West Point’s Graduation and Retention Data

West Point G5 has made great strides in data transparency. We noted this in the last post, but we have saved the best for last! The G5 Institutional Research site also has a link tantalizingly named “Graduation, Commissioning, and Retention rates.” We visited it hoping to find detailed breakdowns of graduation rates and separation rates … Read more

More Data, No Context

West Point has launched some new data offerings on their site. These exceed the previous “class profiles” that passed as the best readily-available public information. Now there are newer, better datasets available at the G5 page. We get comprehensive class characteristics on all the application elements — test scores, qualifications, race, athletics, prior service… We … Read more

Then Vs Now

“This commitment to excellence must permeate everything we do. I will not compromise my decision to advocate winning in accordance with our values of duty, honor and country…. I have great concern being called a liar after more than 42 years of honorable service to our Nation and many years serving here at West Point.” … Read more

… shall be known by its fruit

A large cheating scandal at West Point has come to light: The US Military Academy at West Point is dealing with the fallout from a major cheating incident involving 73 cadets, the largest cheating episode at the elite school since 1976. Seventy-two of the cadets accused of breaking the academy’s famed honor code are first-year … Read more

Merit-Ranked Class Composition

The post on Why There Are So Few Women at West Point raised our interest in a topic: What would the composition of West Point look like if candidates were admitted and attended based on rank order of candidate scores? Given our previous findings, they would almost certainly look very different than they do now. … Read more

Why There Are So Few Women At West Point

Yesterday we happened on Colonel (Ret) Ellen Haring‘s article “Why Are There So Few Women at West Point? Ask Congress,” in which Haring makes a number of gender-advocacy claims and proposals regarding the number of women in the military. The full referenced report is here. We summarize Col Haring’s major points as: Women are too … Read more

Mailbag: Are we doing this right?

Recently we got a comment on our post on the most Black women ever to graduate USMA: Thank you for sharing your analysis. From one academic to another, I would recommend that you add a section discussing the strengths and weaknesses of your research method and design. There are a couple of weaknesses with your … Read more

Pay for Diversity: Most Black Women Ever Graduate USMA

A record number of African American women recently graduated from West Point, the United States Military Academy in New York. This was lauded as a historical accomplishment in many major news venues: Black women are set to make military history on Saturday, as the West Point military academy graduates its class of 2019 with its highest-ever … Read more

Class Year Data

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, … Read more