<p>Nothing is <em>magical</em> about a 20% surge in app’s, admissions was, again, noticeably more difficult this year - I haven’t seen any '10-'11 stats so I wouldn’t assume anything hehe. Why do I keep citing Engineering - the field of study the op is majoring in? Maybe because the vast majority of his classes will be in that subject. And when he takes his humanities, I wouldn’t really constitute a 1 or 2 point difference as being ‘substantial’. At the end of the day, the guy wants to do Engineering, and assuming he does well, with a name like Michigan - or JHU - he won’t have any trouble getting into a top graduate program.</p>
<p>" Fact is JHU for the most part will compete with the ivies, Duke, Stanford, MIT for students. Umich competes with Ohio State, Purdue, and Case Western. Different targets. "</p>
<p>Woah woah woah buddy. Them is fighting words. You seriously think Michigan competes with OSU and Case Western for students…sigh… (mid-west is big gray blob mentality).</p>
<p>This is true. You cited Stanford as the destination of one of your friends in support of UMich in one of your posts. I’m at Stanford now and know firsthand there’s tons of other JHU people from my year and others. If you do well at both schools, you won’t have a problem getting into a great grad school. The Umich people I’ve met are cool also.</p>
<p>Ha Ali…my sister is going to Umich next year from out of state (She was waitlisted from JHU but is turning down ivies…hell…I’ll send a scan of her acceptance/enrollment letter to prove this to you). I have a lot of respect for UMich. Besides, you guys usually win most of the student battles with Ohio State and some with top privates too I bet. You just need to translate that to the gridiron…;).</p>
<p>Haha, that’s cool; I’m sure your sister will love ann arbor. I’ll cease fire as I’m feeling too sleepy to type anymore - altho I enjoyed our little skirmish : ).<br>
op, good luck choosing</p>
<p>“” Fact is JHU for the most part will compete with the ivies, Duke, Stanford, MIT for students. Umich competes with Ohio State, Purdue, and Case Western. Different targets. "</p>
<p>“my sister is going to Umich next year from out of state (She was waitlisted from JHU but is turning down ivies…”</p>
<p>I guess Michigan DOES compete with JHU and the Ivies. Amazing contadiction in just a couple of posts. Don’t think your sister is an anomoly. It happens more often than you realize I do agree that JHU would compete with ANY school since it is so stellar in biomedical engineering. However the rest of the program, like Duke, isn’t nearly as strong. Michigan is strong across the board in engineering.</p>
<p>" Fact is JHU for the most part will compete with the ivies, Duke, Stanford, MIT for students. Umich competes with Ohio State, Purdue, and Case Western. Different targets. "</p>
<p>Yeah, this was a point I was going to respond to yesterday. Personally, I picked Michigan over schools such as Chicago and Columbia, and at my in-state school at least, Michigan usually wins out between schools like Berkeley, Northwestern, and Chicago - our top midwestern schools + the warm school out west - we don’t have many kids apply out east. I only know one person who applied to JHU in my class - his dad’s an alum - and funnily enough, he got into Hopkins and was deffered from Michigan this year, with him leaning toward the later for some science - it was either chem or physics. Now this might be totally anecdotal, but we view schools like osu, purdue and case as safeties, especially osu : )</p>
<p>If you want a standard engineering job, it’s best to go to the cheap state school, but if you have more diverse career goals you’ll want to look to a more highly ranked (overall) school like JHU (or even USC).</p>
<p>There are always exceptions. And she was a Umich Ross Premadmit with a scholarship, one of the more selective parts of Umich. It wasn’t Umich regular.</p>
<p>I think UMich probably wins most of the midwestern battles for michigan high school students because because of cost. If I was out-of-state, and costs are the same, I wouldn’t go to UMich. But if there is a strong cost differential, I would go to Umich as it is still a great school.</p>
<p>“If you want a standard engineering job, it’s best to go to the cheap state school” </p>
<p>I’m not sure what a ‘standard’ Engineering job is: Lockheed, Google, Boeing, Microsoft, Intel? Personally, I plan on going into consulting - Michigan, CoE & Ross especially, is one of the few MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) target schools - or finance - similarly, every bulge bracket ib recruits at CoE & Ross, a hefty number of proprietary trading firms - think DRW, CTC, DE Shaw etc. - recruit only at CoE, along with your middle-market boutiques. I wouldn’t consider these your ‘standard engineering jobs’. These two sectors alone account for 20% of the graduating class this year.</p>
<p>“If you want a standard engineering job, it’s best to go to the cheap state school, but if you have more diverse career goals you’ll want to look to a more highly ranked (overall) school like JHU (or even USC).”</p>
<p>I agree. A cheap state school like the one from your state. Michigan is not your typical state school. You just got owned by ali of arabia btw.</p>
<p>“I think UMich probably wins most of the midwestern battles for michigan high school students because because of cost. If I was out-of-state, and costs are the same, I wouldn’t go to UMich. But if there is a strong cost differential, I would go to Umich as it is still a great school.”</p>
<p>I certainly wouldn’t pay top dollar to attend JHU or USC being a state of Michigan resident. Stanford however, well that would be a much tougher call. ;-)</p>
<p>Seeing as I TA Stanford undergrads and am aware of the undergraduate engineering education provided at Stanford, no I don’t think it’s worth passing over for UMich in-state. For out-of-state, it’s an entirely different ballgame. Then again, not many even have JHU or Stanford as an option (USC a lot less so as they admit a throng of people who turn it down yearly). I actually turned down Stanford for undergrad for JHU as I received a better deal financially (who would have thunk it. And so did Tanman, another poster on this board).</p>
<p>I see you’ve been at this for a while, rjkofnovi with UMich vs. a similar school to JHU, NU.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1102924-umichs-mpulse-v-cap21.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1102924-umichs-mpulse-v-cap21.html</a></p>
<p>rjkofnovi: "Michigan is just as good academically as Northwestern. 
"</p>
<p>Another poster in same thread: Well, I won’t qualify the term, “good,” but will say that Northwestern is much more selective academically for admissions than UMich. Both are fine schools academically speaking. </p>
<p>Another poster in same thread: </p>
<p>@rjkofnovi - UMich is an absolutely FANTASTIC school, but in D’s opinion it is not comparable academically with Northwestern.</p>
<p>From an academic standpoint, UMich accepts ~51% of applicants, while this year Northwestern will accept ~19%.</p>
<p>Average ACT scores at UMich are 27-31, while at Northwestern they’re 31-34 on average (probably higher this year due to large increase in applicants).</p>
<p>Northwestern is also much smaller than UMich, so they offer very small academic class sizes and many more research opportunities per capita.</p>
<p>These sound like the same arguments we are making for JHU.</p>
<p>I think we are getting student quality mixed up with standardized test scores. If you look at the best public universities, namely Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, and Virginia, each has extremely similar ACT ranges. Berkeley: 27-32 ; Michigan: 27-31; UCLA: 25-31 ; Virginia 27-32. All of these ranges have fluctuated up or down by a point or two in the past years, but they have consistently been in this ballpark. I don’t want to get into a huge public vs. private debate, but to claim that students are somehow inferior because the student body doesn’t have the same ranges as their private counterparts does make me scratch my head. True, the average student at a top public maybe didn’t score as highly on a standardized test as their private peers - this could come from a range of factors, from having a more diverse and larger student body, to simply not preparing as vigorously for exams which school like Michigan put relatively little weight on - at least relatively to the seemingly-important schedule & grade point. </p>
<p>Back to the heart of the debate, the op will still find as many extremely motivated and intelligent people at both schools, and he can choose who he surrounds himself with, which prof’s he works with, and which activities he’ll get involved in. Will each university provide him with the platform necessary to get an awesome job or to get into the top grad schools? Most certainly. Will he find intellectually curious and engaging students at both schools, especially in his field of study? No doubt. The difference is, at a large, top public, you have to mold what’s there to make it your own. They’re simply different in nature. Again, I would leave the op’s decision up to intangibles such as fit, how he thinks he would feel in at each environment.</p>
<p><a href=“http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2009-10.pdf[/url]”>http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2009-10.pdf</a>
<a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning;
[UCLA</a> Office of Analysis and Information Management | AIM](<a href=“http://www.aim.ucla.edu/cds/cdsForm.asp]UCLA”>http://www.aim.ucla.edu/cds/cdsForm.asp)
[Common</a> Data Set: Institutional Assessment and Studies, University of Virginia](<a href=“http://www.web.virginia.edu/iaas/datacatalog/cds/admission.shtm]Common”>http://www.web.virginia.edu/iaas/datacatalog/cds/admission.shtm)</p>
<p>Also, as an aside, to those who claim that JHU is more prestigious or more distinguished academically , what is your criteria. A private-biased usnwr ranking that does not place a single public university in the top 20? A ranking that is as arbitrary as the next. </p>
<p>Reputation-wise, especially for the op who is an international, there is no difference overall, especially for Engineering. If you want to cite rankings, arbitrary or otherwise, these are as good as any.</p>
<p>[QS</a> World University Rankings - Topuniversities](<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010]QS”>http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010)</p>
<p>[Top</a> 200 - The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010-2011](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html]Top”>World University Rankings 2010-11 | Times Higher Education (THE))</p>
<p>[Top</a> Universities by Reputation 2011](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/reputation-rankings.html]Top”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/reputation-rankings.html)</p>
<p>[World’s</a> Best Universities: Top 400 - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities/articles/2010/09/21/worlds-best-universities-top-400-]World’s”>http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities/articles/2010/09/21/worlds-best-universities-top-400-)
Edit: My bad, same USNWR/QS</p>
<p>If we look at US News’ academic reputation rating (based on surveys to college presidents asking for their opinion of other colleges, we can get a clearer idea):</p>
<p>4.9 Harvard 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.9 MIT 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.9 Princeton 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.86 Yale 4.8 | 4.9 |4.9
4.83 Stanford 4.9 | 4.9 |4.7</p>
<h2>4.8 Caltech 4.6 | 4.6 |4.9</h2>
<p>4.73 Columbia 4.6 | 4.8 | 4.8
4.63 Brown 4.4 | 4.8 | 4.7
4.63 Cornell 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.6
4.63 Penn 4.5 | 4.6 | 4.8
4.6 Duke 4.4 | 4.7 | 4.7
4.56 Dartmouth 4.3 | 4.7 | 4.7
4.56 Johns Hopkins 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.4
4.56 UC Berkeley 4.7 / 4.6 | 4.4
4.53 Chicago 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.5
4.53 Northwestern 4.4 | 4.6 | 4.6</p>
<h2>4.5 Georgetown 4.1 | 4.8 | 4.6</h2>
<p>4.43 Wash U 4.1 | 4.4 |4.8
4.33 Carnegie Mellon 4.2 | 4.6 | 4.2
4.33 Notre Dame 3.9 | 4.6 | 4.5
4.33 Rice 4.1 | 4.4 | 4.5
4.3 Michigan 4.4 | 4.4 | 4.1
4.3 Vanderbilt 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.3
4.26 Emory 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.4
4.23 UCLA 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.2
4.23 USC 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.3
4.2 UVA 4.3 | 4.3 | 4.0
4.16 Tufts 3.6 | 4.5 | 4.4</p>
<h2>4.06 UNC Chapel Hill 4.1 | 4.4 | 3.7</h2>
<p>3.83 Wake Forest 3.5 | 4.3 | 3.7 </p>
<p>While that metric is potentially flawed, you do see that Berkeley and UMich get their due.</p>
<p>No, I’m not arguing the students are inferior at a top private school compared to a public school. But rather there are academic differences in the student body, and reasons (<em>rightly or wrongly</em>) for which someone will pay more for the private. Publics are less selective, have lower SATs/ACTs, and typically have a lot of students that would not be accepted at top private colleges (that’s not to say there aren’t any, but they are not in the majority. Obviously since they are state schools, they must enroll most of their class from the in-state applicant pool (where as privates can be selective and choose from the best students nationally and internationally, without any limitations). Reasons for going to a private college <em>may</em> include Smaller class sizes resulting in easier research opportunities and more personalized attention, academic prestige (debatable, NU students will say they are more prestigious than UMich and other privates as seen above, JHU students will say they are more prestigious, and UMich students will say they are more prestigious or as prestigious), and connectins (difficult to quantify). At the end of the day, the OP needs to go where he is happy. If he goes to Hopkins or Michigan and is miserable there, he will do poorly regardless of the school’s reputation.</p>
<p>Nice, so these are the peer assessment from previous three year’s avg’s, with the current peer academic rating of Michigan-4.4 and JHU-4.5 (w/ privates like Duke, Brown, and NU at 4.4, Dart at 4.3); you are right that based on this metric you do not have a big pit of privates-landscape. And totally agree, op’s gotta go where he’ll be happy.</p>
<p>Please don’t be worried about the social life at Hopkins! Students do not spend all of their time on academics. You can make it what you want to make it - there are kids that go out every day of the week here and still get fantastic grades. Whyyyy does Hopkins still have this completely false reputation? Also, we are NOT cut throat!!! We are competitive in the sense that everyone wants to do well, no one will sabotage you.</p>