Vantage Ventures

RHODES SCHOLAR SCHOOL COMPARISONS: (Long thread - Disregard if not interested) OOMF from WVU DM'd with a neat suggestion of peeking at Rhodes Scholars to compare institutions on metrics that are completely separate from traditional rankings & money, and based on their students instead. Rhodes winners are also interesting to sports fans because the Rhodes Trust has historically considered athletic achievement as an important qualification metric in selecting winners. WVU is a great example because its core mission (which WVU greatly succeeds at), hurts it by dinging the school in rankings that highly emphasize metrics like admissions selectivity. Nevertheless, WVU is a fantastic state flagship university, and does a tremendous job serving its state and educating its students. Along that line, schools like WVU & Ole Miss have produced more Rhodes Scholars than Notre Dame, UCLA, Rice, Johns Hopkins, Tulane, and 11 of the Big 12, even though they may usually “rank” above them on traditional metrics. Across the FBS confs, I was surprised how strong the Pac schools compared: 6 of the Pac-10 (60%) were in the Top 25 - per below - and all 6 did better than UCLA or my beloved Trojans. Before pulling the data, I figured that this would be a case of normalizing more underappreciated schools, but nearly spit up my coffee when I saw the *overall* conference comparisons, though: The #IvyLeague has more Rhodes Scholars than the *ENTIRE* Power 5 added together. (Wow!) For those of you who enjoy these metrics, this is just a fun one that highlights some of the great schools who do a fantastic job with their students (like Ole Miss, WVU, UGA, UW, Kansas, Utah, OU, etc.) who don’t always get enough credit in some of the regular academic rankings!

Op-ed in @wvstatejournal by @sarah_biller, @danwrightSF & me on West Virginia’s digital revolution. Through several initiatives aimed at supporting digital transformation & entrepreneurialism, WV is well on its way to becoming a #StartupState. wvnews.com/statejournal/o…