Secondary School". Data is listed in terms of % public school admittees. You can also find Greek participation and demographic statistics on other pages.
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Northeastmom
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Posted: Sat Jul 19th, 2008 03:10 am |
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| descartes, thank you.
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mmaah
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Posted: Sat Jul 19th, 2008 03:07 pm |
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I am still pondering (when I should be doing other things) how one would get at true versus faux preppiness. I thing simple percentage of Greek can't account for differences in the kind of Greek culture between some campuses: in some small LACs the Greek system is more like a set of social service clubs with associated ratty housing, versus the more corporate/national systems in bigger schools (which also have the eating club system which is not exactly counted in Greek?). If we take Greek as a single variable, it gives a skew to schools (like Middlebury) that have a big prep school base but no Greek presence. So is there a counterweight variable to subtract out? (% of vegans? ....I guess all the likely factors are not going to be in a common data set..but maybe one of those Pell grant figures would get at the SES element...) Anyway, this has been interesting and I admire your mastery of data!
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Sat Jul 19th, 2008 04:50 pm |
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Completely agree - "Greek life" is a rather blunt instrument. At Whitman, so far as I could tell, it was primarily a means of socializing and not one of stratifying. On the other hand I hear tell that at some places where Greek organizations were banned "secret" clubs still persist (I just read this about Williams, for example). So, yes, I have also searched for a tweak to this index.
Later edit:
Of course "Private school students" is a broad way at getting at this quality, too. I expect there is some difference in aggregate character between parochial/religious high school students and upscale prep school ones, and the summary percentage doesn't distinguish. And it should not be left unsaid that using such statistics leverages statistical trends rather than essential qualities. As always, it is a mistake to stereotype.
Last edited on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 01:01 pm by Descartes
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Canadian
Member
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Posted: Sat Jul 19th, 2008 11:51 pm |
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Hi Descartes,
You might want to include a margin of error.
For instance, my son and his friends went to prep school but are not preppy.......not grunge, not alternative, just no style at all. S disliked schools that felt preppy (eg. Colby & Dickinson).
Also, you might want to consider the influence of public school kids who come from high priced zip codes.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Sun Jul 20th, 2008 01:49 am |
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mmaah wrote: I am still pondering (when I should be doing other things) how one would get at true versus faux preppiness.
I would suggest including the percentage NOT receiving financial aid as a measure. It would be easy to do from CDS info, and I think true preppiness is intrinsically tied to family wealth. Percentage of full payers would be one indication. Or you could use percentage receiving Pell grants perhaps.
Last edited on Sun Jul 20th, 2008 01:51 am by CarolynLawrence
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