<p>ProudWolverine, can you provide any evidence that Michigan is NOT a top 15 university? It's all talk, just like ring of fire. Michigan IS a top 15 university and Alexandre has provided time and time again ample evidence to substantiate that claim.</p>
<p>ProudWolverine, clearly, many great universities would make the list of top 15 universities. That list would fluctuate greatly from region to region. For example, out West, schools like UCLA and USC would make the list. In the South, schools like Emory and Vanderbilt would make the list. In the East Coast, schools like Georgetown and UVa would make the list. In the Midwest, Notre Dame and Wash U. would make the list. </p>
<p>But if you were to ask the most educated of people all over the nation and average the results, Cal and Michigan will both be among the 15 most frequently mentioned. Actually, they would make the top 17. There seems to be a small but natural and distinct gap separating 17 schools from the rest. Those 17 schools are the same I have maintained make up the top two groups of universities in the US since I joined CC more than three years ago. They are:</p>
<p>GROUP I:
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
Yale University</p>
<p>GROUP II:
Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>It is no surprise that those schools also get the highest Peer Assessment scores according to the USNWR.</p>
<p>
[quote]
these global rankings are complete hogwash ... At least USNWR employs a consistent methodology that doesn't allow wild jumps in the rankings from year to year. You won't see Michigan in the top 15 anytime soon...
[/quote]
USNWR's College Ranking does not measure the whole university, nor its global reputation ... which is what these global rankings set out to rank.</p>
<p>So you like the USNWR ranking. According to USNWR's Graduate Ranking, UCB is easily in the top 3 and Michigan in the top 10. Throw in the global prestige factor and I can see Michigan in the top 15 among US universities.</p>
<p>Also it is important to note that UCB is not a factor in many of the health sciences, since it is so close to UCSF which does specialize in those and is excellent at it. Let's face it, it's the so called "hard sciences" that ultimately bring in the most amount of notoriety. They are the disciplines that create the most attention and get the most amout of $$$ for research. While UCB is excellent in many areas of the hard sciences, the fact that it doesn't have any medical school, dental school, pharmacy school, and nursing school, must also be taken under consideration. That Michigan is rated above UCB in this type of ranking system, does not surprise me at all.</p>
<p>^ But Cal is better in the hard sciences than Michigan. In the THES ranking, the only thing holding Cal back is the "student/faculty" score - whatever that measures. Cal has a 24, while UCLA manages 48. This is ridiculous. Cal has a much stronger faculty than almost every university. Cal's students are among the best too.</p>
<p>UCSF is Cal's medical school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
the fact that it doesn't have any medical school, dental school, pharmacy school, and nursing school
[/quote]
Cal has a top optometry school...;)</p>
<p>UCB. I did mention that Cal was excellent in the "hard sciences" and concur that it has a better rep in most of those areas than Michigan and UCLA. UCLA however, like Michigan, does have medical, dental, and nursing programs. No matter how you slice it UCB doesn't and you can't say UCSF is Cal's medical school, because it isn't. Optometry, will all due respect, is not ophthamology. Btw, I agree that Cal is ranked unforgiveably low. I'm just trying to figure out why that might be the case. I also agree that the rankings seem ridiculously skewed towards certain UK schools over all others. The reason I even mention this whole rating is that I'm kind of tired of people, not yourself included, who look upon Michigan as something less of a top 15 school overall in this country. Honestly, great undergraduate education can be had at many colleges in this country. Like I've stated so many times, in my opinion it's the graduate/professional programs of a particular school that define a truly great university.</p>
<p>Haha...yes, optometry is not opthamology.</p>
<p>In THES rankings, the only low score for Cal is "staff/student" score. I can't find a link that explains what that measures. I don't think that Cal not having a medical school should affect this score. It would affect research funding.</p>
<p>Cal has the highest score possible in "peer review, employer review, and citation score". These are the most prestigious categories. That places Cal in the esteemed echelon of:
Harvard, MIT, Stanford - which happen to be, arguably, the top graduate schools in the world.</p>
<p>I agree completely UCB. I don't understand the rankings at all. Btw, you and I both spelled "ophthalmology" incorrectly. A common mistake. :-)</p>
<p>In my opinion, there are only 7 schools that are undoubtedly better than Michigan (both in terms of prestige and academics): Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and Berkeley.</p>
<p>Caltech is too limited in it's scope. I can't disagree with the other six though.</p>
<p>It is an idiotic thing to rank schools based on the basis of solely Academia in my opinion. I personally think the USNWR are a load of B/s. For me, i find the learning environment in conjunction to actual teaching quality, athletics, student body, campus aesthetics to begin with, to be the most important things. You can go to the best academically ranked school in the nation and if they lack in other qualities... the student body itself is deprived of real life learning environment. They are kept in that bubble of pure academia and may not realize the outside world till it is too late.</p>
<p>I have the hope of attending Notre Dame this upcoming spring as a transfer, my hopes stem from a multitude of reasons including their prestige but moreover the environment one learns in. From a school of less then 9,000 undergraduates to reasonably compete with Harvard ,Yale ,Princeton ,Stanford ,MIT ,Columbia, Penn, Oxford, Cambridge, GTown, trinity, etc is unfathomable... it is a school that has produced some of the most brilliant minds as well as employs them. For a school of such small student body to have a global reach such as ND does is very impressive. But it also leaves out many of the smaller LAC that produce great minds and individuals. I think our education ideology has focused too much on the TOP historically and not on the true academic nature of the more specialized institutions.</p>
<p>UMich for instance i think is the best Public in our nation (in my opinion and i have been a die hard Notre Dame fan my whole life) - along side UNC and Cal. For a PUBLIC institution to compete with schools entailing 31 billion in endowment is very impressive and yet at the same time provide an environment rich in ethnic and social diversity... very impressive. Not only that but a very well established athletic community and having an alumni network of 500,000 plus doesn't hurt.</p>
<p>and i am just using examples i am familiar with...</p>
<p>snwrider brings up a very important point. The academic/learnign environment at a university is very important. Some prefer a very serious academic environment such as Chicago, Columbia or Johns Hopkins whereas others prefer a more laid back environment such as Brown or Stanford.</p>
<p>UMich is definitely a top 10 school in the country if one just looks at quantity/quality of research and the strength of academic programs overall. As snwrider has eloquently pointed, the actual undergraduate educational experience that a college offers is usually independent of those factors.</p>
<p>Alexandre, even if Michigan started superscoring, their average SAT scores wouldn't improve that much(maybe 20-30 points) and it would still lag behind the top non-HYP privates. I can guarantee you that USNews uses only enrolled student data in their calculations. Just because that data isn't available for the public to see, that doesn't mean that the universities don't let the USNews staff have access to it.</p>
<p>Also, in my experience with humanities class, there is a difference between having 20 kids and 30 kids for sure. You need at least a dozen kids in a discussion seminar in order to faciliate some good debates and have different POVs considered. Anything beyond 25 students definitely detracts from the learning environment of a seminar because there are usually too many kids wanting to speak and not enough material gets discussed in depth. Our freshman writing classes at Duke are all capped at 12 students for that reason. I absolutely feel that the amount of kids in lecture classes like Economics, Sociology and Psychology does not matter since it's just the professor teaching. For other social sciences such as Philosophy that are discussion-based, class sizes and student to faculty ratios are incredibly important because the accessibility of a TA/professor is instrumental to your success in that field.</p>
<p>By the way Alexandre, Wash U., Notre Dame and Georgetown have national appeal that matches or exceeds Michigan and Berkeley. I can't think of a single educated person I know who wouldn't consider these schools to be among the top 20 in the country, To suggest, in the list of top 17 schools you provided, that there is a huge distinction between the universities you mentioned and Wash U. is absolutely ludicrous.</p>
<p>Wash U. and Notre Dame are peers of Duke, Penn, Dartmouth et. al. Even if they weren't there's no conceivable way they would be considered "worse" than Michigan, UVA, Berkeley, etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Anything beyond 25 students definitely detracts from the learning environment of a seminar because there are usually too many kids wanting to speak and not enough material gets discussed in depth. Our freshman writing classes at Duke are all capped at 12 students for that reason.
[/quote]
I don't see a difference between a class with 12 students vs. a class with 20-30 students...this is college, not kindergarten.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Alexandre, even if Michigan started superscoring, their average SAT scores wouldn't improve that much(maybe 20-30 points) and it would still lag behind the top non-HYP privates.
[/quote]
That's because public universities accept 3-5 times the number of freshman that the top privates do. If Duke admitted 3,000 - 5,000 freshman, their SAT average would drop as well.</p>
<p>
Huh? In a true discussion class, every single person should elect to and have the opportunity to participate and discuss his/her ideas on the readings and materials at hand. Having 12 kids vs. 20-30 kids is a huge difference in this regard because the latter slows the pace of the class down considerably.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, I don't believe class size matters at all at the intro level for engineering, economics, sociology, psychology, etc. For nearly every other subject, it matters considerably.</p>
<p>
That's because public universities accept 3-5 times the number of freshman that the top privates do. If Duke admitted 3,000 - 5,000 freshman, their SAT average would drop as well.
What exactly are you trying to prove? If Goldman Sachs and Google hired 3-5 times as many people, then the quality of their interns would drop as well. Prestige is a byproduct of selectivity and exclusivity. Private schools educate the best of the best. Public schools educate the best of the best, the best, the average and the below average students. The goal of a public university to educate the common man, though it is noble, inherently makes it worse than a similar private school.</p>
<p>Ring<em>of</em>fire, I can't speak for Notre Dame and Wash U, but I can for Georgetown. My father and sister are alums. I attended Georgetown Prep in Rockville Maryland. My family is devoutly Catholic. And yet, both Georgetown alums in my family think Michigan is a better university. When I was admitted into Georgetown, they automatically crossed Georgetown out in favor of Michigan. Then again, my mother crossed out her alma matter (Columbia) in favor of Michigan and my uncle crossed out his alma matter (Penn) in favor of Michigan. I guess my family is pretty ignorant eh? </p>
<p>As for SAT results, I have several issues with them. Superscoring is just one of them. I belive they add an average of 40 points to a university's average. My other issues are:</p>
<p>1) State schools do not value standardized tests. Michigan used to allocate as many points to a student with a 1200 on the SAT as it did to a student with a 1600 on the SAT. If Michigan and Cal wanted to increase their SAT averages to say 1400, they could. However, they couldn't care less about standardized tests and as such, the typical student at those schools doesn't even prepare for the SAT. They show up on the day of the exam, take it once and that's it. Most students at private elites take the SAT 2-3 times, prepare extremely hard for it. If the entire Michigan student body prepared for the SAT just as hard as the entire student body at a smaller private university, the mean SAT score would be higher. </p>
<p>2) State schools only report enrolled students SAT averages...for ALL enrolled students. Many private elites either report average SAT scores of accepted students and some onlyinclude SAT averages of students in their College of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. I will not point fingers, but I know of at least 4 top 20 universities that fudge their numbers. </p>
<p>And class size is obviously an important issue. However, I have compared notes with friends who attended elite private universities such as Cornell, MIT, Northwestern, Penn, Stanford etc... and typically, similar classes had roughly the same number of students. The only exception were intro level classes, where those schools had anywhere between 150-250 students and Michigan had 200-350 students. </p>
<p>Your assessment of Michigan (and Cal) is very limited. But it won't change the principal fact. Cal is one of the top 6 or 7 universities in the US and Michigan is one of the top 10 or top 15 universities in the nation. Academe certainly agrees with that assessment (the Peer Assessment score proves it). </p>
<p>Like I said many times before, the corporate world thinks even more highly of Michigan than academe. The problem here is that you rate universities statistically. Most intellectuals and industrialists couldn't careless about statistics. Like I said in post 18, the most respected of academics consider Michigan and Cal top 10 universities. I already quoted the man and I will quote him again, Gerhard Casper said what most of the nation's leading intellectuals think:</p>
<p>"I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university - any more than the quality of a magazine - can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering the method. Let me offer as prima facie evidence two great public universities: the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of California-Berkeley. These clearly are among the very best universities in America - one could make a strong argument for either in the top half-dozen. Yet, in the last three years, the U.S. News formula has assigned them ranks that lead many readers to infer that they are second rate: Michigan 21-24-24, and Berkeley 23-26-27."</p>
<p>Criticism</a> of College Rankings - September 23, 1996</p>
<p>ring<em>of</em>fire, Goldman Sachs hires over 30 undergrads from Michigan each year.</p>
<p>Actually, better make that "hired" as in past tense. IBanks no longer exist. Thankfully, the vast majority of students at Michigan don't intend on pursuing careers on Wall Street! hehe!</p>
<p>
[quote]
In a true discussion class, every single person should elect to and have the opportunity to participate and discuss his/her ideas on the readings and materials at hand.
[/quote]
Give me a break! "Every single person should elect to and have the opportunity to participate"? Huh? LOL! If you aren't comfortable and can't get your voice heard in a class of 30 young adults, you'll have some serious problems in life.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Private schools educate the best of the best.
[/quote]
We're saying the same thing, but when you have a small cohort to fill, you can select among the "best of the best". What I'm saying is, if Duke had to accept 5,000 freshman, the SAT average would likely go down. The more students accepted, SAT average decreases until it reflects the national average.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wash U., Notre Dame and Georgetown have national appeal that matches or exceeds Michigan and Berkeley. I can't think of a single educated person I know who wouldn't consider these schools to be among the top 20 in the country...
[/quote]
Peer assessment scores for WUSTL, Notre Dame and Georgetown are 4.1, 3.9 and 4.0 respectively, quite a bit lower than Berkeley(4.7) and Michigan(4.4). Obviously many of these highly educated people in academia surveyed didn't consider these three schools to be among the top 20 in the country ... or peers of Berkeley or even Michigan. And it's equally obvious that you don't know any of these people...</p>
<p>novi, how am I doing so far?</p>