<p>RJ, have the Celtics called you yet about replacing Tommy Heinsohn as the color man for Celtics broadcasts when he retires?</p>
<p>Let’s all just agree to make Michigan #1 in any and all rankings and be done with it.</p>
<p>goldenboy, I have only seen half a dozen or so such reports, and in most of them, Michigan places as high a percentage of students in top graduate programs as those universities I listed, even though Michigan has a lower percentage of premed and prelaw students. Listing those will not give a complete picture. The closest thing to it would be the WSJ survey that was conducted back in 2003. Although incomplete and biased to East Coast schools, it included 5 of the top Medical schools, 5 of the top Law schools and 5 of the top MBA programs. Georgetown placed 5.1% of its graduates (12th among research universities) in those programs, Rice 3.8% (13th), Northwestern 3.7% (14th), Cornell 3.2% (16th), Michigan 2.7% (18th), Notre Dame 2.3% (20th), Emory 2.2% (21st) and WUSTL 1.7% (25th). Vanderbilt did not make the top 25 list of research universities. </p>
<p>Now it is important to remember that Michigan has a smaller percentage of prelaw and premed students than most of those universities.</p>
<p>finalchild. You are relatively new to these boards. I’ll just leave it at that.</p>
<p>finalchild, rjk does not claim Michigan is #1. But to claim that Michigan should be ranked between #20 and #30 as goldenboy claims is offensive. I would like to see how he would feel if we continuously and obsessively went to the Duke forum and belittled their university, claiming that it should be ranked between #20 and #30. I support rjk 100% in this regard. </p>
<p>You should check goldenboy’s history. I would estimate that over half of his posts are on the Michigan forum.</p>
<p>I personally don’t think Michigan should be in the 20-25 range, but I don’t think someones opinion that it should be is “offensive” or horribly invalid. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and goldenboy is no exception. </p>
<p>I don’t think Finalchild takes issue with rjk’s opinions, I think she just finds his tone and rebuttals unsettling and sometimes in poor taste.
She can speak for herself, though… This is just my take.</p>
<p>Awkward jakey, as I am male. Haha. What I find odd in terms of RJ’s responses to me is that I ranked Michigan at #16 or #17. Anything higher is speculative as is the case for all but 6-7 schools, and as I’ve noted if we’re talking undergrad only then top LACs could rock the boat a little. There is a lot of focus here on what corporate firms think. Not sure that is the only criterion. Would be hard to put Michigan or Northwestern or WUSTL or even Hopkins over Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore. I call Swarthmore and Chicago even for example.</p>
<p>And RJ, my length of time on the site has little relevance to my credentials (for better or worse). But I can tell you that my credentials are pretty darn good.</p>
<p>Not sure why I opted for a feminine pronoun, haha :P</p>
<p>In any case, I think most of the schools in the 10-20 range (including Michigan) are all fairly comparable so a school ranked at 17-18 isn’t that much, if at all inferior to a school ranked at 12. </p>
<p>I also agree that 16-17 for Michigan is a very fair and good ranking and certainly isn’t shortchanging Michigan, at least not in my eyes. </p>
<p>These rankings conversations are always entertaining :D</p>
<p>I don’t think that UM will get lower than 20-25 because of the quality of the student body. If you look at the schools in the 15-20 range, they all have middle 50% ACT scores of around 32-34 (Notre Dame) or 33-35 (Vanderbilt). UM’s on the other hand is 28-32. The fact that UM admits so many students means that the top 15-20% of UM students will be just as good as higher ranked schools, but it also means that the rest of the student body simply isn’t that great.</p>
<p>I know anecdotes can be misleading, but from my high school, there are many, many kids with ACT scores lower than 29 and they barely took any AP classes who are getting in to UM. You won’t see this caliber of student being accepted into higher ranked schools.</p>
<p>“And RJ, my length of time on the site has little relevance to my credentials (for better or worse).”</p>
<p>Your length of time on this site excludes you from reading the hundreds of condescending posts written by goldenboy as they pertain to the quality of the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>It’s always funny when a poster who doesn’t frequent the Michigan board comes and posts something less-than-positive about the school. They don’t know what they’re in for! :p</p>
<p>Sorry, I didn’t know experience on the Michigan Board is required to have an opinion about UM. I guess I thought that the fact that I am a current undergrad at UM was enough.</p>
<p>Sorry! :(</p>
<p>No don’t worry you are perfectly fine, I am only kidding! I just say that jokingly because this board has a lot of avid fans that don’t always take too kindly to non-positive feedback about Umichigan ;)</p>
<p>Your comparisons between Notre Dame and Vandy to Michigan are all fine and I welcome your perspective! Are you enjoying your experience at Michigan thus far?</p>
<p>Sorry to come off as just having a negative perspective - I actually have enjoyed my experience at UM so far. My professors have all really been fantastic and I really like how I know that I am being taught by a top-notch professor pretty much across the board in all of my classes.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to come off as bashing UM, as it really is a great school, I just wanted to point out that the size of the student and the quality of the bottom 60-75% of the student body might limit it from climbing higher in rankings.</p>
<p>elijahcraig12, other universities ranked between 15-20, like Brown and Cornell, have mid 50% ACT ranges in the 29-33 range, compared to Michigan’s 28-32. Also, I find it fascinating that Notre Dame and Vanderbilt have such gifted student bodies, but are outperformed by Michigan in graduate school placement.</p>
<p>You are right about Vandy and ND elijah- they have impressively strong stat averages/student bodies. Vandy’s SAT/ACT averages are only a small notch behind HYSP. </p>
<p>Vandys Middle 50% SAT of incoming class:
SAT Critical Reading 690 770
SAT Math 710 790
SAT Writing 670 770</p>
<p>Harvard Middle 50% SAT of incoming class:
SAT Critical Reading 690 790
SAT Math 700 800
Sat Writing 690 790</p>
<p>Brown and Cornell don’t have quite as high score averages, but I think those two place more emphasis on subjective criteria.</p>
<p>Interesting to compare.</p>
<p>“Brown and Cornell don’t have quite as high score averages, but I think those two place more emphasis on subjective criteria.”</p>
<p>That’s correct jakey. I wonder why it is ok to rationalize lower scores for Brown and Cornell, but not for Michigan!</p>
<p>“Also, I find it fascinating that Notre Dame and Vanderbilt have such gifted student bodies, but are outperformed by Michigan in graduate school placement.”</p>
<p>I seem to recall reading something about Notre Dame either not reporting all test scores to US News or only reporting the scores of ACT or SAT results, whichever one was higher. I can’t find anything to document it, but I know it existed in some form.</p>
<p>“That’s correct jakey. I wonder why it is ok to rationalize lower scores for Brown and Cornell, but not for Michigan!”</p>
<p>Because Michigan isn’t a top 20 school and isn’t worthy! LOL</p>
<p>I wasn’t intentionally trying to omit Michigan. Michigan also places less emphasis on test scores than it does other criteria. My point was more just to highlight the impressively high scores of Vandy/ND as compared to HYPS.</p>
<p>Somebody must like Vandy. Admit rate under 12%.</p>
<p>Ignore if you don’t enjoy but I have a new “method” to unveil I’m gonig to call “science via metaphor.”</p>
<p>You know how the optometrist continually asks “clearer on the red, clearer on the green, or about the same”? Obviously how this works in individual cases varies, and may be influenced by money, whether one is looking for Big 10 (12?) or ACC or PAC-12 sports, Greek scene, or whatever. Some also may want the “sharper” 20/15 vision while others may just prefer 20/20.</p>
<p>With caveats aside, I think you can determine rankings reasonably well, as long as huge allegiance issues don’t confound, and also therefore work in LACs as well.</p>
<p>Like I said before, I see Swat and Chicago as “about the same.” Many comparisons are not close at all, and then the green and red start becoming harding to distinguish. Yo can see when they are getting closer, when yoiu think you see a difference but are starting not to be sure, and then when you literally cannot discern a difference. Obviously the criteria also matter, like whether as has been preferred here sometimes to focus on total university results, grad placement, or whatever. My interest for the purpose of the original question on this thread is quality of undergrad education/experience.</p>
<p>For me, Michigan wins the optometry test all the way up to the top 25 range (not inclusding LACs). By wins, I mean there is no real struggle to discern a difference. They there may be 6-8 more where you think you discern a different but aren’t sure.</p>
<p>I’ll go backwards, where another school looks clearer than Mich. I would say HYPSM. I would also say Columbia, Penn, Brown, Chicago. I would not pick CalTech (too speciality and too small for undergrad experience for me), and I find Duke, Cornell, Dartmouth, Hopkins, Wash U, Vandy, Rice and Cal/UCLA with undiscernable differences. I think Mich is barely discernable vs UVA and UNC, close but more than barely for Notre Dame, Georgetown, etc, and also somewhat discernable vs Tufts, BC, Rochester, etc. I think Williams, Amherst, Swat are discernable in favor of those. I think Midd, Pomona, Bowdoin, Carleton and discernable in their favor. I see Haverford, Davidson, Vassar, Wesleyan and Grinnell as indiscernable. I see Mich as discernable over all of the other LACs in varying degrees (Hamilton, Colby, Bates, Macalester, Oberlin, Kenyon, other Claremonts, Whitman, etc).</p>
<p>Confession: I don’t know why this interests me at all.</p>