If all schools are PUBLIC...

College Search & Selection
21

<p>One data point stands out in that survey that sakky provided</p>

<p>Description of the Students in the College Admission Project Data
Variable Mean Std. Dev. Minimum Maximum
Male 0.41 0.49 0.00 1.00
White, non-Hispanic 0.73 0.44 0.00 1.00
Black, non-Hispanic 0.04 0.18 0.00 1.00
Asian 0.16 0.36 0.00 1.00
Hispanic 0.04 0.19 0.00 1.00
Native American 0.00 0.03 0.00 1.00
Other race/ethnicity 0.04 0.19 0.00 1.00
Parents are married 0.83 0.38 0.00 1.00
Sibling(s) enrolled in college 0.23 0.42 0.00 1.00
Variable Mean Std. Dev. Minimum Maximum
Parents' income 119,929 65,518 9,186 240,000
Expected family contribution 27,653 16,524 0 120,000
Applied for financial aid? 0.59 0.49 0.00 1.00
National Merit Scholarship winner 0.05 0.22 0.00 1.00
Student's combined SAT score 1357 139 780 1600
Student's SAT score, in national percentiles 90.4 12.3 12.0 100.0
Median SAT score at most selective college
to which student was admitted 86.4 10.4 33.5 98.0
Median SAT score at least selective college
to which student was admitted 73.8 14.6 14.3 97.0
Student's high school was private 0.45 0.50 0.00 1.00</p>

<p>The average family income of the students surveyed is about three times larger than the national avg of $42K. This indicates that the sample is very biased. The survey was done by Harvard and Wharton people, who probably come from similarly wealthy backgrounds and might not readily have the necessary perspective to see that bias around them.</p>

<p>There are flaws in sakky's assumption and support of this survey. He assumes that students prefer one school over the other because of their perception of the academic standards of those schools. In many circles, that is not the only driver, social mobility and exclusivity is also a main driver. There is a fair amount of elitism here, and it's not academic elitism.</p>

<p>That's one dimension that the faculty and peer assessments don't have, their ratings are focused on the purely academic aspects of the universities.</p>

<p>Another point sakky raised about the preponderance of say Brown undergrads in top professional schools vs Berkeley former undergraduates, which he attributed to Brown's student body being better. The fact is that Brown students are far more likely to come from professional upper-income backgrounds and are more focused on that type of path.</p>

22

<p>
[quote]
Sakky, there are far more MBA students who completed their undergraduate studies at Michigan who attend top 10 MBA programs than students who completed their undergraduate studies at Brown. FAR more. I am alking about 3 or 4 times more. Maybe at MIT, there are more Brown alums

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, don't you find that a little odd? AFter all, if any B-school could be said to cater to engineers, it has to be Sloan. Something like 40% of all entering Sloan MBA students are engineers. And clearly Michigan has a far more prominent engineering program than Brown does. Yet at the end of the day, That should strike you as something odd.</p>

<p>Furthermore, it's not just Sloan. It's true at HBS. More people at HBS did their undergrad at Brown than at Michigan. Michigan has more overall grads at HBS than Brown does, but that's only if you also count people who got graduate degrees at Michigan/Brown. I am speaking strictly about undergrad here. </p>

<p>I'll give you another example that has nothing to do with business.. Take a look at the backgrounds of the students at Harvard Law.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.law.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>More than double the number of students came from Brown than from Michigan. Now, is there some regional preference? Sure. But I highly doubt that it can account for the numbers being this misaligned, especially when you account for Michigan's huge size compared to Brown.</p>

<p>I believe the same was true of Yale Law and Stanford Law - clearly more students (as a percentage of the sizes of their class) came from Brown than from Michigan. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Sakky, you and I both know, and I am not sure why you don't defend Michigan on this one, that Michigan palces as high a percentage f its students into elite graduate programs as the likes of Cornell, Penn, Chicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins etc

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, that's not the issue I was dealing with here. I am simply saying that I think the revealed preferences ranking is more useful than the peer assessment ranking. Is it perfect? Of course not. No ranking is. But the peer assessment ranking is pretty suspect when it comes to undergrad. I think students are more discerning than people here give them credit for. If they prefer a certain school over another, there must be a reason for it.</p>

<p>But since you raised the question, fair enough, I went through the HBS Class cards, and here is what I got for undergrad alma maters:</p>

<p>Michigan - 33
Northwestern - 32
Chicago - 17
Cornell - 32
Upenn - 75
JHU - 7</p>

<p>Note, these numbers include alumni of any kind (undergrad or grad). With the exception of JHU, Michigan isn't looking too great on a percentage basis. What I think that means is that the top students are in fact pretty discerning when it comes to their revealed undergrad preferences. Students tend to choose certain schools over another for a reason.</p>

<p>Besides, even if students aren't that discerning, I doubt that it matters. Let's face it. The truly top employers tend to go to where the top students are, even if they don't like it. Like I said, lots of recruiters hate recruiting at Harvard. But they keep coming back anyway. And when it comes to grad school admissions, I think it's clear that the grad schools will admit the best students. I do find it suspicious indeed that Michigan (and Berkeley) don't match up that well when it comes to admission to places like Harvard Law or Harvard Business School.</p>

23

<p>I think a far larger proportion of students at Penn or Brown go into college with career paths in mind involving top/Ivy professional schools. That accounts for some of their disproportionate representation at say HBS.</p>

24

<p>how can one see other undergrads for HBS class cards? for example, to see non-Ivy New England elite schools like Stanford Duke and NU in HBS?</p>

25

<p>Sakky, try to look beyond Harvard for a change. Look at top 10 graduate schools instead. You conveniently forget that many Michigan students are pefectly content to stay in Ann Arbor to attend Michigan's top 5 Law school or MBA programs. In fact, roughly 70 Michigan students join Michigan's Law school and another 40 or so join the Ross graduate program annually. Since Brown does not have a Law school or MBA program of its own, it will naturally send its students to graduate programs at other universities.</p>

<p>But even if we look at HBS, the fact that Michigan places more students into it than Cornell is a huge accomplishment, considering the fact that Cornell is a fellow Ivy institution and its students have an East Coast bias. And remember that Cornell is very big. Last time I checked, Cornell was 60% the size of Michigan. So even proportionately, Michigan and Cornell are not far off. And Chicago and Johns Hopkins do not have an advantage over Michigan either. Yes, Chicago is smaller than Michigan, but many Michigan students would never apply to B school. Over 50% of Michigan students are either too successful professionally (in the case of BBAs and BS Engineers) to ever go to graduate schools or their interests lie in completely different fields, such as art, music, nursing, architecture, education, kinesiology etc... At schools like Chicago, almost all the students major in traditional disciplines and their career path usually requires further studies. Penn and Northwesern do have an edge over Michigan with HBS, but overall, when you look at top 10 professionaly programs, statistically speaking, they do not have an edge over Michigan. </p>

<p>Sakky, Michigan's student body is extremely gifted, regardless of how you look at it. It is comparable to the student bodies at all top 20 universities save H,M,P,S,Y and Caltech. This is pretty evident from the Wall Street Journal "Feeder School" survey that came out 2 years ago, where Michigan was ranked #18 (as a %age of its total student among research universities, right behind #s 11-17 Chicago, Penn, Rice, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Caltech. Caltech, Cornell and Michigan aren't as "pre-professional" as Chicago, Penn or Northwestern, which explains why they were ranked slightly lower, but by and large, all of those amazing universities are churning out equal ratios of top-5-graduate-school-worthy students annually.</p>

26

<p>SAKKY???</p>

<p>can we see the rest of the figures for HBS</p>

<p>such as for duke, stanford, yale, brown, columbia, dartmouth, etc...</p>

27

<p>Don't many of Mich's undergrads want to pursue further studies at Michigans own top 5-10 programs too...that would definetely account for a great deal of the elite private vs public skew</p>

28

<p>bumppppppppp</p>

29

<p>bumppp...............</p>

<p>SAKKY???</p>

<p>can we see the rest of the figures for HBS</p>

<p>such as for duke, stanford, yale, brown, columbia, dartmouth, etc...</p>

30

<p>Peer assesment seems like a valid indicator of 'actual' quality, rather than 'prestige'. It is rated by peer institutions correct? So who would know best about the 'actual' quality of universities- the answer, i think, is the professors or other knowlegable people who contribute in rating other colleges.</p>

31

<p>It also is a perception of the school from informed individuals which I look at as prestige. Like a alexandre said, I wish the recruiters had some type of rankings like this that were put in to get another, well informed, opinion. Business week did this when they put out top UG business schools list. The rankings for the recruiters were VERY different than the rankings in US news and that is a good thing. Seeing different opinions are important. Business week has some kinks to work out because the recruiters they used put Miami University of ohio at 3, indiana at 5, iowa at 6, and put places like wharton at 17, UNC at 27, and Emory at 56. I just don't feel that a recruiter would take a student from miami university of ohio over someone from wharton and that is what that ranking SHOULD be saying because it is what the recruiters rank the schools. Its a start and in 3 years those rankings will level off and it will be the start of better rankings than US news. </p>

<p>Private schools are bumped WAY, WAY, WAY to high in US news while they underrate publics. I value the Peer Assessment scores far more than the overall scores. I feel the peer assessment ranking is prestige and quality while the overall ranking values things I value less like alumni giving rate and class size.</p>

32

<p>If you use peer review, there are 5 public u's in the top 20, how many are there for the overall usnews ranking in the top 20? I think its like 2-3, which shows how it favors private schools</p>

33

<p>^^^^ Very good point and I agree but its not 5 public universities by PA rankings, its six. Also its not 2 or 3 by USnews rankings, its 0, or 1 if you count Berkeley (4.8 peer assessment ranking) which ties for 20th with 4.0 PA ranking Emory.</p>

34

<p>wow, that is verrry skewed then</p>

35

<p>IMHO, I think Berkeley seems a bit overrated on this scale, maybe because of its excellent graduate programs? Because on almost every other measure (i.e. quality of student body, size of university), it is very similar to UCLA. Also, I think many students feel that a number of colleges are better than Berkeley at the undergraduate level (you can see this through cross-admit rates) such as Caltech, Columbia, UPenn, Duke, Dartmouth, or Brown.</p>

36

<p>Here is an interesting ranking methodology. The rankings themselves are a little dated, 2001, but the methodology is worth a look. It also provides some interesting categories such as overall, and overall not including primarily technical schools, etc. It also contains a discussion of USNWR methodology.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/Undergra2001.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/Undergra2001.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

37

<p>I've got to say, that's the first list i've seen where Indiana is #3 overall and ahead of all the Ivy League schools (talking about "The Top 50 by Number of Disciplines Ranked").</p>

38

<p>Perhaps Berkeley is slightly or somewhat overrated, but I don't know if you could compare it to UCLA in the way you do. As far as schools go, while Berkeley may be the strongest all around with regard to grad school (or about the same as Harvard and Stanford), UCLA isn't that far behind with respect to being all around solid in the graduate level. Berkeley has more history and prominence in popular culture, or perhaps at least a more academic image than UCLA. What's the latest difference in peer assesment, anyway? In my 04 book, it's .4 points, the difference between Harvard or Princeton and Penn (4.9 vs. 4.5), and .1 less than the difference between Harvard or Princeton and Dartmouth or Brown. (4.9 vs. 4.4). Yale is 4.8.</p>

<p>Edit- Interesting list. I'm familiar with the philosophy rankings and didn't know Leiter did this. He should update it, as there is a new NRC report out, I believe. Additionally, I'd like to see lists of "disciplines ranked," and how he accounts for differences in collections of sat scores (best combined vs. best single sitting).</p>

39

<p>
[quote]
It also is a perception of the school from informed individuals which I look at as prestige. Like a alexandre said, I wish the recruiters had some type of rankings like this that were put in to get another, well informed, opinion.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Nah, the recruiters are a highly flawed opinion, for reasons I have stated in other posts here on CC. The truth is, recruiters are not solely interested in getting top talent. No, what they REALLY want is to get top talent who will be willing to work for low salaries without complaint, and who are therefore easy to hire because they don't ask for much. </p>

<p>That is why a school like Harvard Business School always tends to do relatively poorly on pure recruiter rankings. The reason is simple. HBS grads tend to demand extremely high pay packages and lots of power and perks, and are notoriously difficult for companies to hire, because they have lots of other options. That's why recruiters don't like HBS grads. In fact, many recruiters report how they hate recruiting at HBS and strongly prefer to recruit at other schools where the students are less demanding and don't ask for high pay, etc. But that's not a weakness of HBS, that's actually a strength. After all, the reason why HBS grads can ask for so much power and money is because they know they can get it. If that ticks off the recruiters, then so be it. The recruiters may dislike recruiting HBS grads, but they keep coming back anyway, even though they hate it. </p>

<p>So the point is, what recruiters want is definitely not consonant with what students want. For example, recruiters would like to pay people as low as possible, whereas students obviously want to be paid as high as possible.</p>

40

<p>sakky</p>

<p>can u plz more stats for HBS class cards</p>

<p>for like stanford, wash u, mit, brown, dartmouth, etc...</p>