<p>That's correct. I never claimed Michigan was as selective as Cal, Cornell or Dartmouth. The student quality at Michigan, as I am sure you painfully found out NYao, is as good as it is at Tufts, Cal and Cornell, but the odds of getting into Michigan are better.</p>
<p>It's still surprising to me that Michigan honors applicants are getting rejected from these schools. I guess they just must have a stat-heavy app with few EC's.</p>
<p>its not really surprising, another person from my high school the year i graduated, who only had a 520 on the verbal SAT got into honors at Michigan, i don't know how she's doing in honors because she couldn't speak english well. </p>
<p>Selectivity, as we all know is not solely dependent on SAT/GPA or Acceptance rate. It takes into account everything, including personal essays (creative writing/communication skills), Interview(verbal/social ability, manner), Recommendation, extra curricular, as well. Michigan ignores all these other factors mostly when evaluating an applicant, this alone makes Michigan less selective. Thus, making the acceptance less personal, and more systematic, evaluating talent solely based on numbers. The more selective a school is, the better the student body. Alexandre, for years you have attempted to twist this fact.</p>
<p>NYao, first of all, I have only been on this forum for 16 months, hardly "years. Secondly, your criteria for how well "selective universities measure the quality of students is naive to the pointof ignorance. </p>
<p>1) Most elite universities do not officially interview candidates and those that do, do not use it as a determining factor unless the candidate completely blows the interview by not showing up, being rude or offensive etc... Very few universities actually use interviews as a determinent because many students are coached on how to behave in interviews.</p>
<p>2) Essays are great, and universities that seem to place a lot of emphasis on the essays will get the best writing effort out of their applicants. The fact is, most of the applicants who are put in such a situation will spend days writing an essay, having it proof read by family, friends and teachers until in the end, the essay will no longer be one that the student could have written on her/his own. It is widely considered that essays are a meaningless tool to evaluate applicants. </p>
<p>3) ECs. LOL Unless one garnered offical national recognition, there is no way to evaluate the true level of one's talent. Let me tell you, I have known dozens of students who went to top universities, ranging fropm MIT to Stanford, Cornell to Duke, Northwestern to Penn, etc... They all exaggerated the significance of their ECs to the point where they were merely glamorizing the mundane! And that's ok, because let us face it, all applicants to major universities do it. Tell me, how many truly exceptional talents (outside of the academic arena of course) attend universities? How many future pulitzer or Nobel prize poets and authors, orchestra level musicians, professional level athletes etc... truly attend a university? 1%? 2%? And Michigan does not suffer here because we do in fact attract some of the most talented authors, musicians and athletes. </p>
<p>4) Recommendations. Michigan, and indeed all universities look at recommendations. But they assign limited weight to it because there is no way of knowing how reliable the source is. </p>
<p>In short NYao, those 4 criteria, although helpful, do not really help universities truly identify talent. All they do is help universities narrow their list of candidates. But let us face it, the number of equally deserving and qualified candidates who are denied admission to most Ivies and other mega selective universities far outweighs the number of who are admitted. As far as I am concerned, it is a strength of Michigan that it should admit most of its highly capable applicants. And should some mediocre appilicants be admitted in the process, so be it. But as I always say, the quality of Michigan's student body is excellent. how many times have I seen top students come to Michigan only to feel average compared to their fellow classmates? How many 4.0 students with 1400+ SAT scores came to Michigan only to struggle to maintain 3.4 or 3.5 GPAs?</p>
<p>just because excellent students struggle at a school, doesn't mean the academics is stellar. The average gpa at comparable private schools are all over 3.2. This is further proof that Michigan doesn't care. Check the 54% med school acceptance rate on the careercenter's website. </p>
<p>Those 4 criteria you listed are the best ways of evaluating a student's ability in addition to gpa and SAT scores. You have just made a negative and deficiency of the UMICH admissions office, a positive. </p>
<p>The fact that a 4.0 student with 1400+ SAT struggles, proves my point.</p>
<p>Nobody can beat my unluckiness. Got accepted into honors at UMich, but wailisted at NU, rejected from Penn, Duke, Columbia, and Cornell. I had a deep passion and stats well above the average fo those institutions. Im not going to ask where I went wrong. Simple going to consider myself unfortunate....</p>
<p>u wrote a bad essay/bad recommendation, not enough leadership positions, probably, my housemate had a 1480 and 3.8 from one of the best high schools in the country. He got rejected from Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern. 750+ on all SAT IIs. It was simple, he wrote poorly thought out essay.</p>
<p>nope. I had a professional essayist read adn edit it. She's a friend of our family from my dad's college days. I looked at my teacher rec's. They were all cheked exceptional except a rare few. I Was unlucky. Im the result of people applying to 10+ schools, lol.</p>
<p>keep telling yourself that.</p>
<p>What's your point? I said Im unfortunate. Is that simple statement too cocy for your likings?</p>
<p>Rachmanioff, I'm in the same boat as you: I was rejected from NU, Penn, Cornell, and JHU (all within 48 hours). Waitlisted at: Vandy and UVA. <em>SIGH!</em> Is this normal?</p>
<p>I'm there baby... 5 straight rejections did it</p>
<p>Cornell, dartmouth, berkeley, middlebury, tufts... not that I would have gone to tufts or berkeley</p>
<p>for those who are speculating: I have many extra-curiccular's, leadership, sports, you name it...</p>
<p>and I received professional assistance on my essay, I think this was just a tough year...</p>
<p>/ Michigan 2010, Go Blue!</p>
<p>Don't feel bad people. Most of the universities you mention turn away more qualified candidates than they accept. Cornell and Penn admitted 20% of their applicants this year. Do you really think that only 20% of their applicants were clearly above the rest of their applicants? I can tell you right now that the top 50% of their applicants are pretty much identical and only a third of those get to be accepted. The remaining availlable spots go to URMs or major legacies. So, as Rachmaninoff says, luck had something to do with it. But I would not say you were unlucky. I would say you weren't lucky. Well over 60% of identically qualified applicants don't get in, so those who do are lucky. </p>
<p>Besides, I Michigan is at least as good as all those schools that didn't offer you admission. Their loss is our gain. I mean look at it that way:</p>
<p>PEER ASSESSMENT SCORE:
Cal: 4.8/5.0
Columbia 4.7/5.0
Cornell 4.6/5.0
Duke 4.6/5.0
Johns Hopkins 4.6/5.0
Michigan 4.5/5.0
Penn: 4.5/5.0
Dartmouth 4.4/5.0
Northwestern 4.4/5.0
Carnegie Mellon 4.3/5.0
Middlebury 4.3/5.0
UVA 4.3/5.0
Vanderbilt 4.0/5.0
Tufts 3.7/5.0</p>
<p>As you can see, all of those schools have roughly identical prestige and reoutation rankings according to university presidents and top faculties. Tufts and Vanderbilt are below the rest.</p>
<p>WSJ FEEDER SCORE (% of total students enrolling into top 5 professional programs) & RANK:
Duke 9% (#5 among research universities)
Dartmouth 8% (#6 among research universities)
Columbia 7% (#8 among research universities)
Chicago 6% (#10 among research Universities)
Penn 5% (#11 among research universities)
Northwestern 4% (#14 among research universities)
Middlebury 4% (#9 among LACs)
Johns Hopkins 4% (#15 among research Universities)
Cornell 3% (#16 among research universities)
Michigan 3% (#18 among research universities)
UVA 3% (#19 among research universities)
Cal 2% (#23 among research universities)
Tufts 2% (#24 among research universities)
CMU 1% (not among the top 25 research universities)
Vanderbilt 1% (not among the top 25 research universities)</p>
<p>Dartmouth, Duke and Columbia seem to have a significant lead, but one must keep in mind that the WSJ rating, although accurate and quite telling, can be misleading if not interpretted correctly. At any rate, Michigan holds its own with most of those universities.</p>
<p>QUALITY OF LIFE:
Hard to rate them because it depends on personal style. Michigan is generally considered to have a better overall quality of life than CMU, Columbia and Johns Hopkins and usually is listed as one of the most pleasant college atmospheres.</p>
<p>Well I got rejected from Princeton, Cornell, Cal, CMU, Caltech, and got waitlisted at Stanford.</p>
<p>Luckily I had my college of engineering acceptance handy.
Go Blue!</p>
<p>Can't wait to see everybody.</p>