<p>Michigan definitely has quality programs, but I don't think of it as a top 25 by selectivity. Their acceptance rate is like 70%, and they don't discriminate against out-of-state students much like the UCs do. That said, it's probably one of the most selective on my list.</p>
<p>Michigan is a top 25 school by any metric, and the acceptance rate is deceptive.</p>
<p>UCLA has a much lower acceptance rate than Chicago, but which do you think is harder to get into?</p>
<p>Alright, I'll list 25 schools that I think are more selective than Michigan, and you can pick the ones you think don't belong: 8 Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Hopkins, Northwestern, Chicago, WUSTL, Berkeley, UCLA, UVa, Carnegie Mellon, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, Georgetown, and Notre Dame. There are probably a handful more schools that are on par, like Wisconsin, NYU, and USC. Michigan is at best a 20-25 school in selectivity.</p>
<p>I don't think Chicago is significantly harder to get into than UCLA, actually, especially for OOS students. I've routinely seen students accepted to Northwestern/Chicago and rejected by Berkeley, UCLA, and even UCSD OOS. At my Chicago high school, everyone in the top 5% and some in the top 10% got into Northwestern or Chicago.</p>
<p>im_blue,</p>
<p>You're missing the point: It's not percent accepted that matters, per se; it's the stats of those who apply and are accepted. Chicago has significantly higher median scores for accepted students than UCLA.</p>
<p>OK, so which of the 25 schools on my list do you think are worse than Michigan?</p>
<p>Ugh, that's not my point, and stop trying to set up a strawman.</p>
<p>My point is that Michigan is clearly in the top 25 for difficulty of admissions, even if it admits a large percent (and it's not 75%). It's not really a good addition to a list for someone whose stats aren't in line with that level. </p>
<p>To beat a dead horse for a moment: It's like saying to someone who's a near-match to UCSD that they'd be competitive at Chicago based on percent admitted alone. The average scores of a UCSD undergrad and a Chicago undergrad are very different (probably an SD apart.)</p>
<p>OK, I looked it up and it's more like 60%, but that doesn't matter anyway. They're not clearly in the top 25 in selectivity due to their admitted student numbers, regardless of their admit rate being 50% or 60% or 70%. I'm not setting up a straw man. You say they're top 25, so tell me which of my 25 schools they beat. They're not "clearly top 25" just because you say they are. And in any case, I did say that they're one of the most selective on my list. I had to draw the line somewhere. How come you're not arguing on behalf of a Wisconsin or an NYU?</p>
<p>Just intuitively - I would guess that the chemistry department of the University of Michigan is better than that of Texas A&M.</p>
<p>im_blue,</p>
<p>I'm not arguing for Wisconsin or NYU because it's not the subject at the moment. Nor did I say that they're top 25 just because I say so. But it's a little disingenous to say that percent admitted alone says that a programs more or less competitive.</p>
<p>I agree that admit rate alone does not indicate selectivity. Let's just leave it at that.</p>
<p>this goes to the original question in the threa. I go to Berkeley and not one of my graduate instructors has not been from an ivy or a top LAC.</p>
<p>As molliebatmit pointed out so well, that may be for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>I had a few TAs at UCLA that weren't from Ivys or top LACs, but most were.</p>
<p>
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students at top schools have access to famous professors who can write very powerful letters of recommendation (if you have an effusive letter of rec from one of the top researchers in your field, that is your golden ticket); in the sciences, students at top schools often have more access to groundbreaking research projects
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This is because you can engage in undergraduate research with faculty that are known in the field, which will be very significant when it comes time to secure letters of recommendation for graduate admissions, which can make or break you
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<p>You know, I've heard this over and over again about just how important it is to engage in big-league research with star profs who can then write you strong letters of rec, etc. </p>
<p>Yet, if that's really true, then I've always wondered how is it that the top LAC's are able to get so many of their students into top PhD programs, relative to the small number of students that they have. After all, the LAC's don't have huge research facilities. The LAC's don't have famous profs. Yet they are able to get an unusually high percentage of students into the top PhD programs.</p>
<p>As a case in point, consider the Caltech PhD programs. I think we would all agree that Caltech is a top graduate program. Yet the fact is, when you examine the biographies of newly minted Caltech PhD's, you will notice that an unusually high number of them come from the LAC's. For example, in many years, Caltech conferred more PhD's upon people who had done their undergrad at Harvey Mudd than at UCLA, a remarkable feat considering the fact that UCLA has literally 30 times the undergrads that Mudd does. True, not all of UCLA's students are studying technical fields (and would thus not be interested in a Caltech PhD program), but still, the sheer numbers of UCLA should mean that they should have far far more students getting into Caltech. Geographic preference can't be much of a factor, as Mudd, UCLA, and Caltech are all within a half-hour of each other. </p>
<p>So here we have UCLA, a prominent research university with lots of super-huge projects and lots of star profs. A tiny LAC like Mudd has none of that. Yet Caltech seems to admit a lot of Mudders anyway. Or to make the comparison more stark, I'm sure there were some UCLA students who wanted to go to Caltech for graduate school and got good grades and engaged in research projects but nevertheless got turned down because Caltech chose to admit somebody from Mudd instead.</p>
<p>I can only see 2 possible reasons. Either Caltech is being stupid in admitting so many "unqualified" Mudd students, or Mudd is apparently very good at preparing its students for PhD admissions despite not having star profs or prominent research projects.</p>
<p>some of my friends from my tiny, not very known to the general population LAC are currently at the following grad schools: columbia, yale, harvard, michigan, emory, gw, wustl, bc, duke, usc, chicago, northwestern, northeastern, johns hopkins. and thats just from my group of friends.l</p>
<p>No, I don't think that having a rec letter from a big-name professor is a requirement for admissions, or even that it's common.</p>
<p>I'd put it on the same level as publishing a paper in a prestigious journal as an undergrad -- few people have superstar letters or Nature papers, but those who do have them are basically auto-admits.</p>
<p>Extra credit for the graduate school admissions process, perhaps.</p>
<p>
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I can only see 2 possible reasons. Either Caltech is being stupid in admitting so many "unqualified" Mudd students, or Mudd is apparently very good at preparing its students for PhD admissions despite not having star profs or prominent research projects.
[/quote]
It's the latter. Harvey Mudd is arguably the top LAC for science and engineering, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had one of the top grad school placements as well. Just because one school's grads place well does not mean letters of recommendation are useless.</p>
<p>And I did not say recommendations from star faculty were required for admission, only that they may be able to overcome an otherwise weaker undergrad institution. Obviously, I wasn't referring to the likes of Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>Something else to consider: don't go to a school that just has a solid department in the specific area that you think, as a junior in high school, you want to study. It may change. It probably will change. So make sure you go to a school that is strong pretty much all around and not one that is just strong in, say, chemistry...but little else. Who knows...you may end up as an anthropology major.</p>
<p>
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No, I don't think that having a rec letter from a big-name professor is a requirement for admissions, or even that it's common
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<p>
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It's the latter. Harvey Mudd is arguably the top LAC for science and engineering, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had one of the top grad school placements as well. Just because one school's grads place well does not mean letters of recommendation are useless.</p>
<p>And I did not say recommendations from star faculty were required for admission, only that they may be able to overcome an otherwise weaker undergrad institution.
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<p>Actually, I agree with both of you that recs from 'superstar' profs are important, as long as we carefully define what it means to be a 'superstar'. While I obviously can't prove this, I suspect that when it comes to PhD admissions, a superstar prof is not strictly defined to be a prof who has produced highly prominent and cited research. Few of the profs at Mudd (or any LAC) are highly prominent researchers. I think in this context, a 'superstar' can also mean a prof who has developed a reputation for educating highly qualified future PhD students. </p>
<p>To give you an example, if Professor X at Harvey Mudd strongly endorses a certain student in his Caltech PhD application, I would think that the Caltech adcom would treat that with great weight despite the fact that Professor X is not himself a prominent researcher. That's because Caltech has admitted lots of Mudd grads in the past and Caltech obviously trusts Mudd's educational program and so if Professor X is willing to vouch for a certain student, then that's an strong indication that the student must be pretty good. </p>
<p>The point is, for the purposes of admission, the term 'superstar' means somebody who is highly trusted by the doctoral adcom. It may mean a highly prominent researcher. It may mean a trusted prof at a LAC. It can mean a variety of things.</p>
<p>What about a well-known professor who earned a Ph.D from the department to which one is applying? Would his/her rec hold more weight?</p>
<p>huskem55, what tiny LAC did you go to?</p>