Monday, April 19, 2010

Data Call

Does anyone out there feel like helping out with some data analysis? It might not be helpful or interesting to those who made it to finalist status this year, but those who are thinking of applying this fall should be interested in what we can find out.

I am looking at some specific questions, and I need some data that doesn't appear to be immediately forthcoming. If necessary, I will hunt it down. The questions are:

  1. Of all accredited graduate schools in the US, what percentage produced PMF nominees in 2010?
  2. What was the performance rate of all PMF-nominating schools in 2010? That is, of schools who nominated, how many became finalists?
  3. What is the overall PMF performance rate of accredited graduate schools in the US?
  4. Of all Historically Black Colleges and Universities, what is the performance rate (nominees to finalists)? How does that compare to the larger set of schools?


To answer these questions, I need one dataset that I don't already have: the number of US graduate schools (and preferably a full list).

If I can get this, I still need to clean up the data so it can be compared in databases.

I really don't care about anything but aggregate statistics. With any luck, this data can be collected and analyzed several years in a row (so back data is also appreciated).

Any takers?


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2 comments:

  1. KAugust 31, 2010 at 3:03 PM

    Did you ever end up following up with this data analysis? Sounds like it could be interesting. If you're just looking for (accredited) institutions of higher learning in the US, this listing looks pretty extensive:

    - http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ/state/

    Then there's the ED database that seems harder to access without doing individual searches and flipping through pages:

    - http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/

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  2. Aaron HeltonAugust 31, 2010 at 4:20 PM

    @Kam: I hadn't gotten back to this largely because I could never find the data I needed, which surely must exist somewhere. Neither of these lists indicates which have graduate programs, though we can usually assume that any institution that grants 4 year degrees also has graduate programs. Perhaps I will just take what I have and go from there.

    Also, the data from the nominees list alone includes such varying standards of display even within the same university that data cleanup was a pain. I managed a comparison of some of the HBCUs, noting for instance that Howard University had 24 nominees for 2010 and 0 finalists. Howard is located in DC. I hate to draw conclusions about the ability of the PMF program to draw diverse applicants based on so little data, but I found at least that one example pretty sobering.

    If anyone wants the data, I still have it.

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