<p>Yet there are more Californian at the University of Michigan which doesn’t even meet needs. California is 3rd among OOS, just behind New York and Illinois.</p>
<p>I agree with novi. I suppose some students just prefer to go far away from home for college and if the family can afford it…</p>
<p>
Sure, why not? Michigan’s a good school and rich Californian families whose kids get rejected by UCLA and Berkeley would rather send them to Michigan than UC San Diego or UCSB. There’s no real surprise there.</p>
<p>
Those cases are exceptions to the rule. Wash U. is only slightly better than UCLA by the way. Turning down MIT to go to a college other than its 4 peers is extremely rare.</p>
<p>[Compare</a> Colleges: Side-by-side college comparisons | Parchment - College admissions predictions.](<a href=“Compare Colleges: Side-by-side college comparisons | Parchment - College admissions predictions.”>Compare Colleges: Side-by-side college comparisons | Parchment - College admissions predictions.)
MIT: 80%
UCB: 20%</p>
<p>@Goblue you need to remember the reason California is third for OOS students is simply because there are literally millions more Californians than students in any other state. I’m sure that there is a higher percent (percent of not the kids at michigan, but of high school grads from a state) of Indiana Natives at Michigan than California Natives, even if the California number is way higher because they are the most populous state.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or for students who were accepted to both, like myself, that would like to get the same quality education at an institution that better suits them. And there were quite a few kids who were rejected/deferred by Michigan but accepted to either UCLA/Cal from my high school this year, as out of state admissions are becoming increasingly more competitive.</p>
<p>
So you are saying that Californian is third among OOS students at virtually all of its peer schools? Source please?</p>
<p>I applied to Berkeley and Michigan and was accepted to both but chose Michigan (Economics and History, 1996) for several reasons, including (prominently) cost. (I was in-state.) If I were you, I would choose Cal for similar reasons, unless cost is not a concern (at all). Both schools are comparable in terms of academic prestige, though the campuses and overall feel are quite different. Michigan offered a great undergraduate experience, including research opportunities (I worked at ISR my last two years), and prepared me well for grad school (Chicago economics, following two years of work). But if I were a California resident, I would go with Berkeley, just as a Michigan resident I went with UM.</p>
<p>I apologize for consecutive posts. Given my experience, UM is comparable (and perhaps slightly better) to Berkeley in the social sciences, especially if undergraduate research opportunities are important to you. But in the natural and physical sciences, it seems clear that Berkeley now has an advantage (though that was not as true when I went to UM). All else being equal, Berkeley seems like the better choice (given my very limited knowledge about you and my nontrivial knowledge about both schools), even though I could not be a more proud UM alumnus.</p>
<p>
I don’t really know why you’re going on the offensive with me but do realize that you’re in the small minority of Californian students whose families are willing to pay upwards of $100 K to go to a similar sized state school OOS. Going to Wellesley or Brown would be a whole different matter since those colleges are very different with regards to undergraduate focus and the level of intimacy afforded than UCLA, Cal, or Michigan.</p>
<p>I have not once used statistics of any kid to proclaim that Cal or UCLA is better than Michigan or vice versa. You’re putting words in my mouth.</p>
<p>
The information is easily accessible from multiple sources actually that corroborate the same pecking order with regards to the desirability of American undergraduate institutions.</p>
<p>For your reference:</p>
<p>[A</a> Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803]A”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803)
<a href=“http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/2010_2011/minutes/10_07_10_SenD6388.pdf[/url]”>http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/2010_2011/minutes/10_07_10_SenD6388.pdf</a></p>
<p>The next slide was a bar graph depicting the percentages of students admitted to Stanford
who were also admitted to 12 other universities, ranging from 27% to the University of
California at Berkeley, to 10% to the University of California at Davis. UCLA, Princeton,
Harvard, Yale, UCSD, Duke, MIT, Brown, Columbia and USC, in that order, were in
between.
The next slide was a bar graph showing the top 20 colleges attended by students offered
admission to Stanford who chose to attend another college. Only 4 of the 20 exceeded 2%.
Those four were MIT (13%), Princeton (14%), Yale (16%), and Harvard (32%).
Noticeably absent from the 20 was the University of California at Berkeley.
Cal does not even come up on this chart, which is really interesting. We have major
application overlap, and yet when were enrolling our class, head to head, theyre going to
choose Stanford.
Where the competition starts to come to the fore is from our colleagues at Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, and MIT. These are consistently the schools were competing with.</p>
<p>I would imagine the same is true with MIT. Less than 10 students will choose Cal over a school like MIT annually.</p>
<p>
Keep up the classy behavior.</p>
<p>goldenboy, not trying to be overly mean, but you look really insecure when you come on UMich’s forum all the time and talk down the school.</p>
<p>Seriously, how do you have time to look up all of this **** for a school you don’t even attend?</p>
<p>“Keep up the classy behavior.”</p>
<p>I would not speak of class Goldenboy, you know nothing of the word.</p>
<p>Just to mention - the article referenced above ([A</a> Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803]A”>A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities | NBER)) is based on data from high school students graduating in 2000 and was first published in 2002.</p>
<p>Seriously goldenboy… what do you have against Umich? Did your not-as-intelligent buttbuddy get accepted and you didn’t? Duke’s still a good choice, but did you feel insulted or something? Did a UMich guy pick up one of the chicks you were pathetically trying to pick up? (I can tell it would be pathetic due to your constant posts, backed up with articles, about a school that you don’t go to)</p>
<p>Honestly… what is it?</p>
<p>
I appreciate your sentiments Scott but I don’t “talk down the school”. I grew up in Michigan, know lots of people who went to UM, and my sister was deciding between UM and some other schools not too long ago so that’s when I first got exposed to the forum. I’ve stayed since I find it to be a pretty interesting place with lots of heated discussion, which is the polar opposite of what you’d find on my alma mater’s forum (which is rather dead). Other than that, I’m just trying to help high schoolers reach informed conclusions and where to go to school and balance out the pro-Michigan responses to some degree.</p>
<p>This university has the most vocal group of supporters of any on this forum. When high school seniors post comparison threads on multiple forums, their Michigan thread often gets the most responses and views. It’s important that these impressionable students get a balanced and fair view considering all aspects (prestige, finances, education, etc.).</p>
<p>
I have nothing against the school and back up all my views with data. I’ve found that this forum’s usual posters have a more inflated view of Michigan than any Michigan alum I’ve met in real life (besides international students like Alexandre), so I think its interesting and I want people to receive correct information like I mentioned before.</p>
<p>Also, lots of posters who went to different schools post all over the place. I’m not sure what the fact that I went to Duke has to do with anything. Also, its pretty unlikely to get admitted to Duke and not UM, although its a possibility I guess. I got admitted to the Honors College in fact.</p>
<p>
You bring up a good point dadinator about the study being a little dated but school prestige doesn’t change that much in the span of a decade. If anything, Duke and UChicago are probably more desirable now than a decade ago while Brown has probably declined a bit (relatively speaking). Michigan’s a pretty well established university so I doubt its position would move up or down even if the study was redone today.</p>
<p>I am pretty new to this forum (having looked at it only in the past month – as my nephew made a decision regarding schools – and posting for the first time today). But it seems that the previous respondent is a Duke partisan. As a relatively senior member at a large financial services firm who has some input in the hiring of new associates, I can say that Duke’s overall student body probably has higher HS stats (which they tend to <em>still</em> list prominently on their CVs four years later; that has always seemed a bit odd to me) than Michigan’s or Berkeley’s. But in terms of the top of top – and we tend to hire about 2 to 4 percent of applicants, depending on year – UM and Cal graduates do slightly better, at least in terms of what we want (highly quantitative analysts who can work independently). Also, while we hire more undergraduate B-School grads than econ grads (and Wharton and Stern definitely hold an upper-hand to Ross or Haas grads in terms of number of total hires), the econ and engineering grads we hire seem to do more later in their careers. Is this information generalizable? Not necessarily. But it comes from almost eight years of hiring experience, which I think is somewhat informative. I am not here to bash any school or any major. I did not advise my nephew to choose Michigan or any other school over Duke (he was accepted to both as well as Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, and Virginia, and ultimately chose Carnegie Mellon). But a quantitative focus with a strong background in the liberal arts from a large research university can prove very valuable both for a first job and for later performance in graduate school.</p>
<p>“I’ve stayed since I find it to be a pretty interesting place with lots of heated discussion, which is the polar opposite of what you’d find on my alma mater’s forum (which is rather dead).:”</p>
<p>Here’s a thought. Try posting more often on the Duke forum how HYPSM are much better than your alma mater. I am sure that would increase the amount of conversations there.</p>
<p>“Also, lots of posters who went to different schools post all over the place. I’m not sure what the fact that I went to Duke has to do with anything.”</p>
<p>There is quite a list of Duke students/alums who have bashed Michigan on a regular basis here on CC. You are just one of newer ones. You don’t do anything “fair and balanced.” Your views inevitably place Michigan in a weak position compared to it’s peer institutions.</p>
<p>I would say that Berkeley is more prestigious than Michigan, and presumably, in your case, cheaper.</p>
<p>floridadad55 has an MBA from Michigan so you know he’s not biased.;)</p>
<p>
Thanks for the informative post! CMU is pretty underrated on this forum and their graduates definitely have very strong analytical and quantitative skills from what I’ve observed.</p>
<p>Bloomberg/Businessweek did a study on which undergraduate institutions produce grads who fare the best on the test. All the schools your son was considering besides Michigan and Virginia made the list and UC Berkeley is the best performing state school.</p>
<p>[Which</a> College Scores Best on the GMAT? - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<ol>
<li>CMU: 720.9</li>
<li>Duke: 720.2</li>
<li>University of Chicago: 712.9</li>
<li>Northwestern: 712.0</li>
<li>UC Berkeley: 711.1</li>
</ol>
<p>I am happy that my nephew (not son) chose Carnegie Mellon. I think it will be a good fit for him. But to imply that Carnegie Mellon prepares students for careers and grad school better than Michigan based on the very narrow measure of GMAT scores seems misguided. One, the GMAT is much more biased toward “good test taking” than, say, the GRE. Two, I would venture – and I am open to being proved incorrect – that not only as a total number but as a share, more UM students than CMU students take the GRE, thus lowering the average score. If you did a controlled analysis, I would doubt that the performance of UM and CMU students would be significantly different one way or the other. </p>
<p>When it comes to elite schools, it’s very hard to say which one is “better,” as I’m sure many people have written on this site before. I believe, based on my own experience and those of my colleagues and acquaintances, that the top public research universities – Cal and Michigan, in particular, along with UCLA, UVA, UNC, and Wisconsin – offer motivated students opportunities that are hard to beat, out of state or in state. But for in-state students, especially, it seems that there should be a very high bar before choosing an alternative. (My nephew is a DC resident, so no such good option was available.) </p>
<p>So, back to the original poster – which is why I initially commented on this thread – unless finances are irrelevant, it seems that Cal would be the wise(r) choice.</p>
<p>
Yes, I have to say I was not a fan of the GMAT’s computer-adaptive testing format. I would encourage several practice exams on the computer format before scheduled testing day.</p>