Several days ago I posted a note that Michigan had done well as to producing Fulbright fellows. A comment on that thread made me curious as to how Michigan has done over recent years. I’ve posted a few years results below (readily accessible), to give readers a sense of the university’s success in this domain.
Year School Awards Applicants National Rank Rate
2015-2016 Michigan 29 127 2 23%
2014-2015 Michigan 28 120 2 23%
2013-2014 Michigan 32 151 2 21%
2012-2013 Michigan 40 141 1 28%
2011-2012 Michigan 30 148 1 20%
2010-2011 Michigan 40 144 1 28%
2009-2010 Michigan 28 111 4 25%
2008-2009 Michigan 31 144 1 22%
2007-2008 Michigan 37 119 1 31%
2006-2007 Michigan 21 76 4 28%
2005-2006 Michigan 26 100 1 26%
2004-2005 Michigan 18 86 5 21%
Average 30 122.25 2 25%
Total 360 1467 25%
The university has led the nation roughly half of the time over the last 12 years and
averages a 2nd place national ranking with 30 successful applicants per year over an average of 122
applicants. Generally, people are quick to “normalize” such figures relative to student body population,
but such a process does not correctly take cognizance of the proper denominator: the number of
applicants. As to applicant pool, Michigan is probably in the upper quartile; however, the “rate” of success
speaks for itself.
To take it a step further, I actually tallied the numbers for the 15 most productive Fulbright universities between 2005 and today. Michigan was far and away #1.
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor: 389
Harvard University: 314
Yale University: 305
Northwestern University: 261
University of Chicago: 254
Brown University: 249
Columbia University: 243
University of California-Berkeley: 243
Stanford University: 211
Princeton University: 194
University of Pennsylvania: 187
Cornell University: 178
Georgetown University: 177
Duke University: 166
Johns Hopkins University: 165
“That’s very impressive but it would be much more informative if you also provided a list of the number of students who applied.”
If you re-read my initial post, you’ll find a hint near “applicants”. If you read the Alexandre’s post, you’ll not that the populations differ by 1 year’s worth of data (for the Michigan cohort), that will provide a further hint, given the broadly consistent measure of the success rate for Michigan. As to the other schools on the list, their application pool runs from roughly 70 to 140 per year per school…again, roughly speaking, consistent with the Michigan cohort. So the difference in the success rate doesn’t have much to do with either school size or cohort size, it is almost purely attributable to two factors: 1) a highly qualified pool at Michigan; 2) a well-organized process for drawing students into the candidate pool.