<p>lol, I’m sorry but doesn’t Michigan have a 50% acceptance rate?</p>
<p><a href=“Compare Colleges: Side-by-side college comparisons | Parchment - College admissions predictions.”>Compare Colleges: Side-by-side college comparisons | Parchment - College admissions predictions.;
<p>No offense to the Michigan students defending their school, but let us not be delusional now.</p>
<p>UC Davis/Irvine and lots of other “lessor” schools have lower acceptance rates than UMich, so your point is…?</p>
<p>UCB, Michigan made the “best undergraduate teaching” list every year except this year. I think when it comes to teaching, both Cal and Michigan do a great job and neither has a clear edge. </p>
<p>Where the PA is concerned, Michigan usually gets a 4.5 rating while Cal usually gets a 4.7 rating. That makes them peers.</p>
<p>According to that parchment website, 75% will pick UCLA over UMich. How credible.</p>
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<p>Thanks, 17 year old, I really value you’re opinion. And no, this year Michigan had ~35% acceptance rate. Not that acceptance rate determines educational quality, but nonetheless that number is two years outdated.</p>
<p>iiBoGo, this year, Michigan’s acceptance rate will most likely be under 40% (~37-38%), not 50%, though acceptance rates are not telling. Cal has a lower acceptance rate because it is the flagship public university of the most highly populated state in the US (37 million people compared to Michigan’s 10 million). Given this huge difference, it is not surprising that Cal receives more applicants. </p>
<p>What really matters is the calibre of the student body. Both universities have extremely strong student bodies, particularly when you consider their size, their philosophy regarding standardized tests (both deemphasize the SAT) the fact that neither pads their stats with cheap tricks such as superscoring.</p>
<p>According to their latest common data sets, Michigan and Cal had virtually identical stats:</p>
<p>Cal:
98% graduated in the top 10% of their high school class
Average High School graduating GPA: 3.84
Mid 50% SAT:
Critical Reading: 600-730
Mathematics: 630-760
Writing: 610-740
Combined: 1840-2230</p>
<p><a href=“http://opa.berkeley.edu/statistics/cds/2010-2011.pdf[/url]”>http://opa.berkeley.edu/statistics/cds/2010-2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>Michigan:
92% graduated in the top 10% of their high school class
Average High School graduating GPA: 3.76
Mid 50% SAT:
Critical Reading: 590-690
Mathematics: 640-750
Writing: 610-710
Combined: 1840-2150</p>
<p><a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning;
<p>UC Berkeley</p>
<p>"According to that parchment website, 75% will pick UCLA over UMich. How credible. "</p>
<p>That’s because California residents will outnumber Michigan residents 4 to 1 and residents of those two states will make up the bulk of the voters in the Michigan vs Cal survey. If one were to poll only OOS students both both schools, Cal would still have the edge, but it would not be as extreme as 88 vs 12.</p>
<p>Alex, I said they were peers. :)</p>
<p>No comment on faculty achievement?</p>
<p>Also Michigan is a safety school for many who apply to the Ivies. You don’t have that on the West Coast.</p>
<p>Heh, Berkeley is a safety school to Stanford, Caltech, MIT, Harvard, Princeton and Yale…many CA kids apply to those schools.</p>
<p>Try stanfordrejects.com :)</p>
<p>When it comes to faculty achievements, particularly in the Sciences, Cal obviously has the edge. That explains why Cal is ranked significantly higher in fields such as Biology, Chemistry and Phsyics. I think many of award-winning professors move to Cal toward the end of their careers.</p>
<p>Engineering and math as well…</p>
<p>Alex, you mean profs mostly move to Berkeley after they get awards? That could be, but most get their award for work done at Berkeley. 28 Nobel Prizes awarded while on Berkeley academic staff…Michigan = 0. And Berkeley is lacking a medical school. Berkeley econ has won its share of recent Nobels…not necessarily science.</p>
<p>Berkeley also lacks a conservatory level school of music, theater, and dance. Berkeley is the premier public school in this country. It just isn’t quite as well rounded as Michigan.</p>
<p>“Engineering and math as well…”</p>
<p>Berkeley is marginally better in engineering and math than Michigan. It is “significantly” better in the natural sciences. Let’s be honest, Berkeley is the top public in the USA. Michigan and UCLA follow behind, then UVA, UNC, etc. There is also no doubt that California has the best public university lineup in this country by far. If I were a resident there and gained admittance to a number of schools in the UC system, there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that that is where I would attend college.</p>
<p>Yet California is the most represented state in Duke/Princeton’s undergraduate student body and is the 4th most represented state among the undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania…</p>
<p>[Penn</a> Admissions: Incoming Class Profile](<a href=“http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/profile/]Penn”>http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/profile/)
<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/pdfs/Profile_11.pdf[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/pdfs/Profile_11.pdf</a></p>
<p>Clearly a lot of Californians choose better East Coast private schools over Cal. It is more of a safety school than Michigan IMHO, which is basically revered by Michiganders.</p>
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<p>This couldn’t have ANYTHING to do with the fact that California has the largest graduating high school class in the country, could it? Meaning a large number of students who can’t ALL go to Cal. Because it would be stupid to think something like that, huh?</p>
<p>And using the word better? That’s just stupid. If you want to form arguments based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence, I’ll offer up my own experience.</p>
<p>The valedictorian of my class chose UCLA over Northwestern, Dartmouth and Brown (amongst other schools I’m sure) and I know she got a lot of money from Northwestern. The salutatorian chose UCLA over Wash U. and Cornell (again, amongst other schools). The girl who was ranked 3rd went to Duke because she didn’t get in to Cal’s engineering program. That’s right, DUKE, the school that you think is the greatest in the world, bar none. And then the person ranked 5th chose Cal over Michigan, MIT, and Cal Tech and a bunch of other schools.</p>
<p>^^That’s because there’s a lot of people that live in Cali. California is one of the top 3 most represented states at UM, up there with New York and obviously Michigan. In fact I think Michiganders under appreciate how strong the school is. Our graduates have a presence all over the country and UM is probably the second strongest public school purely academically, and definitely the most well rounded out of maybe any school but definitely out of publics. Duke and Princeton are WAY smaller than Cal or Michigan. The presence there over other states is not at all indicative of how Cali residents “rank” their school choices.</p>