<p>“Dukie” is respectively well rounded? I think you meant to say Duke. And “respectfully”. That would at least be the correct word usage, but wouldn’t even make sense in the context of that sentence. You also misspelled your user name. Who is this clown?</p>
<p>hey giants92 mate i went to write back about the frat stuff personal message but your inbox is full it won’t let me send a message until its free…
peace</p>
I never made an absolute assertion about the Michigan student body. I was just trying to illustrate that professors do notice the differences in caliber of the students they teach at various institutions and have to “teach up to” or “teach down to” a certain group of students, which affects everybody’s educational experience.</p>
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Yeah, but its better than being unemployed. If you’re interested in business and you get rejected from Ross, it doesn’t seem like there are a lot of opportunities at LS&A unless you are at the very top of the heap and can snag MBB or a good boutique consulting firm. You’re not qualified for an Engineering job, a Big 4 Accounting job, etc. etc. Ops pays about $60k and you get to live in New York, which is not a bad gig for the average college grad.</p>
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I disagree since once you get past a certain number of the best consulting firms, the rest do a lot of monotonous diligence and advisory work that isn’t all that great. Even a mediocre regional bank on the other hand has some deal flow and presumably some live deals you can work on as an analyst, even with second-rate clients and a narrow specialization.</p>
<p>“I never made an absolute assertion about the Michigan student body. I was just trying to illustrate that professors do notice the differences in caliber of the students they teach at various institutions and have to “teach up to” or “teach down to” a certain group of students, which affects everybody’s educational experience.”</p>
<p>LDB, we are each entitled to our opinion. Some faculty (including the one you mentioned from Princeton) may think Michigan sucks. I am sure there are some who think Duke sucks too. Such opinions are vulgar and show a degree of ignorance on the part of the faculty member. Opinions such as these at elite universities are very rare as the majority of faculty at those universities will respect fellow top universities. The majority of faculty at top universities will think very highly of both. Overall, in academe, Duke and Michigan are regarded as peers at the undergraduate level. The Peer Assessment score proves as much. That is irrefutable evidence. It cannot be denied. Some of the most highly regarded academics such as MIT’s ex-president Charles Vest, Princeton ex-president Harold Shapiro or Stanford ex-President Gerhard Casper have all state at one point or another that Michigan is among the top universities (at the undergraduate level) in the US. Thousands of equally respected faculty all over the nation will, on average, share their sentiment.</p>
<p>This said, your statement about “teaching up” or teaching down" shows how little you know about high-level academics. Professors at elite universities will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER compromise. They take way too much pride in their craft. I compared my syllabus to those of my friends at Stanford and they were identical. In fact, because they have the quarter system, in most classes I looked into, Michigan covers more material. Michigan is actually known as one of the most innovative universities in the nation where setting curriculae is concerned. Other elite universities often copy Michigan in this regard. If you think faculty members at a top 5 or top 10 department are going to dumb-down the material for the sake of their students, you truly do not understand the nature of higher education at top universities. The only difference will be the class average and the percentage of students receiving As, Bs, Cs etc… At a university like Michigan, more students will be given Cs and Ds than at a university like Stanford. That is only fair since the student body at Stanford is stronger than the student body at Michigan.</p>
<p>“If you think faculty members at a top 5 or top 10 department are going to dumb-down the material for the sake of their students, you truly do not understand the nature of higher education at top universities.”</p>
<p>Well since Duke doesn’t have anywhere near the amount of top 5-10 departments as Michigan does, it’s only natural that LDB wouldn’t be aware of this situation.<br>
:-)</p>
<p>“I never made an absolute assertion about the Michigan student body. I was just trying to illustrate that professors do notice the differences in caliber of the students they teach at various institutions and have to “teach up to” or “teach down to” a certain group of students, which affects everybody’s educational experience.”</p>
<p>Sorry, but your illustration is not worth mentioning. I know successful adults who will not hire Duke students, but I don’t try to use that to say anything about Duke’s student body, because anecdotal evidence is just that - anecdotal. I guess Michigan teaches us to have higher standards.</p>
<p>“I guess Michigan teaches us to have higher standards.”</p>
<p>One of the many qualities I love about Michigan is the fact that its students are humble, welcoming, fun and not nearly as judgemental or opinionated as students at many other elite universities.</p>
<p>sooo… i hate to deviate back to the original purpose of the tread, but i have a question. i’m interested in both engineering and business and, because i can’t get myself to pick just one, i’ve decided to pursue a dual degree (plan to really, i’m a highschool senior). is this realistic? will i die in a swamp of work? (though i wouldn’t really mind extra work if i got to study stuff i’m interested in…)</p>
<p>and do you think it would actually help me to pursue a dual degree career-wise?</p>
<p>Unless you come into Michigan with a boatload of AP credits, it will take you over 5 years to graduate with a double degree from the CoE and Ross. A student I know came into Michigan with 8 credits of Calculus, 4 credits of Physics, 4 credits of Chemistry and 8 credits of Economics and managed to graduate in exactly 5 years, but he started with 24 credits.</p>
<p>I would honestly really be interested to take a class at Duke (or another one of our “peer” institutions) to see if there would be an equivalent amount of dimwits as there are in a lot of the classes at UM. One example of many I’ve experienced: currently taking probably the jokest class I’ve ever taken in college (to get some distribution credits out of the way). ~75% of the midterm consisted of exact questions that were on the practice test (verbatim). Remainder of the test consisted of easy questions, albeit not questions that we had seen before. Class average was hardly above a 75%.</p>
<p>Some of those “dimwits” might realize what the PA scores actually mean. This is taken right from the USNWR website:</p>
<p>Peer assessment. How the school is regarded by administrators at peer institutions. A school’s peer assessment score is determined by surveying the presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions (or equivalent positions) at institutions in the school’s category. Each individual was asked to rate peer schools’ undergraduate academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those individuals who did not know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark “don’t know.” A school’s score is the average score of all the respondents who rated it. Responses of “don’t know” counted neither for nor against a school. The survey was conducted in spring 2010, and 48 percent of those surveyed responded, the same as in the previous year. A higher average peer assessment score does better in the ranking model than a lower per assessment score.</p>
<p>@giants, To be fair, I know a lot of people who make joke classes pass/fail, and don’t care about midterm scores regardless of how easy the exam may be. Dunno how large your class is, though.</p>
<p>My point giants is that you quoted Alexandre about Duke as Michigan’s peer academic school and then injected the quality of the student body into it. While I don’t necessarily disagree with your assessment, I just feel your comments really didn’t have much to do with the point that was made. It appeared to me that you didn’t understand what PA actually measured. In other words why quote someone and not address the original statement, unless you never understood what was said in the first place?</p>
<p>Giants, such classes exist at any university. How do you think 90% of Football players at schools like Northwestern, Notre Dame and Stanford graduate?! ;)</p>
<p>Seriously, every college has “bird classes”. Heck, every college has “bird majors”. You are going to have “dimwits” at every university. Of course, given Michigan’s size and public status, it is going to have more dimwits than smaller private universities and those students will load their schedule with “bird classes”. That’s the way it goes.</p>
<p>Listen to what you just said. The quality of the student body isn’t a factor in determining whether schools are peers?! What a joke. “Peer: something of equal worth or quality.” It is a useless categorization using the word “peers” to describe two schools if quality of student body isn’t taken into account.</p>
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Yes, I suppose. I would simply be curious to see how the proportions compare at different “peer” schools, such as Duke.</p>