Michigan State Honors Program vs. University of Michigan

[Sparkeye7]

<p>MSU HONORS RESEARCH</p>

<p>Professorial Assistantships</p>

<p>The Honors College targets the top 1% of students in the nation to be involved in the Professorial Assistantship program, Michigan State University’s most selective undergraduate research program, during the students’ first two years at MSU. PAs work with members of the teaching faculty on tasks directly related to scholarly research and innovative teaching. See “The Professorial Assistantship ¶ Program” for a more detailed description of the program, eligibility requirements and scholarships.</p>

<p>Honors Research Seminars</p>

<p>These Honors classes are designed particularly for first- and second-year Honors College students and provide an opportunity to engage in research in close association with MSU faculty members. (The seminars are listed as UGS 200H in the Schedule of Courses and Honors College Bulletin of Course Descriptions.) Among the benefits of these seminars:</p>

<pre><code>Seminars offer opportunities for hands-on work, often on cutting-edge research projects, under the supervision of MSU faculty members. Students who gain this experience are well situated to find other research opportunities in future.
Seminars are small and offer the opportunity to work with interesting students from a wide variety of majors.
Every seminar offers the opportunity to present at the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum in April. Many seminars also offer presentation and publication opportunities in other forums, both inside and outside the university.
Seminars count as one Honors experience and, with the approval of an Honors College Academic Specialist/Adviser, may count toward General Education requirements for Honors College members.
</code></pre>

<p>Research, Independent Study, or Thesis Courses</p>

<p>Students who are highly interested in an area of study may take advantage of the opportunity to do research, an independent project, or thesis with a professor. An Honors thesis is required for HC members in several majors but is optional for all other majors. Students are often required to obtain special permission before enrolling in a research, independent study, or thesis course and should check with the department offering the course about enrollment procedures.</p>

<p>Students engaging in research may apply for modest support through the Honors College Research Fund. Those planning a senior thesis or similar project may apply for a Genevieve Gillette Fellowship or a Hymen and Miriam Stein Scholarship.</p>

<p>[<research programs=“”>](<a href=“http://honorscollege.msu.edu/research_opportunities/research_programs.html”>http://honorscollege.msu.edu/research_opportunities/research_programs.html&lt;/a&gt;)</research></p>

<p>[Scholarships</a> for Current Honors College Members](<a href=“http://honorscollege.msu.edu/scholarships/current_members.html#research]Scholarships”>http://honorscollege.msu.edu/scholarships/current_members.html#research)</p>

[goldenboy8784]

<p>

@bclintonk

I don’t think this is evidence that Brown is more “holistic.”

Alas, we already know that Brown is more “holistic” bclintonk since its more selective than Vanderbilt and ranks high on most Revealed Preference Surveys (usually right behind HYPSM) so high school seniors value it more than Vanderbilt.</p>

<p>

@bclintonk

Except we don’t even know that, because we don’t know that they’re reporting either grades or test scores the same way. Brown might be reporting weighted GPAs while Vandy is reporting unweighted. Or, one or both of them might be reporting “recalculated” grades according to their own formula. Vandy shows higher ACT scores, 30-34 middle 50% compared to 29-33 for Brown; but Vandy may be reporting superscored ACTs and Brown not. We just don’t know. These so-called “objective” statistics are not necessarily comparable, and not at all transparent.

Don’t you think the CDS standardizes all of this? Obviously, all of the reported GPAs on the Common Data Set are unweighted. As for the test scores, only Notre Dame superscores the ACT and “superscoring” has almost no effect on score ranges since people don’t magically score higher on one section of the ACT and lower on another during a particular test date when the opposite was the true the examination before.</p>

<p>

@bclintonk

Bottom line, such fine parsing based on so-called “objective” stats is a fool’s errand, because we don’t know the figures are comparable.

You’ve ignored the part of that section in the Common Data Sets that are transparent and not manipulable: the percentage of students scoring higher than 700, 600, etc. on a particular section. These statistics give us a rough idea of where the student body at certain schools fall in the score ranges of these standardized tests. Vanderbilt has 7-10% greater number of students scoring 700 or above on these tests than Brown. The difference in the number of students scoring 30 or higher on the ACT is even further skewed in favor of Vanderbilt-88% vs. 72%.</p>

<p>

@bclintonk

Brown’s average ACT score is 31. As Alexandre has explained, that’s probably the average ACT score for Michigan engineering.

My claims are always substantiated bclintonk. You simply can’t compare ACT scores between Brown and Michigan since Brown is primarily a SAT school and Michigan is mainly an ACT institution. The weaker students at Brown tend to submit ACT scores while sending ACT scores is the norm for Michigan applicants.</p>

[GoBlue81]

<p>

The Honors College targets the top 1% of students in the nation to be involved in the Professorial Assistantship program

So the Honors College students come from the top 1% in the nation?</p>

<p>

the Professorial Assistantship program, Michigan State University’s most selective undergraduate research program, during the students’ first two years at MSU. PAs work with members of the teaching faculty on tasks directly related to scholarly research and innovative teaching.

So do the PA’s get to teach (or TA) at the college level even though they are only freshmen and sophomores? If not, what does working on “innovative teaching” mean?</p>