If all schools are PUBLIC...

College Search & Selection
41

<p>
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Sakky, try to look beyond Harvard for a change. Look at top 10 graduate schools instead.

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<p>So which one do you want me to look at? Anyone for which I have facebook information, I am happy to consider. </p>

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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.

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<p>Sure, it's a factor, I agree. But still, even with that fact alone, it's hard to see how that will compensate for the differences in population size.</p>

<p>I think HBS and HLS are pretty good proxies for the simple reason that, let's face it, most people who are admitted to Ross and HBS will choose HBS. Not all, obviously. But I believe HBS wins the cross-admit battle. Same for HLS. </p>

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[quote]
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.

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<p>I would dispute the notion that Cornell has an East Coast bias. After all, Ithaca is located far closer to the Midwest than it is to Boston. While I don't know the figures, I believe that a disproportionate number of Cornell students are actually from the Midwest than from the Eastern seaboard. </p>

<p>
[quote]
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.

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<p>Further studies, true, but not necessarily business school. Come on, let's face it. Plenty of Chicago people will run off to complete PhD's to become academics. This is obviously not conducive to going to B-school in the future. </p>

<p>As a case in point, Chicago doesn't even offer engineering, whereas Michigan has a HUGE engineering school. This is important because B-school is an extremely popular option among engineers, with the number of MBA students at HBS who hold engineering degrees being something like 25% of the class, and at MITSloan, it's something like 40%, despite the fact that engineering bachelor's degrees represent only about 5% of all bachelor's degrees conferred in the country. Hence, engineers clearly represent a highly over-represented figure within the top B-schools, and that clearly hurts a school like Chicago that doesn't offer engineering at all. </p>

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[quote]
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

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<p>Nobody is saying that the Michigan student body isn't talented. Obviously it is one of the most talented in the country. However, I think people ought to see what some of the numbers bear out. </p>

<p>What I think the real issue, as I think you have agreed to before, is that, quite frankly, Michigan (as well as Berkeley and every other public school) has a lower tail of students who, to be blunt, just aren't very good. Let's face it. These students simply don't have that much talent, and also not much motivation. Come on, Alexandre. You've seen these students at Michigan, and I've seen them at Berkeley. There are lots of students who just aren't interested in studying or hard work. They don't really want to learn anything, they don't really want to do anything. </p>

<p>I agree that if we could look at, say, the top X% of the students at Michigan, and compare them to the top private schools, things would look very good for Michigan. But we can't. To be fair, we have to look at all of the students at Michigan, including those who aren't that good.</p>

42

<p>Sakky, you are ever the cynic aren't you? Well, in this case, you misunderstood me and it was partly due my not being more specific. I was referring to choice recruiters, like the Ciscos, IBMs, Pfizers, P&Gs, J&Js, Goldman Sachs', Larzard Brothers', Citigroups, Lehman Brothers', JP Morgans, McKinseys, Bains, Booz Allens, BCGs, Medtronics', Amgens, Lockheed Martins, Kraft Foods etc... of the world think. I could care less about what the recruiters from average company think. Same goes with the opinion of a schools academic excellence. I could care less about what high school students think. High school students know very little about universities. I only care about what experienced, seasoned educators at top universities think. When talking about academic excellence, we should rely on the highest common denominator...the recruiter and the professor.</p>

43

<p>sakky consider</p>

<p>Columbia MBA or Columbia Law</p>

44

<p>Sakky, at best, a university will send 40 of its students each year to HBS or HLS. That's out of over 1,500 students who graduate. HBS and HLS are indeed excellent, but rating a university based on the number of students from a school who actually enroll into one of those two programs is very limited. One should look at the number of students from a university who get into top 10 graduate programs.</p>

<p>And Sakky, although Ithaca is closer to the Midwest than it is to Boston, 75% of Cornell students come from the east cost, as opposed to just 25% of Michigan students. </p>

<p>Finally, at the momment, only 25% of Michigan students have less than a 1250 on the SAT (in one sitting). That's equivallent to 1300 if you use the same method private universities report their mean SAT scores. Brown and Cornell and many other excellent universities have roughly 25% of their students scoring under a 1300 on their SAT. I said it before, I say it again, only a handful of universities (7 or 8) have appreciably better student bodies than Michigan. Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale definitely do. Another 2 or 3 universities probably do as well. But that's about it. Whether you look at the rate of Michigan students who enroll into top 10 graudate programs or who join exclusive companies each year, the statistics clearly prove that Michigan's student body is stellar.</p>

45

<p>"So which one do you want me to look at? Anyone for which I have facebook information, I am happy to consider."</p>

<p>I am actually curious to see what universities send the most of their students to the following 11 MBA programs:</p>

<p>Columbia Business School
Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck Business School
Duke University's Fuqua Business school
Harvard University Business School
MIT's Sloan School
Northwestern University's Kellogg Business school
Stanford University Business School
University of California-Berkeley's Haas Business School
University of Chicago Business School
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor's Ross Business School
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School</p>

46

<p>
[quote]
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...

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<p>Hey, be patient. I don't visit every thread I participate in every day, you know. Heck, I don't even visit CC every day. </p>

<p>But since you asked, here it is. </p>

<p>** Big note - HBS just changed its classcards to reflect the fact that the class of 2006 just graduated and are therefore no longer HBS students (commencement was yesterday in fact). The old classcard information I gave in previous posts included students from both classes of 2006 and 2007. Now I see that the classcard information only contains information for students in the class of 2007, and won't even let me choose to look at data from the class of 2006 (I get an error if I do so). In a few months, I am sure that the database will include students from both the classes of 2007 and 2008. **</p>

<p>But anyway, for the class of 2007:</p>

<p>Michigan - 20
Stanford - 50
Yale - 31
Columbia 18, plus 2 from Barnard
Dartmouth - 21
Brown - 13
MIT - 30
Harvard - 96
Upenn - 36
Northwestern - 13</p>

<p>Note, that this is just raw data about the school affiliations about the various students, and is not specific to undergrad. For example, if you have a master's degree from Michigan, but a bachelor's degree from somewhere else, then you are counted as affiliated with Michigan. For example, I see that the first person I see on my search of the Michigan affiliations of the class of 2007 actually has a BS in Mechanical Eng from Rutgers, and an MS from Michigan. I see another guy who has his BSE from the University of Rochester but has a MS from Michigan. The list goes on, and I don't think I want to spend time parsing all of the results to eliminate all of these people whose affiliations with a school is with the grad-school only. Suffice it to say that the figures above overrepresent any school (i.e. Michigan, Harvard, Stanford) that has a large graduate school, relative to those schools (i.e. Brown, Dartmouth) for which the graduate school is quite small.</p>

<p>
[quote]
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?

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</p>

<p>Well, to make a long story short, you have to gain access to the HBS Intranet. I can give you the link right now, the problem is that I don't think any of you can access it.</p>

<p><a href="http://beech.hbs.edu/classcards/search.do%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://beech.hbs.edu/classcards/search.do&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Hence, I think the easiest way is for me to print the data for you. And if you don't trust me, I would say that whatever I print can be verified against anybody else who also has access to the HBS Intranet.</p>

47

<p>I would not question your integrity Sakky.</p>

48

<p>Actually, guys, I think I have a better way to look at things. The current HBS class-card information may be less revealing than it seems because it only looks at current students. Hence, there may be just some years where one particular school just happens to get an unusually high or low number of students in at a particular time. In other words, the data may be noisy.</p>

<p>Hence, let's have a look at the HBS alumni database information. Here is what I got, for HBS MBA grads (hence no HBS doctoral degrees, no HBS executive education certificates, none of that stuff except the MBA degree) apportioned by college affiliation.</p>

<p>Harvard - 3264
Yale - 1508
Princeton - 1281
Stanford -1155
MIT - 973
UPenn - 831
Dartmouth - 730
Cornell - 737
Brown - 722
UCBerkeley - 532
Michigan, Ann Arbor - 453
US Naval Academy - 448
Williams College - 430
US Military Academy - 408
Duke - 391</p>

<p>Now, with that raw data, we can then talk about the biases inherent to this data. I will list a few that I can think of, y'all are free to list more.</p>

<p>*The data is only indicative of an affiliation, not necessarily an undergrad affiliation. For example, if you pick up an MS from a particular school, then you are counted as affiliated with that school, even if your bachelor's came from somewhere else (in which case, you are actually counted twice as being affiliated with both schools). So obviously this bias stands in favor of those schools that have large graduate programs, such as Michigan, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, etc. </p>

<p>*Geographic bias. It is true that some people tend to want to get their MBA's close to where they live. So I do agree that there is some Northeast bias towards Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Williams, Brown, etc. </p>

<p>*Preprofessionalism of the undergraduate program. I agree that certain schools are far more likely to prepare a student to eventually attend HBS than others are. To that I would say that any school that has a prestigious undergrad business program, or a prestigious engineering program (or both) will tend to be highly preprofessional. I would say that this bias strongly favors schools like Michigan, Berkeley, MIT, Penn, Cornell (because they have both good engineering and good UG biz) and somewhat favors schools who have good engineering (but not UG biz) such as Stanford, Navy, Army.</p>

<p>*Schools that don't have their own MBA program. I agree that if your school doesn't even have an MBA program, then you have no choice but to go elsewhere for your MBA. Hence, this favors schools like Brown, Army, Navy, Williams, Princeton.</p>

<p>*And what I see as the biggest bias of all - the sheer size of your school. Obviously if you just have lots and lots of undergrads, you ought to have lots and lots of people go to HBS. That's simple mathematics. </p>

<p>Personally, I think the biggest factor is the last factor. But I will leave it up to you to figure out how all the biases play out.</p>

<p>Here is the link I used, although I doubt that too many of you will actually be able to get into it. You would click on the link on the top left that says "alumni directory".</p>

<p><a href="http://my.hbs.edu/hbsinfo/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://my.hbs.edu/hbsinfo/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

49

<p>Where's Columbia in all this? I would have thought Columbia would have made the list. Thanks for sharing the information with us Sakky. I am not surprised by the results. Cal and Michigan are 3 and 4 among non-Ivy league schools. Not too shabby for public schools. I personally think the biggest "bias" is affiliation. Is it any wonder that 7 of the 9 most represented schools at Harvard are Ivy League institutions? </p>

<p>If you have the time to compile similar lists for the follwoing B schools, it would be great:</p>

<p>Columbia Business School
Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck Business School
Duke University's Fuqua Business school
MIT's Sloan School
Northwestern University's Kellogg Business school
Stanford University Business School
University of California-Berkeley's Haas Business School
University of Chicago Business School
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor's Ross Business School
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School</p>

50

<p>Columbia = 325</p>

<p>Then there is Columbia College (which is the undergrad college at Columbia, apparently some alumni choose to state that they are alumni of Columbia University, others as alumni of Columbia College) = 19</p>

<p>And there there is Barnard College (the women's college of Columbia) = 44</p>

<p>Hence, total = 379</p>

51

<p>As far as the other schools, I don't have access to their facebooks or databases except for Sloan's, and sadly, Sloan's doesn't allow you to search by institution affiliation, darn it.</p>

<p>What I can do is peruse the current Sloan facebook to examine current Sloan students (in the various Sloan programs - MBA, PhD, etc.), and I get the following.</p>

<p>MIT - 43
Harvard - 25
Michigan -16
Berkeley - 29
Stanford - 26
Northwestern - 12
Upenn - 24
Brown - 16
Cornell - 26</p>

<p>That's all I've checked for now.</p>

52

<p>
[quote]
A2Wolves6, I'm afraid I have to disagree. This is not the best way to determine ranking.</p>

<p>I think a better way is to look at student revealed preferences. After all, it's the students themselves who the schools are trying to cater to. After all, if a school really is desirable, then students ought to prefer to go there. If a school is highly ranked according to their peers but students don't really prefer to go there and instead prefer to go elsewhere, then that is indicative of some issues that the school must have.</p>

<p><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....tract_id=601105%5B/url%5D%5B/quote%5D"&gt;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....tract_id=601105

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</a></p>

<p>Here is the followup paper, from December of 2005
<a href="http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>edit: I forgot to attribute this to Byerly, who linked me to the updated version of the paper when I linked the older study in another thread.</p>

53

<p>Actually, I should say that Harvard = 27. Apparently, 2 people decided to list themselves as "Harvard College".</p>

54

<p>boxesarefun, I find that paper interesting, or what I've read of it, anyway- never the whole thing, most of the charts. But I haven't noticed something- if they even imply or state that maybe people, especially their parents, friends, and maybe teachers, encouraged them to go to someplace or another. Perhaps something might ultimately be the students choice, but if you parent isn't letting you go anywhere but X, then there isn't much choice, now is there? So I feel it should be "where students enroll," and not portrayed as if they independently choose. Maybe the report doesn't do that, or most of the choice is the students, but this is just how I feel.</p>

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[quote]
And there there is Barnard College (the women's college of Columbia) = 44

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<p>I know the two are closely tied, but I think "the women's college of Columbia" is a bit closer than reality. You can graduate from Barnard without taking a class at Columbia. Now, I don't know why you wouldn't, but you can. It's a different school, it just is, it isn't a college of Columbia in my view. Maybe they say they are, but if they do, that's ridiculous, they're Columbia's sister school, a seperate entity, an LAC branched onto Columbia.</p>

55

<p>Well, Drab, I think this is a case of splitting hairs. The truth is, if you start going down the road you are proposing, then you have to do the same for all schools. For example, Cornell consists of a number of individual entities, some of them purely private, and some of them that are actually part of the SUNY system (with in-state tuition subsidies and in-state residency admissions preferences). Shall would then say that graduates of the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (which is part of the SUNY system) as not 'really' Cornell grads? Or perhaps before Radcliffe was fully absorbed into Harvard, does that mean that graduates of Radcliffe prior to those days were not "really" Harvard grads? For example, does that mean that actress Stockard Channing of the West Wing is not "really" a Harvard graduate because she graduated from Radcliffe before the merger? Are Helen Keller and Gertrude Stein not really Harvard graduates for the same reason?</p>

56

<p>
[quote]
boxesarefun, I find that paper interesting, or what I've read of it, anyway- never the whole thing, most of the charts. But I haven't noticed something- if they even imply or state that maybe people, especially their parents, friends, and maybe teachers, encouraged them to go to someplace or another. Perhaps something might ultimately be the students choice, but if you parent isn't letting you go anywhere but X, then there isn't much choice, now is there?

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<p>If what you are saying is true, then that only leads to the question of why parents/friends/teachers are encouraging students to pick school X over school Y, and why can't school Y change those perceptions so as to have more people convince students to pick it.</p>

57

<p>Sakky, Barnard is a completely separate entity, just as BMC is separate from Penn or Claremont McKenna is separate from Pomona College etc... At any rate, even without the 40 from Barnard, the 344 Columbia alums who went to HBS is an impressive enough number. Anything over 250 is bloody impressive if you ask me.</p>

58

<p>
[quote]
Sakky, Barnard is a completely separate entity, just as BMC is separate from Penn or Claremont McKenna is separate from Pomona College etc...

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<p>alexandre, that is incorrect. barnard college is one of the four undergraduate colleges of columbia university. that said, barnard does have both its own administrative infrastructure and admissions process and in that sense it may be appropriate to consider it a seperate entity, as us news does. but considering something a seperate entity does not make it so.</p>

59

<p>I guess I was thrown off by the fact that the Fiske Guide and the USNWR rate/rank Barnard as a self-standing entity. But if you say Barnard is part of Columbia University and the diploma of Barnard students says Columbia College and not Barnard College, I'll take your word for it.</p>

60

<p>columbia commencement (which includes barnard): <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ceremonies/commencement/bacservice.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ceremonies/commencement/bacservice.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>from the barnard website:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Barnard is located just across Broadway from Columbia's main campus and is one of four undergraduate schools within the Columbia University system (the others are Columbia College, the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies). In an arrangement unique in American higher education, Barnard has its own campus, faculty, administration, trustees, operating budget and endowment, while students earn the degree of the University.

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