<p>collegealum314, you posted the rankings wrong by ignoring the ties. If you're going to post those worthless rankings, at least do it right please.</p>
<p>US News America's Best Colleges 2007
Top 25 Public National Universities</p>
<ol>
<li>University of California–Berkeley<br></li>
<li>University of Michigan–Ann Arbor<br>
University of Virginia<br></li>
<li>Univ. of California–Los Angeles<br></li>
<li>U. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill<br></li>
<li>College of William and Mary (VA) </li>
<li>Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison<br></li>
<li>Georgia Institute of Technology<br>
Univ. of California–San Diego<br></li>
<li>U. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign<br></li>
<li>University of Washington<br></li>
<li>University of California–Irvine<br></li>
<li>Pennsylvania State U.–University Park<br>
University of California–Davis<br>
Univ. of California–Santa Barbara<br>
University of Florida<br>
University of Texas–Austin<br></li>
<li>Univ. of Maryland–College Park<br></li>
<li>Ohio State University–Columbus<br>
University of Pittsburgh</li>
<li>Miami University–Oxford (OH)
Rutgers–New Brunswick (NJ)
Texas A&M Univ.–College Station<br>
University of Georgia</li>
</ol>
<p>Maybe in the midwest Michigan is preferred, but from a New Yorker's point of view, it isn't. It is still a world-class school, and if one of my children wanted to go there I would be all for it. Obviously their numbers are good, being #2 in US News, but I stand by my rankings.</p>
<p>In the midwest, only U. of Virginia and Berkeley might be more respected than Michigan.</p>
<p>collegealum,
I mostly agree with your comments about how U Michigan is viewed in the Midwest. Along with U Wisconsin and U Illinois, U Michigan is considered a top public school for the Midwestern states. It would also be a competitor to the top private schools of Notre Dame, Northwestern, and U Chicago although I would expect U Michigan to lose most of the cross admit battle to these privates, particularly for non-Michigan residents. </p>
<p>Outside of the Midwest, U Michigan would compare about as well as any of the top publics would do outside of their home regions. In Texas and the Southwest, U Texas is most definitely the most recognized and best received public school. In Florida, U Florida, much improved over the last decade, would get the nod. In Atlanta and much of the Southeast, Georgia Tech would be very strong. In the Mid-Atlantic states and parts of the Southeast, U Virginia, W&M, and U North Carolina all would be considered more highly than other public universities. The Northeast is a bit trickier as there are not any really highly regarded local public universities although you will regularly bump into graduates from places like Penn State, U Maryland, the SUNY system, U Conn, U Mass, U Vermont, etc, but these schools are not as highly regarded, even in their home regions. Along with these northeastern state universities, U Virginia, U North Carolina, U Michigan and W&M all send students to NYC on a regular basis and have good reputations there, but none have what you might call a dominant presence for public schools. And, of course, in the West and California, the UC system and especially Berkeley are held in the highest regard and U Washington's reputation is certainly growing. </p>
<p>IMO this is how these schools and their graduates are viewed in the various regions. Call it parochialism if you like, but regionalism plays a large role in how these public schools are perceived by employers, students, and local folks.</p>
<p>Maybe my rankings aren't perfect for midwest students. Maybe they would be best off going to Michigan, but 80% of the population of this country doesn't live in the midwest (probably closer to 90% if you ignore Chicago and Detriot.) I don't claim that my rankings apply to everyone, whereas other people here do. It depends on where you live, where you want to live, what your major is, what kind of job you want, what the atmosphere of the school is, etc. My rankings are based on my experiences and are based on which schools I would have chosen if I could have gotten into all of them.</p>
<p>Pitt???It's not even #1 in Penn. PSU is by far.</p>
<p>Well, I am really only familiar with science and technical fields. It's pretty hard to get a Wall Street job from any public school. In fact, i don't know anyone who got a job like that out of a public school.</p>
<p>I agree with you in that respect, collegealum314. The vast majority of Wall Street workers come from private schools. You have a chance at the top five publics, but that's about it.</p>
<p>barrons, on what basis?</p>
<p>And regarding midwest schools, I really don't think my rankings reflect a bias. I believe the University of Chicago to be one of the premier instituions in the world. I guess a public school's reputation just depends on where you are.</p>
<p>I was also basing my opinions on a couple of MIT undergrads I knew who were from the East Coast. One guy was convinced that Michigan was harder to get accepted to out-of-state than MIT. He's wrong, of course, but it does reflect somewhat on his opinion of the school. Someone else I knew who was from Connecticut had U. of Illinois as his back-up school to MIT. He was in comp sci. though, which is a strength of UIUC. Also, I knew many people that went to top software companies in Silicon Valley from UIUC. But again, this is comp sci. and jobs aren't that hard to come by anyway in that field.</p>
<p>314--You must not know too many then. UM and Uva each place around 50 a year in major firms. Indiana, UNC, Texas, Wisconsin and some others place around 15-30 a year.</p>
<ol>
<li>UC Berkeley</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>UNC</li>
</ol>
<p>Big Tailoff</p>
<ol>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>Wisconsin</li>
<li>Florida</li>
<li>Illinois</li>
<li>Washington</li>
</ol>
<p>There is no significant tailoff from UCLA and UNC to Wisconsin. In many areas UW is better than UNC and the only edge UNC has is in the diificulty for OOS admission. UW has twice as many NAS members as UNC and about the same as UCLA.</p>
<p>I agree with hawkette re regionalism and the reputation of the large State U's. In NC and Virginia, UNC and UVa are considered on par with Ivy League; esp with native born families. As more transplants are moving in this hyperbole is getting somewhat diluted.</p>
<p>As you go into other regions these schools are viewed much less favorably and most of the time are not even on high school kids radar. The exception would be if they had a great football/basketball season and received more national publicity.</p>
<p>Lesson being, if you want to live in NC/VA/TX/Mi/Ca then these state schools might be better than a LAC far away that nobody in Odessa/Staunton/Greenville/or Battle Creek has ever heard of nor cares about. At a much lower price tag.</p>
<p>Here is a tidbit regarding the "public vs private" debate. I am a recruiter (among other things) at a major aerospace company. We actively recruit at 88 schools throughout the country. Thirty of those we consider "key" schools...ie, the "best" of the 88 if you will. Of those thirty, 20 are public. Of the 10 privates, only 2 are Ivies. So, by this metric, 20 publics are considered "more valuable" then most of the Ivies. Just a tidbit to munch on.</p>
<p>let me guess the key private schools: MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, U. of Chicago, Northwestern, Duke, Harvey Mudd, Wash U. St. Louis.</p>
<p>The last four I was not sure about at all--total guesses.<br>
Was I right? What are the key private schools?</p>
<p>Hate to be a stick-in-the-mud (Mudd?), but the list is proprietary. But...you got 3 of 10 privates correct (30%...you fail), and only 1 of the 2 Ivies correct. Of the 20 publics...it's easier to guess...but even there, maybe only half or so are in the USNews top-20 publics.</p>