Rankings Rankings Rankings

For years prior to 2001, I have to look up variables by hand.
Best part? Magazine ads from 1999.

On every campus in the United States, there is an office (typically) called institutional research (IR). This is the office where I have my assistantship, and have been working there since April. Finally in September when the new semester started and I left the work I was doing with Jim, I hopped on for a full assistantship in IR. The majority of the work I do there is data collection and some analysis. Lately, I have been collecting data on the rankings for colleges and universities. These rankings come from the US News and World Report magazine, and I'm sure anyone who has looked into going to college has used this as a way to rank potential schools. I think I looked at this magazine when I was pursuing an undergraduate degree, but it may have been just to see where my institution fell in the rankings because I was pretty sure where I was going to go. (I confess here that my choice in school was completely based on my gut feeling). Despite the fact that many feel hostile towards college and university rankings, it is quite fascinating. There is so much information, and one school may be leagues apart from its ranking in US News to another ranking system. For me, this means though, that I spend hours looking for data, and organizing it into a spreadsheet that will eventually go into a database so we (my supervisor and I) can run statistical analysis on it. He's cooked up an idea about using a particular test, which is lightyears beyond my skill level. However, I do enjoy getting to have the hands on learning about quantitative methods because it makes it come to life so much better than classroom learning. Now I can finally see the beginning and the middle, and soon once we have all of the data, the end of all this work. The bonus, though, about collecting data, is that I have caught up on all of my podcasts from almost a year. Another bonus - Stand Up Desk. So I get to the office, I put my headphones in and listen to my podcasts, then scour for data, and put it in its place in my spreadsheet. I heart tidy activities.