You are entitled to your opinion hailbate. In fact, I find Michigan students’ humility when it comes to our own university refreshing. The alumni know better though!
But you were also trying to pass your opinion as fact. Just because you think Michigan isn’t as well regarded as some of the Ivies (and other good private universities like Northwestern) does not make it fact. Employers and academia certainly hold Michigan in the same high esteem as schools like Brown, Cornell, Northwestern and Penn.
Michigan has always had lots of Exeter and Andover students as it is known to be one of the best “public ivies”. I didn’t wind up going at the end of the day but have several friends there.
Michigan has had a very large and very affluent alumni base in NYC for many decades. I suspect many of them send their kids to elite boarding schools in the Northeast, and many of those end up going to Michigan for college. In the past three years, Michigan has enrolled a total of 34 graduates from Andover and Exeter combined. Just for a sense of perspective, below are the most popular destinations for students from those two schools:
Harvard University 74
Yale University 70
Columbia University 69
University of Chicago 59
Georgetown University 57
University of Pennsylvania 57
New York University 49
Stanford University 48
Brown University 47
Princeton University 42
Tufts University 37
Boston College 34
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 34
University of Michigan 34
Carnegie Mellon University 31
Dartmouth College 28
Wesleyan University 25
Williams College 25
University of California-Berkeley 23
Bowdoin College 22
Northwestern University 21
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 21
University of Southern California 21
Washington University-St Louis 21
Colby College 20
Amherst College 19
Boston University 17
University of California-Los Angeles 15
Claremont McKenna College 14
College of William and Mary 14
University of Virginia 14
Bates College 13
Duke University 12
Rice University 10
University of Notre Dame 10
Michigan is the third most popular destination outside of the East Coast, behind only Chicago and Stanford.
Michigan attracts a lot of students from other elite private schools, including St Paul, Dalton and Harvard Westlake.
I love how @FalconloverxxXxx posts his question, and then wanders off, and doesn’t explain how he would renege on Dartmouth, and in the meantime, there is a complete s***storm brewing with people jumping in with all sorts of comments…
That is correct eyo777. I am not surprised that is the case at elite private schools on the eastern seaboard given the size of our alumni base in that region. In NYC in particular, the number of prominent Michigan alumni, and therefore the reputation of the University, is second only to the Ivy League and other major Northeastern schools like Georgetown and MIT. But I am baffled by Harvard Westlake. In the last 5 years, 109 of their graduates matriculated at the University of Michigan, compared to only 27 at Cal and 24 at UCLA. Only 4 matriculated at UVa and 1 at UNC.
@Alexandre I’m personally not baffled at all about Harvard Westlake. I just visited UC Berkeley and UCLA and signs of the budget crisis are everywhere. Everyone I spoke to mentioned larger classes, cancelled courses, deteriorating facilities and declining student services. Michigan, conversely, is growing and renewing its facilities and offering increasing FA to OOS students. And of course Ann Arbor is fantastic and beats UVA and UNC hands down.
Not all kids at prep schools are Ivy League bound. They can’t all be exceptional. Those schools also take the good students and help them to be great enough for schools like Michigan.
“But I don’t get it. Why spend all the money to go a top public? I mean Michigan is fine and great but the whole point of paying 160K (40k a year for 4 years) is to get your son/daughter into an minimum Ivy league and ideally HYPS.”
HYPS are amazing, but I am not so sure the other Ivies are better. Some are different, but not better. At least not in academia and corporate America. Actually, Cornell is virtually identical to Michigan in most respects. Penn is also quite similar.
“If I was parent and paid all the money I would have a heart attack if my son/daughter went to a public school after dishing out all that money. I am just being honest here. No matter how great Michigan is I would demand a refund from the school.”
If that is the case, a lot of parents should be demanding a refund. Only 20%-25% of the students graduating from Andover and Exeter end up at Ivy League schools + MIT + Stanford.
Something to keep in mind is that many of those students actually choose Michigan over other top universities, including some Ivies, because their parents are themselves alums and raised their kids to be fans of the University.
“Even if I was a Michigan alum, I would want my kid in an Ivy and would not want them to go to Michigan because I would want them to do better than what I did. I would need Dartmouth at minimum. Other schools like UChicago/MIT/Stanford/Duke would be accepted. But Dartmouth minimum to just breakeven for me if I am paying 160k.”
That’s the point I was making Todd, very few Michigan alumni would consider Brown, Chicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, JHU, Northwestern or Penn “better” than Michigan.
Michigan alums are not delusional mind you, they just happen to not be prejudiced against Michigan. Public or not, Michigan has the faculty, facilities, resources and reputation to match any of the private universities I mentioned above. In the academic and corporate world, there is no distinction between Michigan and other elite universities.
Who knows umsigmadom, she may yet find some obscure survey that proves otherwise. But all the surveys conducted on academe rate Michigan among the top 10 or top 15 at the very worst…and that’s for undergraduate education. At the graduate level, Michigan is usually among the top 5 or 6. There are no surveys that cover all of corporate America, but if you look at individual sectors (including Silicon Valley/Tech, Management Consulting, Investment Banking, Pharma, Energy, Automotive, Aerospace etc…), and where they hire the most heavily, Michigan is always among the top 10 nationally.
It’s interesting how much of an anti-Michigan bias there appears to be. Todd87 uses the term “public school”'as if Michigan were the high school in “Lean on Me”, and not the #1 research institution in the world with a top 10 engineering school in almost all disciplines and a top 10 business school. It’s baffling. Many of the snooty boarding school types spend so much of their high school years bashing public school education, that it has created a blind spot, harmful to their worldview. Anyway to all of those accepted to the Leaders and Best, congratulations! No doubt some of you will create the next Google (or the 1st something else) or be the next one to donate $500,000,000 to the school. Michigan has its disadvantages (e.g. larger size) but it can more than hold its own against the perceived juggernauts. Now, hows that for a “public school”?
