D.1 Case 1

Rankings of research universities.

Based on factors (e.g., academic reputation, financial aid offerings, overall cost, and success of graduates in the post-college job market) that actual college freshmen said were most important to their college decision, College Choice developed their 2015 Rankings of National Research Universities. Data for the top 50 universities are saved in the TOPUNIV file

Data on academic reputation score, average financial aid awarded, average net cost to attend, median salary during early career, percentage of alumni who feel their work makes a better place, and percentage of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees awarded for the top 50 research universities are saved in the file.

  • The average financial aid awarded values were determined by recording the financial aid awarded to each freshman who attended the university in 2015.

  • The median salary during early career values were de-termined by recording the salaries of a random selec-tion of alumni with 0 to 5 years of experience

Consider a first-order multiple regression model to predict academic reputation score (\(y\)) using financial aid awarded (\(x_1\)), net cost (\(x_2\)), early career salary (\(x_3\)), work makes a better place percentage (\(x_4\)), and percentage of STEM degrees (\(x_5\)).

Adapted from here