Ranking methodology

Every program on Kinesiology Degree Programs carries the same score, produced by one run over the federal data. There is no editorial override, no pay-for-placement, and no hidden adjustment. This page is the whole model.

A program is scored as a weighted percentile inside its own peer group: other programs in the same field at the same award level. A master’s program is never measured against a bachelor’s. That is why the number is comparable down a ranking page and not comparable to a score you saw somewhere else.

Hands going through a printed report of charts and figures at a desk — Photograph by RDNE Stock project on Pexels

The 7 Inputs Behind Every Kinesiology Program Score

Weights sum to 100. Bar length is the weight.

Graduation rate: The institution's six-year completion rate. The heaviest single input, because a degree you do not finish returns nothing.
Admissions selectivity: The undergraduate admit rate, inverted, so a harder seat scores higher. Read it as how much competition a place attracts, not as teaching quality.
Earnings of graduates: Median earnings of graduates of this specific field at this specific school, four years out where reported. Per-school and per-field, not a national average pasted onto every row.
Incoming academic profile: The midpoint SAT of the entering class, where the institution reports one.
Institutional scale: Total enrollment. A proxy for the breadth of labs, faculty and electives a department can sustain, weighted lightly because bigger is not better on its own.
Return on tuition: Graduate earnings divided by published in-state tuition. This is the only place published cost enters the score.
Degrees conferred in the field: How many of these degrees the school actually awards each year. A track record, and a check against programs that exist mainly on paper.

Two Limits on Every Kinesiology Program Score

Every program is scored only against programs in the same field at the same award level. A master's program is never compared to a bachelor's, and a score of 80 places a program near the eightieth percentile of that group, not at eighty percent of anything. Scores are curved so the group median lands near 75, which is why a program in the middle of the table still reads in the seventies.

A school that files less data is pulled toward the group median in proportion to what is missing. This is deliberate. Without it, an institution reporting nothing but an enrollment figure could ride one input to the top of a table. It does mean an unreported figure has a real cost: a program with a thin federal record cannot reach the top of its group, however good the program is.

What the Kinesiology Program Score Does Not Measure

The number comes from the seven inputs above and nothing else. No reputation survey feeds it, no editor moves a program up or down, and advertising is not an input — an advertiser buys a labeled placement, not a rank. The weights are published above, and every program on the site is scored the same way.

It does not measure teaching. Admit rate is in the model as a read on how much competition a place attracts, and graduation rate is institution-wide, because IPEDS does not publish either one per program. Read both as facts about the school, then read the profile on each card, which is written from the department’s own program page, for facts about the degree.

Sources: the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System for completions, admissions, cost and enrollment, and the College Scorecard field-of-study files for graduate earnings. Wage context on career pages comes from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics and is national, never a school-level outcome.

Model last reviewed 2026-07-26.