The previous posts have been most edifying to put together, but we’ve been a bit short on time lately to build on them. There is additional analysis that can be done on activities (in particular, deeper dives into test and GPA by corps squad teams, analyzing the extent of test score advantages for various groups, analyzing separations, looking at prior service grads, recruiting opportunity, and so on) which we’ll tackle when we have the opportunity.
We hope this has been illuminating about the extent to which standards have been (or not, depending on your yardstick) been compromised over time at the US Military Academy. Other studies (in particular by RAND and Center for Equal Opportunity) have found this as well, and not only at the Army school. Like John T Reed (and thanks for linking us, John!) we’re disappointed by the focus of the national-level leadership (Military and civilian) on initiatives other than brute effectiveness at winning wars. We think the focus on sports has detracted from the Academy’s ability to get the best set of graduates into the Army. We think the focus on PC initiatives and individual careers has largely superseded the focus on what Douglas MacArthur would call “victory” and when officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
But that’s admittedly a point of view with imperfect information. Hopefully we’re wrong.
In the meantime, for those analytically inclined readers, raw data by graduating class year are below. These were obtained by FOIA from West Point in 2018. We are happy to post or link to analyses completed by readers based on the data. More notes on the data set are available at posts About the Data and Data Errata.
Thanks for reading.
Hello. I’d like to do some analysis on this data but I’d like to know if you have the definition of each column (some are clear and others are not) and if the data set indicates who was admitted or not.
Thank you.
Thanks for the note. I have a rough data dictionary at: https://usmadata.com/2018/06/08/about-the-data/
which will answer some of those questions.
While there is a column in the class files titled “admitted”, all values are “N”, meaning it’s not useful for our purposes.
Additional worksheets in the class data have MIADs, dates of application submission (though it’s not clear precisely what is included in an application), gold award/eagle data, and others.
Unfortunately, without knowing who was offered admission (and even better who accepted the admission offer), it is difficult to draw conclusions from the data set. I am currently most interested in the average SAT/ACT for admitted athletes vs. admitted non athletes and average SAT/ACT for admitted prior service/prep schoolers vs. admitted non athletes.
Thanks for your work in obtaining the data set nonetheless.
That is a deficiency in the data. We had to make due with evidence of attendance, which is not quite the same thing, and had to give up on identifying yield for different segments of the cadetorate.