<p>from what i read in college&selections, this list seem to be accurate.
it’s such a shame to see this
17. Emory
17. Rice
17. Vanderbilt
20. Notre Dame</p>
<p>are placed higher than Berkeley.</p>
<p>lols.
and not to mention michigan.</p>
<p>Great job USNEWS!</p>
<p>Well you have to give credit to Rice, it is quite underrated. It is a good school for undergrad because they focus a lot on the undergrads, especially because the school only has around 3000 undergrads. And it doesn’t have a med school or law school.</p>
<p>cdz, unfortunately, the rankings are legitimate. Michigan has dropped to #27. </p>
<p>And contrary to what some of you may think, the drop in rankings had little to do with selectivity. The USNWR assigns very little weight to acceptance rate (as well it should since acceptance rates are meaningless). Michigan’s selectivity rank is usually anywhere between #18 and #2. Although I have not yet seen the last selectivity rank, I doubt it has dropped out of the top 25. </p>
<p>What most likely caused Michigan’s drop over the last 2 or 3 years are the following four factors:</p>
<p>1) Graduation rates: Michigan’s graduate rates have improved over the years, from slightly over 80% to slightly under 90%. However, the differential between “predicted” and “actual” graduation rate has dropped significantly (from 10+ to less than 5) over the years and that has hurt Michigan in the “graduation rate” section. Overall, I think the graduation rate section is too rigid. I agree that graduation rates must be taken into consideration when ranking universities, but the USNWR differentiates at a micro level and does not take certain variables into account. Is there a noticeable difference between a graduation rate of 93% and a graduation rate of 88%? And does it matter if the predicted graduation rate is much lower than the actual graduation rate? Obviously not, but the USNWR will distinguish between those broad-brushes and assign very different ratings to them. </p>
<p>2) Faculty resources. Michigan’s Faculty Resources rank last year was not even among the top 60 last year. This REALLY hurts Michigan. If you remove this criteria alone, Michigan would probably be ranked among the top 20. I believe that the USNWR should hire a third party auditor (like E&Y or D&T) to go over the numbers reported by the various schools because I have seen some very strange changes in this section over the years. And even if the numbers were audited and all reporting inconsistancies were weeded out, the concept of faculty resources must be taken into context. Does class size always matter? Are some subjects or courses taught as effectively with 20 students in the classroom as with 40 students in the classroom?</p>
<p>3) Financial resources. Michigan’s financial resources rank is generally decent (top 35 or 40), but the USNWR does not consider the fact that tuition at public universities are already highly subsidized for in-state students. This is one ranking where separating public from private makes sense since the finances at those types of universities work very differently. The USNWR is essentially comparing apples to oranges and public universities are being treated unfairly.</p>
<p>4) Alumni giving rates: That’s the least telling and most useless criterion used by the USNWR. There are two reasons why public universities will always have lower alumni giving rates than private universities: (1) Public universities have much larger undergraduate student population than private universities and therefore, their alumni network is much harder to reach in its totality and (2) public universities have not needed alumni donations to remain financialy stable until the 1980s because state support was more than sufficient to meet the cost of operation. Private universities on the other hand have always needed alumni support to survive and have been relying on alumni support for generations. </p>
<p>Those are the four primary reasons why Michigan is ranked so low and why it continues to drop in the rankings. I think eventually,two things are going to happen:</p>
<p>1) The USNWR is going to abandon the alumni giving rate as a ranking criterion (perhaps keep it as one of the side rankings that do not impact the overall ranking) and will separate public from private when it comes to financial resources.</p>
<p>2) The USNWR is going to have to hire a third party auditor to go over those numbers. This should REALLY level the playing field. </p>
<p>At any rate, I would not worry too much about the rankings. Michigan may drop to #28 or #30, but it won’t drop lower than that. In the long term, I believe Michigan will always remain one of the academic pillars and will always be given the respect it deserves where it matters most. The Michigan Peer Assessment score has always hovered between 4.4 and 4.5 (or been ranked between #7 and #13 in the nation). That will not change in the foreseeable future. </p>
<p>GO BLUE!</p>
<p>Michigan does better under the Peer Assessment score.</p>
<p>4.9 = Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford
4.8 = Yale
4.7 = Berkeley
4.6 = Caltech, Columbia, Chicago
4.5 = UPenn, Hopkins, Cornell
4.4 = Brown, Duke, Michigan
4.3 = Dartmouth, Northwestern, UVA
4.2 = Carnegie Mellon, UCLA
4.1 = UNC, WashU, Wisconsin
4.0 = Georgetown, Emory, Rice, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, UIUC
3.9 = USC
3.8 = Notre Dame </p>
<p>Despite Michigan’s low overall ranking, it is still an excellent university.</p>
<p>The fact that USC is ranked higher than Michigan really bothers me. Now my brother has something to brag lol</p>
<p>Proudwolverine, as you can see fromt he Peer Assessment rating provided by Tenisghs, USC may be ranked higher according to the USNWR, but according to academe (and graduate school admissions committees), Michigan is rated significantly better than USC (4.4 vs 3.8). It is not even close really. USC’s academic peers are Purdue and Inidiana whereas Michigan’s academic peers are Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Penn.</p>
<p>What does peer assessment mean? Sorry if I sound dumb.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Some food for thought: </p>
<p>UCLA’s admit rate was 21% this fall. Not sure of UM’s numbers, but I’d assume they were somewhere in the 30-40%. </p>
<p>97% of UCLA admits ranked in the top-10% of their high school class. That’s higher than every single Ivy League school and tied with MIT.</p>
<p>The average admitted GPA at UCLA was a 4.3</p>
<p>So, not sure your argument is with UCLA being higher. USC?- I’ll go with that. They have money, and scandals. Michigan has respect. Rankings don’t change that.</p>
<p>Doesn’t Michigan have more money than USC and UCLA? 7.57 Billion vs. 3.589 Billion vs. 2.299 Billion? Are you talking about endowment per student. I’m not sure about UCLA or USC, but Michigan’s is somewhere around $122,000 per student(behind UVA, which is ranked first in public school endowment per student).</p>
<p>Michigan’s acceptance rate according to USNWR is 42.1%</p>
<p>You also can’t use GPA’s because the UCLA weight system is different from the U-M GPA system. U-M GPA system doesn’t go above a 4.0.</p>
<p>94% of Michigan’s students ranked in the top 10%.</p>
<p>Academically, Michigan destroys UCLA and USC.</p>
<p>Alexandre’s idea about a 3rd party audit of many of these Universities is an especially good one. People here mentioned USC being ranked above Michigan. I’m especially wary of this because of what happened in the Engineering Graduate Rankings for 2010. USC nearly reported double the percentage of faculty with membership in the National Academy of Engineering as they should have. This factor is about 6% or 7% of the overall graduate engineering rank. USC original NAE membership numbers had them being the highest of any Engineering University in the Country. They were counting retired faculty, adjunct faculty, and faculty serving in purely administrative positions against the policies of USnews. It was caught by a CC member.</p>
<p>Entertainer, I just assumed it was how colleges were viewed by other colleges or by college graduates, but I’d be interested in hearing for sure exactly what it is as well.</p>
<p>No matter what happens, as a wolverine, Go Blue!!!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The GPA is actually 4.16 weighted. The unweighted GPA would be much lower. UM uses unweighted.
Also UCLA has a smaller acceptance rate because there are many many more people in California than Michigan. And they can afford to reject more people because there are many UofC, CSU, and top private schools in California. Michigan however only has UMAA, UMF, UMD, and MSU as the big state schools. So there are less kids apply to UM than UCLA. UCLA had 55,680 applicants, UM had only 29,939 applicants. UM accepted only 2,000 kids more this year. In 2008, they accepted just as much applicants as UCLA did. UCLA has a lower acceptance rate because they had 25,000+ more applicants.</p>
<p><a href=“http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2009/07/story.php?id=7517[/url]”>http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2009/07/story.php?id=7517</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/selecting/camp_profiles/camp_profiles_ucla.html[/url]”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/selecting/camp_profiles/camp_profiles_ucla.html</a></p>
<p>The UCs have an automatic advantage over Michigan in acceptance rate because they have the common application. How many of UCLA’s 50,000 applicants actually had a chance at getting in and how many were realistically dreaming of getting into UC Riverside, but figured why the heck not also check the UCLA and Berkeley boxes on the application?</p>
<p>If UM did the same thing, it’s acceptance rate would drop overnight. I’m not really concerned about that kind of gaming to gain in the rankings. What I’m really concerned is real substance that would make Michigan better and that is a smaller incoming classes, more financial resources, more spending on students, and better student to faculty ratios. Michigan needs to keep improving in these areas to remain competitive with other elites.</p>
<p>As long as U-M is big, public, and honest about what it reports, it will be ill-served by the USNews ranking. And it could slide–not due to any failing or loss of real quality, but due to its relative position to others who tweak their approach to reporting.</p>
<p>And Michigan’s acceptance rate increased this year to 50% and the school accepted 200 more kids, which will lower the student to faculty ratio and increase the size of classes at the school. Michigan’s selectivity and faculty resources figure will be lower next year when USNWR puts out their next ranking.</p>
<p>UNC and Wake Forest going ahead of Michigan next year is a very real possibility. If Mary Sue Coleman doesn’t start playing the USNWR game and tweaking the numbers, then Michigan is on its way to sliding out of the top 30.</p>
<p>Two decades ago, Michigan was a top 10 school and the idea that schools like Columbia and Penn are superior to it would be laughable. Now, the schools is ranked outside the top 25 and is ranked below the USC.</p>
<p>Mary Sue Coleman knows what she has to do to make Michigan a top 25 school again(decrease enrollment, shuffle around class rosters, waitlist people to artificially boost selectivity, etc.), but does she have the guts to play the game?</p>
<p>We shall wait and see.</p>
<p>Honestly, quite disappointed by the rankings.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t see how the quality of the university will not decline. In my honest opinion, the quality of teaching in LSA is quite pathetic and when you think of the thousands of dollars in tuition we pay every year, it is quite despicable. I only say LSA because Ross and Engineering are more exclusive and have a smaller student body and greater resources for a student. Just look at the LSA buildings - Mason Hall, Angel Hall, Lorch, Chemistry building, Dennison etc. Where are the resources for students? Quite often these classes are so packed with barely any room for movement or conducive learning. Students are crammed into small spaces, especially during the winter with a lot of winter clothing and boots, etc. Look at the fishbowl - it’s almost impossible to find a computer when you need one. The UGLI is quite pathetic for studying (I generally go to Kresge or the med school library, or just study in my room). </p>
<p>I just think a LOT needs to be done to improve the quality of undergrad teaching, especially when you’re constantly increasing tuition every year. The fact that the classrooms are so small given the large number of students in one section (this includes discussion sessions as well - even if there’s 30-40 of us - generally there’s more like 60-70 in upper level Economics courses) just turns me off from going to class. Quite simply, Michigan NEEDS to reduce the number of students it enrolls every year, or else quality of education will get worse day by day. I just cannot see that happening though, because they need the $$$. </p>
<p>Note: I am not complaining about how class sizes at Michigan are large. I’m complaining about how large the class size is GIVEN the space available for teaching. For example, my Econ teacher complained that our classroom was too small given the large number of students in our class. However, he wasn’t given another room quite simply because it wasn’t available. So yes, this will reduce the overall quality of an education.</p>
<p>Alexandre, is the Times Higher Education, “World’s Best Universities” a better depiction of Michigan’s academic and international strength.</p>
<p>“decrease enrollment, shuffle around class rosters, waitlist people to artificially boost selectivity, etc” </p>
<p>Wow, I hope they start doing this a year later so I actually have a chance of getting accepted…and wait listing people just so they can show they have better stats seems a bit jerkish. I hope they don’t do it.</p>
<p>“Proudwolverine, as you can see fromt he Peer Assessment rating provided by Tenisghs, USC may be ranked higher according to the USNWR, but according to academe (and graduate school admissions committees), Michigan is rated significantly better than USC (4.4 vs 3.8). It is not even close really. USC’s academic peers are Purdue and Inidiana whereas Michigan’s academic peers are Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Penn.”</p>
<p>Alexandre, when looking at the ranking, most people don’t really care about the PA score. They only look at the overall ranking. Last night, one of my brothers, a trojan, showed me the ranking and simply said, “we are slightly better than you.” I find it hard to believe that this USNWR bias has managed to tarnish and underrate Michigan’s reputation. I hope Mary Sue Coleman and other important university officials realize this and start taking the appropriate measures to stay in the competition.</p>