When have I ever used the US News to justify Michigan’s strength? I think the US News is a joke. The only US News ranking I trust is the one that has nothing to do with the US News, the Peer Assessment rating. I do not even trust the universities with the best teaching rank, which actually favors Michigan.
For the record, I do not think Michigan should be ranked higher than Cal or UCLA. But when it comes to financial resources, Michigan’s ranking at #42 makes no sense whatsoever. Nor do its faculty resources (#50) and selectivity rankings (#37).
I get it that admissions in the state of Michigan cannot consider race or ethnicity. And I get it that US News does not consider it in the rankings. Still, it’s my biggest complaint about University of Michigan. It is stunningly non-diverse – racially and economically. For a public university, it’s a real shame. For comparison, look at Cornell, which otherwise has a lot in common with University of Michigan. Cornell is about 45% white. 55% of the students are everything else under the sun. The differences are obvious. Stand outside Willard Straight Hall for 30 minutes at noon. Then stand outside the Michigan Union for 30 minutes. Stark difference.
A friend who visited Michigan for the first time last year said to me, “Is there anyone who goes there who’s not white and does not wear a Canada Goose parka?” A little hyperbole for effect, but the sentiment is there.
We should “ding” UVA too, a more comparable public school:
White 60.7%
Asian 12.1%
Black or African American 6.1%
Hispanic/Latino 5.8%
Non-Resident Alien 5.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native 0.2%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander 0.0%
Ethnicity Unknown 9.9%
Cornell has only 16% of its undergraduates with Pell grants (approximately the lower half of the family income range). Virginia has only 12%.
So while Michigan does not do well on SES diversity, it is not like Cornell or Virginia are significantly higher at representation from the lower half of the family income range.
For comparison, UNC-CH has 22% on Pell grants, and UCLA has 34% on Pell grants.
@Alexandre this is your reply in post #7 in ref to post #1 so I don’t know what your talking about…………what worse is it looks like you cherry picked your rankings to show UM in the MOST favorable light.
“Alexandre this is your reply in post #7 in ref to post #1 so I don’t know what your talking about…………what worse is it looks like you cherry picked your rankings to show UM in the MOST favorable light.”
It looks like you came into the Michigan forum to disparage the university. Getting back to the original point of this thread; Michigan is not weak in any way.
I am a die-hard Wolverine, but I will admit there are several things holding Michigan back from being direct peers with the “upper Ivies” and the like (Stanford, MIT):
-Financial Aid: The upper Ivies/Stanford/MIT best Michigan, for both in-staters and out-of-staters (not including significant scholarship recipients, which are few and far between anyway) - Michigan is getting better, but there is still a significant gap. Also, Michigan does not offer need-based aid to international students, while the upper Ivies/Stanford/MIT meet FULL aid for international students and all students. yaThis causes many students who are super talented to not matriculate to Michigan.
-The mandate/pressure to admit so many students from the state of Michigan: This really hurts Michigan’s selectivity, and is a serious disadvantage, although an unavoidable one since we are a public school. At least for top California public schools, they have a bigger and generally more talented pool (there, I said it) to choose from in the big state of California (which does a better job of funding K-12 education and has more wealthy/educated families).
-Restriction from using race in admissions decisions: This rule prevents Michigan from recruiting a truly diverse student body - another serious disadvantage.
-Location: Ann Arbor is perhaps the best college town in the country, but it is not in an ideal metropolitan area (Detroit Metro). This is something that can hold back out-of-staters and international students from matriculating. Harvard has Boston, Princeton has New York and Philly, Yale has New York and Boston, Columbia has New York (obviously), Stanford has the Bay Area, and MIT has Boston.
That’s not cherry picking CU123. Here is how I broke it down:
The only subject-specific rankings of undergraduate programs available are the Business and Engineering rankings provided by the USNWR, and those are not based on their flawed methodology, but exclusively on the opinion of the deans of those programs.
Since there are not rankings of other undergraduate departments (such as the traditional disciplines, architecture etc…), I used the USNWR graduate rankings of the traditional disciplines (there are twelve of them ranked by the USNWR; Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, Economics, English, History, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology). Again, those are not based on any flawed methodology, but on the collective opinion of the deans of the respective departments.
For all other traditional disciplines (Anthropology, Classics, Languages, Philosophy etc…), and for other disciplines such as Architecture, I used Gourman because there are no other sources that I can think of, although in some instances, the NRC and the Philosophical Gourmet could also be used.
“I am a die-hard Wolverine, but I will admit there are several things holding Michigan back from being direct peers with the “upper Ivies” and the like (Stanford, MIT):”
exlibris97, rjkofnovi, unlike some posters on this thread, stayed on topic. I should know since I am the originator of this thread and understand the spirit in which it was conceived.
“I am a die-hard Wolverine, but I will admit there are several things holding Michigan back from being direct peers with the “upper Ivies” and the like (Stanford, MIT)”
yikesyikesyikes, there is no doubt that Michigan is not a direct peer with Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. No university is. Those five universities stand a tiptoe above the rest. Michigan belongs to the group of universities that immediately follow, a group that includes Cal, Cornell, Northwestern and Penn.
“Michigan’s only weakness is that their football team has yet to beat OSU (under Harbaugh) and win their 1st Big 10 football title since 2004.“
Michigan’s only weakness is that their football team has yet to beat OSU and almost any rated team on the road (under Harbaugh) and win their 1st Big 10 football title since 2004.
