Is Michigan weak in any way?

@billcsho Sorry, patience is about gone. I am very skeptical that as an OOS student , my son will get enough FA. I made a donation to their admissions fund.

The admission process has been on their website for years.
https://umich.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/33
https://umich.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2080

The timeline or the process have not been changed although some minor revisions in the last couple years. It is the rumors and speculations that make people nervous and lost patience.

The decisions are mostly out. Again, there is no change in the admission timeline this year regardless of the large increase in applications.

Back to the original post, why is UM ranked so high in individual areas but only #28 in National Universities, behind UCB, UCLA and UVA?

^^^^A #28 ranking at USNWR does not make Michigan “weak.” My question would be why are schools like Columbia ranked so highly when they are relatively weak in major disciplines; such as engineering…

A ranking of 28 does not make a school weak.

Good question CU123. I would start by saying that all of those public universities you mentioned in post 1,023 have deflated ratings according to the US News & World Report, Cal and Michigan more so than UCLA and UVa. But to your point, even amongst public universities, Michigan’s rating is slightly deflated.

There strange, counterintuitive outcomes, such as the Financial Resources rank. For example, take UCLA, which is identical to Michigan in size and structure (both have 28,000-30,000 undergraduate students, both have approximately 15,000 graduate students, both have large medical and engineering programs, both have huge medical centers etc…). As such, the financial comparison between those two universities should be fairly straightforward. UCLA’s annual budget stands at roughly $7 billion, and its endowment at approximately $4.5 billion. Michigan’s annual budget stands at $9 billion, and its endowment at $11 billion. The clear advantage is on Michigan’s court, especially when you factor in the cost of real estate and the cost of living between Los Angeles and Ann Arbor. You would think that Michigan would have a clear advantage in the Financial Resources ranking. And yet, somehow, UCLA’s Financial Resources ranking is #19 in the nation, and Michigan’s is ranked at a head-scratching #42 in the nation! It is almost as though the US News mixed the two up!

The Faculty resources ranking is also suspect. At UCLA, 57% of classes have fewer than 20 students while 18% have more than 50 students, and the student to faculty ratio is 17:1. At Michigan, 60% of classes have fewer than 20 students while 17% have over 50 students, and the student to faculty ratio is 15:1. Again, Michigan has a slight edge statistically, yet somehow, UCLA’s Faculty Resources rank is significantly higher than Michigan’s (#22 vs #50).

There are other inconsistencies (Michigan’s selectivity rank is laughably low), but I think the two criteria above are sufficient evidence that the data is very inconsistently, unreliably and poorly collected, edited and tabulated.

I’ve not seen this thread before.

I often wonder why Michigan is not rated higher, since as Alexandre mentions, many of the stats are similar or better than UCLA, UVA and Cal. I think part of it must be student selectivity, since for example, Michigan recived 66,000 apps and UCLA and Cal received 113,000 and 89,000, respectively. (figures from memory).

However, I seem to run into a lot of Michigan alums here in SV, specifically in and around the Stanford campus. A lot. Just this past weekend, I attended a party on the Stanford campus and ran into several UMich grads. The party was hosted by a pair of Stanford alums. And just a couple of weeks ago, I attended another party, nearby Stanford, and met several UMich alums. BTW, I am not a Stanford or UMich alum.

Maybe lack of diversity has something to do with it. UMich is stunningly non-diverse.

“You would think that Michigan would have a clear advantage in the Financial Resources ranking. And yet, somehow, UCLA’s Financial Resources ranking is #19 in the nation, and Michigan’s is ranked at a head-scratching #42 in the nation! It is almost as though the US News mixed the two up!”

It’s a coastal bias Alexandre. USNWR needs to boost rankings where they have the best chance to sell them.

“I think part of it must be student selectivity, since for example, Michigan received 66,000 apps and UCLA and Cal received 113,000 and 89,000, respectively.”

It is true that Cal and UCLA receive applications from significantly more students than Michigan. However, the quality of the students that are admitted, and that matriculate, at Michigan is roughly identical to those at Cal and UCLA.

SAT range:
Cal: 1300-1530 (1420 average)
Michigan: 1330-1500 (1420 average)
UCLA: 1240-1490 (1370 average)

ACT range:
Cal: 29-34 average (31.5 average)
Michigan: 30-33 (31.5 average)
UCLA: 27-33 (30 average)

It is difficult to compare the UCs to Michigan in terms of average GPA and graduating class rank, but I assume that all three enroll students of similar caliber.

“Maybe lack of diversity has something to do with it. UMich is stunningly non-diverse.”

brantly, Michigan can only admit qualified applicants. If fewer qualified URMs apply yo Michigan, it probably has more to do with location than the University’s prejudice. It should be noted that the state of Michigan isn’t exactly that diverse. 79% of Michigan residents are white, with very of those being hispanic. In California, only 62% are white, and roughly half of those are hispanic. California is a much more diverse state than Michigan, so it will naturally admit a more diverse student body.

That being said, diversity is not one of the criteria used by the US News ranking, so I don’t think Michigan’s lack of diversity contributes to its suspiciously low ranking.

“It’s a coastal bias Alexandre. USNWR needs to boost rankings where they have the best chance to sell them.”

I agree to a degree, although that did not stop Chicago (#3), Northwestern (#11), Rice (#14), Vanderbilt (#14), Notre Dame (#18) and WUSTL (#18) from doing well. I think it is more a private vs public issue. Americans do not value public education and are highly suspicious of anything that is state run. Knowing that, the US News adjusted its rankings to ensure that the public would not be scandalized by seeing a handful of public universities ranked among the top 20.

@Alexandre I would disagree that “Americans do not value public education”. I think survey data shows that and public universities educate far more students than private universities. There is clearly a segment of well-to-do that is looking at top privates as the goal, and USNews has reinforced that.

The thing about USNews is it is open to manipulation of stats to boost ratings and private schools have more levers to pull than public schools. In this regard, Michigan has perhaps benefited from being able since has been able to enroll a higher percentage of students from out of state. Being able to tap into applicants who can pay above the cost of attendance provides more funds that can be used for targeted purposes to boost student quality, etc. (This is pretty much what Duke, Vanderbilt, etc. did.) Michigan is closer to quasi-private in that sense than schools like Texas that have closely-controlled OOS percentages and also legislature-controlled admission criteria.

I haven’t looked carefully at the numbers, but I thought UCLA has benefited from having a high “financial resources” rank vs. say Cal. A lot of this is probably spurious as it is probably related to 1) having a medical school under UCLA administration and 2) it probably doesn’t benefit undergraduates in any way. If Cal was administatively combined with nearby (and closely aligned) UC San Francisco, the picture would look entirely different as UCSF is a colossus.

One of the very regrettable things about USNews in my opinion is is measures expenditures rather than outcomes. In their world if they were ranking cars, the most expensive one would win rather than the one that provided comparable or better outcomes at lower cost (e.g. a better value). At a time when students and families are staggering under loan debt, this is particularly unfortunate.

I hate the outcomes measurement. How do you measure an outcome? How much money the student makes one year after graduation? Five years after? Ten? Twenty? How many promotions they got? Whether they have traveled the world, have great interpersonal relationships, own their own home, enjoy their life?

@IzzoOne outcomes are a ridiculous way to rank a university.

  1. Outcomes are heavily influenced by major. Do you want a great outcome? major in CS, who cares if you don’t like it, you’ll have a great outcome.
  2. If the caliber of student that attends a top school would simply skip it and use the money to start there own business they would far exceed the ROI at any university, however they would still be “uneducated”.
  3. Most ROI rankings put MIT #1 and Caltech #2..............I wonder why.......does that mean they received the best education, or does it mean they produce mostly engineers?

The measures that USNWR are clearly stated, many which can be verified. Also don’t confuse graduate level schools with the undergrad rankings. If you want to find out about a “suspicious ranking” go look up the actual data being used to determine why UM is #42. It’s really not that hard.

@CU123 I get your points and agree with a couple. In many ways major may be more important decision than college as this report shows. I do not agree with point 2. I don’t think the data supports that. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/5rules/

But I think outcomes can be measured through surveys, studies on social mobility, repayment rates, etc. See examples on survey data: https://www.gallup.com/education/194264/measuring-college-university-outcomes.aspx

Think about this. We track car owner satisfaction and repair rates. The data we have for colleges is pretty much equivalent to the sticker on the window.

If a school can do more spending less money, it is penalized in USNews. That makes no sense.

“The measures that USNWR are clearly stated, many which can be verified.“

They can be indeed. Schools like Columbia who artfully use; ED to improve yields, super scoring testing to improve numbers, playing with student/faculty ratios, and admitting 1/3 of their undergraduates as transfer students. These are just a few ways privates game rankings.

CU123, the US News does not give a detailed explanation of how it calculates financial resources, and it certainly does not share the data and how it was collected, edited and tabulated to determine the financial resources ranking.

But there is no rational or legitimate explanation for ranking Michigan’s financial resources #42 in the nation. In order to arrive to such a result, the data and the methodology must be seriously flawed. Michigan is one of the 10 wealthiest universities in the nation. Even on a per/student basis, if you factor in state funding and economies of scale, it is one of the 10 wealthiest universities in the nation.

Like I said, Michigan has a much larger endowment than UCLA ($11 billion vs $4.5 billion), spends a lot more than UCLA ($9 billion annual budget vs $7 billion annual budget), and is located in a significantly cheaper area than UCLA. In order for UCLA to be ranked #18 and Michigan #42 makes no sense.

What I really find interesting is that you use USNWR rankings to justify that UM is not weak in any area, then when you find a USNWR UM ranking you don’t like you bring it under suspicion………………….this is what really weakens your argument. How do I know that all UM USNWR ranking aren’t unduly influenced by some nefarious forces? A better answer would have been “Yea, I don’t get why UM isn’t ranked higher then Cal/UCLA, by God it should be!”