<p>Uh, yeah, no one disagrees Michigan is great for graduate school and for professor research - after all, Michigan has several times as many professors as Dartmouth, Brown, or Duke does, no wonder its faculty is cited more times in academic journals. Good for Michigan grad students though.</p>
<p>However, I don't think you can ever compare Michigan to Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Duke, Chicago, etc. for undergrad. Just look at the higher caliber of the students they attract, how many of these students go on to top professional schools, and how many academic superstars are in their undergraduate entering classes.</p>
<p>More comparable schools to Michigan undergrad are Vanderbilt, Emory, Lehigh, BC, etc. I realize many will disagree with me, because for some reason people think its OK to pretend Michigan undergrad is much better than private schools like Lehigh, Vanderbilt, Emory, and BC, which attract exactly the same types of students. This does a disservice to high schoolers looking for prospective colleges - and also does a disservice to private schools such as Emory or Lehigh that don't have vehement backers on this website.</p>
<p>Again, I am not talking about graduate programs, so please don't talk about quality of scientific research at the graduate level, or how many top 10 grad programs a school has.</p>
<p>Emory, Lehigh, BC, Vandy - These are schools that have similarly strong under grad student bodies, and probably just as many research opportunities because they are smaller schools with smaller classs sizes, etc. These are great schools and Michigan is definetely as good and is as prestigious (or even more, arguably) as they are for undergrad.</p>