TY  - JOUR
AU  - Avery,Christopher
AU  - Glickman,Mark
AU  - Hoxby,Caroline
AU  - Metrick,Andrew
TI  - A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10803
PY  - 2004
Y2  - October 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christopher Avery
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-4063
Fax: 617/496-5960
E-Mail: christopher_avery@hks.harvard.edu

Caroline Minter Hoxby
Department of Economics
Stanford University
Landau Building, 579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650-725-8719
Fax: 650-725-5702
E-Mail: choxby@stanford.edu

Andrew Metrick
Yale School of Management
135 Prospect Street
P.O. Box 208200
New Haven, CT 06520
Tel: 203/432-3069
E-Mail: metrick@yale.edu
AB  - We show how to construct a ranking of U.S. undergraduate programs based on students' revealed preferences. We construct examples of national and regional rankings, using hand-collected data on 3,240 high- achieving students. Our statistical model extends models used for ranking players in tournaments, such as chess or tennis. When a student makes his matriculation decision among colleges that have admitted him, he chooses which college "wins" in head-to-head competition. The model exploits the information contained in thousands of these wins and losses. Our method produces a ranking that would be difficult for a college to manipulate. In contrast, it is easy to manipulate the matriculation rate and the admission rate, which are the common measures of preference that receive substantial weight in highly publicized college rating systems. If our ranking were used in place of these measures, the pressure on colleges to practice strategic admissions would be relieved.
ER  -