Of course, the question that is more important than "What is the best ROTC Battalion?" is "What is the best College for me?"
As someone who works in higher education, I laugh at institutions all competing to be at the top of USNR's rankings because all the parents want their children to go to these schools. And here we are debating the same question with regards to ROTC Battalions...
Sigh...
And the worst part of it is that these judgements are made on statistical numbers that may have absolutely nothing to do with the main purpose of a school or battalion - to improve ME (the student/cadet) as a person, scholar, athlete, leader.
Just because a school/battalion graduates more Rhodes Scholars, DMGs, etc. doesn't make it a better school. They may very well start with better prepared freshmen or weed out the less successful from their statistics.
And what the schools/battalions don't provide you is a measure of their inputs and equivalent measures of those same inputs as outputs. An example might be SAT scores in and the same student's GRE's out. And that would be a very narrow measure of value add (as we call it in the business), but one that is very easily measured and compared across institutions.
And even if you compare 1300 SATs coming into 2 different institutions, that measurement may be meaningless to a student coming in with a 1500 or a 1100. Many schools add more value to different segments of their student populations than others. Students who struggle because they are at the bottom of their incoming classes may have less value add during their studies than those who are in the middle. And those at the top, may do extremely well if they get the extra attention or may slack off if the institution doesn't offer that level of personalization.
What this lead me to tell folks is to find out what the experience of students/cadets who are similiar to YOUR student/cadet. Do they thrive at this institution or do they get lost in the shuffle? A cadet who might be considered "low speed" at a top institution may not get the opportunities to learn the s/he may get a a school where s/he is closer to the norm.
We often get caught up in the statistics available when making many of life's most important decisions (where to live, where to work, etc) because it is easy to justify those decisions when talking to our peers. And if that is what brings you satisfaction, then be happy with it. Those of us who have looked (often with little success) for better information to make these decisions have a different life view. We measure our success on whether our student/cadet is happy and finds a space where they can be productive - at least they are working hard. Is it the best? I don't think we have data to prove the answer one way or the other, but I find the observation of activity (getting the most out of one's day) more important than the observation of result (scores/grades) as a measure of success.
Getting off my soap box again...
