michigan usnews 2013 prediction

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
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<p>Actually knight2011, Michigan’s larger student body is spread across more fields of study and academic and professional interests. For example, 14% of Michigan students apply to Law school, compared to 29% of Georgetown students and 20% of Cornell, Duke and Penn students. And the absolute numbers really favor Michigan once you include Michigan graduate programs. For example, Michigan places ~150 of its own students in Michigan Law School, Michigan Medical School and Ross MBA each year. Schools like Cornell and Northwestern place ~40-60 of their own students in their own graduate professional programs. When you adjust for applicant numbers and include all top graduate programs, Michigan places a similar percentage of its students in top 10 Medical Schools, top 10 Law Schools and top 10 MBA programs.</p>

<p>There really is not significant difference in the quality of the students at Michigan and its private peers (Cornell, Northwestern and Penn to name a few), and graduate schools respect applicants from Michigan as much as they do those from Cornell, Northwestern or Penn.</p>

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<p>I’ll be honest, I think our bottom is more bottom-y</p>

63

<p>To me it seems that michigan does rank pretty strong in its individual programs. However if one simply compares the incoming class profile of the students at michigan to a school like penn it clearly shows that the students at penn come in stronger. For instance, SAT scores, high school achievements such as merit scholars and what not, high school GPA and selectivity show that penn has a more refined caliber of student than mich.
2011 Penn enrolled act 30-34
Mich act 28-32</p>

<p>from common data set average GPA of incoming penn student 3.89
Mich student 3.79
The selectivity…Penn = 13% acceptance Mich=35% acceptance</p>

<p>In order for someone to get into a school like penn or jhu, duke, etc…they have to achieve higher scores, awards, gpa and then still face a crap shoot in admissions. </p>

<p>@alexandre, considering you strongly feel that michigan is equal to the private heavyweights why does it rank so much lower on usnwr? This is a serious question and its not disrespectful. To me it seems michigan does in fact do very well with placement but the caliber of student does seem a notch below the ivy students and jhu, MIT, chicago, Cal tech, stanford and duke.</p>

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<p>

Well, to be fair, Michigan’s undergrad population is nearly times the size of Penn. As student population gets larger, it’s gonna more closely represent the national mean.</p>

<p>

Because USNWR considers things like class size stats, average SAT scores (but doesn’t adjust for student population size), and alumni giving…factors that favor smaller private schools.</p>

65

<p>Let me just complete the statement made by UCB:</p>

<p>Because USNWR considers things like class size stats, average SAT scores (but doesn’t adjust for student population size), and alumni giving…factors that favor smaller private schools…like Emory who make up numbers to raise their appeal at USNWR, impressionable high schoolers, and their families.</p>

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<p>How is anyone here qualified to give a fair assessment on numerous colleges that they have never attended?</p>

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<p>First off all Alexandre, thank you for not deleting my posts and engaging in a civil discussion.</p>

<p>

Alexandre, to be fair, you do this all the time with private schools who have fairly weak faculties like Notre Dame, Tulane, UMiami, Boston College, Emory, and USC all the time.</p>

<p>Michigan is fortunate to be an academic powerhouse for the past century. Not many universities enjoy the same privilege…is it fair to Vanderbilt that Michigan has a stronger faculty? Vanderbilt can’t help that its a newer university and doesn’t have the same established academic presence of U of M.</p>

<p>Vandy is doing its best by excelling in other areas like student body strength, faculty pay, undergraduate focus, advising, etc. to mitigate the fact that a school like Michigan has such a headstart to it in terms of attracting academic superstars.</p>

<p>You’re focusing on the one area where Michigan excels: department graduate strength and faculty qualifications. A Vandy Alum would focus on the student to faculty ratio, strength of students, small class sizes, top-notch advising, etc.</p>

<p>If you are going to criticize Tulane for having a weak overall academic faculty, then I can criticize Michigan for having weak students (the bottom third).</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>A lot of these Stanford subpar law school applicants are varsity athletes on the baseball or football teams. The figure here is much smaller than Michigan’s anyway.</p>

<p>How about we look at how many Stanford graduates there are at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Law? There are 39 Stanford grads at Yale compared to only 12 Michigan Alums despite the fact that Stanford has a 1/4 of the law school applicants for instance.</p>

<p>

Alexandre, there is no clear top 10 for any of these professional programs.</p>

<p>There are the T14 Law Schools:</p>

<p>Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Columbia
Chicago
NYU
Penn
Virginia
Berkeley
Michigan
Duke
Northwestern
Cornell
Georgetown</p>

<p>There are the M7 Business Programs:</p>

<p>Harvard
Stanford
Wharton
Booth
Kellogg
Sloan
Columbia</p>

<p>As far as medical schools go, there’s Harvard and then there’s somewhat of a drop off to the next 15 medical schools or so and its tough to see where to draw the line.</p>

<p>At any rate, it is simply false to suggest a similar percentage of Michigan undergrads enter T14 Law Schools or M7 Business Schools as Cornell, Penn, or Duke.</p>

<p>Most law schools don’t release their undergraduate representation breakdown, but Duke is above Michigan even in absolute numbers in the ones that do (UVA, Chicago, Yale).</p>

<p>As far as the top business schools go, respected CC poster Sakky checked Harvard’s database and there are currently 88 Penn alums, 47 Duke alums, 39 Cornell alums, and 29 Michigan alums enrolled.</p>

<p>Look at post #22 here:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/1224650-top-feeder-colleges-americas-elite-b-schools-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/1224650-top-feeder-colleges-americas-elite-b-schools-2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Goldenboy, your arguments are very weak. First of all, comparing the quality of a student body to that of the quality of a faculty in attempting to determine the quality of a university is laughable and idiotic. Only a moron (or someone so depsrate to make a point that is way off mark) would attempt to do so. A university is run by professors, not students. Students come and go, faculty are the ones who build a university’s curriculum, develop research that alters the state of humanity and teach classes. </p>

<p>“Alexandre, to be fair, you do this all the time with private schools who have fairly weak faculties like Notre Dame, Tulane, UMiami, Boston College, Emory, and USC all the time.”</p>

<p>Really? I disrespect universities? I judge individuals according to their alma matter? Just because I do not think a university does not have a strong faculty does not mean I do not respect it. I have often gone on record praising universities like Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt etc…, even if their faculties are not the strongest. I definitely include them among the elite and have consistently listed them among America’s elite universities. Just because I believe Michigan is stronger academically, does not mean I think any less of them. This said, private universities are lying and cheating to improve their ranking, and that, I do not respect.</p>

<p>“You’re focusing on the one area where Michigan excels: department graduate strength and faculty qualifications. A Vandy Alum would focus on the student to faculty ratio, strength of students, small class sizes, top-notch advising, etc.”</p>

<p>Actually GoldenBoy, Michigan’s department strength (both graduate and undergraduate since the two are pretty much the same) and faculty qualifications, although both among the top 10 in the US, are not Michigan’s only primary strengths. Another one of Michigan’s defining traits is its unlimited resources. Only a handful of universities (HYPSM and perhaps two or three others) have more resources than Michigan. Michigan’s facilities and opportunities afforded its students (both undergraduate and graduate) are on par with wealthy private universities. As for Vanderbilt, let them submit themselves to an auditing exercise to check on its true student strength. Like Emory, I doubt it would exceed Michigan on that front. </p>

<p>“If you are going to criticize Tulane for having a weak overall academic faculty, then I can criticize Michigan for having weak students (the bottom third).”</p>

<p>I do not criticize Tulane for having a weak faculty, I simply do not believe it is an academic peer of Michigan, or a top university for that matter. It is, however, a very good university that I respect. </p>

<p>And why should I criticize Michigan for having “weak students” when private universities have almost equally weak students but are lying about their stats to hide the truth. At Michigan has integrity. By superscoring and adding 50 points to its range, Emory’s SAT jumps from a solid 1320 to a more impressive 1420. In reality, even with superscoring, Emory’s average was 1370. I have said for a while now that private universities have no intergrity. Emory is just the first of many that will be caught in coming years. I very much doubt most private universities have true SAT averages that exceed 1400 if measured and reported the way Michigan and its ethical public peers do.</p>

<p>“A lot of these Stanford subpar law school applicants are varsity athletes on the baseball or football teams. The figure here is much smaller than Michigan’s anyway.”</p>

<p>Wow, so you know that most of those subpar law school applicants are varsity athletes? And why is this not true of Michigan? Perhaps the large number of subpar law school bound Wolverines are also student athletes? And even if the figure is much smaller in the absolute sense, it is still significant in the relative sense. In 2009, 150 Stanford students enrolled in Law schools. Of those, 23 enrolled in law schools ranked between #61 and #150. That represents 15% of Stanford’s law-bound students. It is certainly a significant figure.</p>

<p>“How about we look at how many Stanford graduates there are at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Law? There are 39 Stanford grads at Yale compared to only 12 Michigan Alums despite the fact that Stanford has a 1/4 of the law school applicants for instance.”</p>

<p>You are now flipping the script GoldenBoy. In a previous post on this thread, you said, and I quote, that “…undergraduate reputation is reflective of everyone that has received a degree from a university…”. By that reckoning, you were explicity saying that it does not matter how well the best students at a university do, all that matters is how the worst students do. Stanford’s worst students certainly aren’t doing much better than Michigan’s students.</p>

<p>“At any rate, it is simply false to suggest a similar percentage of Michigan undergrads enter T14 Law Schools or M7 Business Schools as Cornell, Penn, or Duke.”</p>

<p>I am not sure how looking at the percentage of all students entering T14 Law schools or top 10-15 MBA Programs (M7 is not an established league, but rather, a conference and is of no consequence as it omits elite MBA programs such as Tuck, Ross and Haas) is significant if one does not look at how many students within the entire student body apply to law school or MBA programs. Schools like Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Michigan and Northwestern do not have as many applicants, as a percentage of their overall student bodies of course, to Law school or MBA programs as schools such as Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown and Penn. At Michigan, only 25% of students apply to Law and Medical school, compared to 40%-50% at most private elites. Chicago currently has only 12 alums enrolled in HBS, compared to 26 BYU alums. Are we to infer that BYU is superior to Chicago? As long as a university is well represented at an elite graduate program, it is clear that it is a well regarded academic institution. If some universities are better represented than others (except for Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford as their numbers are truly a in a league of their own), it is likely because the university has a tradition of attracting students with pre-professional intentions. Either way, the general agreement among the highly educated, particularly in academe, as well as in major corporate circles, is that Michigan is one of the top 10 universities in the US. But don’t sweat it Goldenboy, the USNWR is not likely to start auditing university data or altering its methodology to level the playing field any time soon, so at least one ranking will keep Michigan out of the top 20 for some time.</p>

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<p>@alexandre…I don’t think any of the elite privates are falsifying data especially sat scores. A school like dartmouth has so much to lose by falsifying SAT scores and so little to gain. Some of these privates are so near the top that it woudn’t garner them any more credit if their SAT scores were higher. For instance, princeton average is 1510. Why would princeton falsify data so they can have an average of 1550? They’re putting their whole credibility on the line for 40pts. Emory makes more sense because 1320 puts them competing with case western, villanova, boston college, and u-illinois type schools. 1420 puts them strong against cornell, brown, vanderbilt, georgetown and notre dame. </p>

<p>I highly doubt that the elite privates have lower scores than they claim. I know many students at Georgetown and Penn who have 33+ ACT scores. In fact it’s a hard time finding students who don’t. I don’t know about emory because i have never been there or talked to students from there. The other schools that many on here are saying equal to mich such as northwestern, duke, penn, and georgetown, i do have first hand knowledge of those schools and the students and I think the college board SAT average is right on the money.</p>

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<p>knight2011, Claremont McKenna and Emory are not an isolated cases. I am certain that several private universities manipulate their SAT scores and ranges. Superscoring adds 20-30 points per section. If a universities adds an additional 20-30 points per section, as Emory did, it increases its range by 80-100 points (out of 1600). I am not saying all universities add points, but I doubt CMC and Emory were alone in this practice.</p>

<p>And it is not limited to standarized test scores. Private universities manipulate other data, such as student to faculty ratios. Schools like Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford and Yale all have large graduate schools. However, when calculating their student to faculty ratio, most of those universities do not include graduate students. For example, Caltech claims to have a 3:1 ratio. In reality, it is closer to 11:1. That’s probably the most extreme case. Most private universities claim ratios of 6:1 - 7:1. When adding graduate students, most ratios would increase to 10:1 - 12:1.</p>

<p>Private universities also “work” the class size and financial resources figures, although I think some public universities are also engaging in fuzzy math in those two variables.</p>

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<p>

Alexandre, Michigan superscores its SATs as well. Here’s proof:
<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;

<p>I’m not sure how you got away for so many months and perhaps years for making this false claim that public universities do not superscore SATs. </p>

<p>According to the College Board, the University of Michigan, “considers your highest section scores across all SAT test dates that you submit. Only your highest section scores will be considered as part of the final admissions decision. Each time you submit scores, <university x=”“> will update your record with any new high scores. <university x=”“> strongly encourages you to submit your scores each time you take the SAT. Sending your scores each time you take the SAT can benefit you by allowing <university x=”“> to consider you for all available enrollment-related opportunities.”</university></university></university></p>

<p>This is its official stance on the matter and it is similar to basically every other private school that is discussed on this thread. U of M is now doing whatever you have been accusing its private counterparts of doing for probably a decade now.</p>

<p>

Again, do you have proof that this practice occurs among most of the esteemed private schools in this country? Do you have proof that U of M doesn’t engage in the same practices?</p>

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<p>Emory’s New Admissions dean (started this year) was the one who chose to perform an internal audit and decided to report the discrepancy. Problem is he was the former admissions dean at Johns Hopkins. I therefore don’t think it’s fair to declare or insinuate most elite privates are incorrectly reporting their data.</p>

<p>Additionally, JHU (under it’s old admissions dean now at Emory who reported the discrepancy) reported a non-superscored ACT range of 30-34 for Enrolled Students. The discrepancy between Michigan and some of the top privates does exist in student quality (although it might not be as pronounced in some cases).</p>

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<p>Additionally, in the common data set, it SPECIFICALLY STATES verbatim:</p>

<p>“Student to Faculty Ratio
Report the Fall 2011 ratio of full-time equivalent students (full-time plus 1/3 part time) to full-time equivalent
instructional faculty (full time plus 1/3 part time). In the ratio calculations, exclude both faculty and STUDENTS in standalone graduate or professional programs such as medicine, law, veterinary, dentistry, social work, business, or public
health in which faculty teach virtually only graduate-level students. Do not count undergraduate or graduate student
teaching assistants as faculty”</p>

<p><a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning;

<p>Section I2</p>

<p>Elite privates are by no means intentionally distorting the faculty to student ratio, but merely reporting what’s being asked.</p>

<p>Even taking this into account, Michigan reports the faculty to student ratio for undergrads anyways:</p>

<p><a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning;

<p>Michigan has a total number of 42,000 students (graduate and undergraduate). They use 35,000 students to calculate the reported ratio of 15:1 given to US News in Section I2 of the above link (the ratio includes part time students in addition to full time undergrads).</p>

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<p>“I’m not sure how you got away for so many months and perhaps years for making this false claim that public universities do not superscore SATs.”</p>

<p>Michigan does NOT superscore. I don’t care what you read on the College Board sitr. </p>

<p>[Application</a> FAQs | University of Michigan Office of Admissions](<a href=“http://www.admissions.umich.edu/application-faqs]Application”>http://www.admissions.umich.edu/application-faqs)</p>

<p>The following question was asked and answered:</p>

<p>Question: "If I take the ACT and SAT, which score does Michigan consider? Will I be penalized for taking ACT or SAT multiple times?</p>

<p>Answer: Michigan will only consider the best test score from one sitting and will not penalize students for taking the exam multiple times. We do encourage students to submit all test results as we may use elements of test scores to benefit a students application where applicable even if it’s not representative of their best sitting (for instance, a stand-out ACT-Math subscore would be a plus factor in reviewing an application to the College of Engineering)."</p>

<p>Notice the part about taking the best scores from ONE SITTING? Schools like Duke do that to elevate the overall scores of the applicants which ultimately make themselves look better to the USNWR.</p>

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<p>You really think there’s a difference to speak of between 3.79 and 3.89, when UMich enrolls far more in their class? If Penn enrolls 6k every year, that difference likely disappears. That’s why the usnews ranking is crap. It’s nonsense to try and compare them like that. They’re all excellent, highly respected schools, so can we get past this “notch below”?</p>

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<p>"Even taking this into account, Michigan reports the faculty to student ratio for undergrads anyways:</p>

<p>Michigan has a total number of 42,000 students (graduate and undergraduate). They use 36,000 students to calculate the reported ratio of 15:1 given to US News in Section I2 of the above link (the ratio includes part time students in addition to full time undergrads)." </p>

<p>Blah, Michigan does not have 35,000 undergrads, it has 27,000 undergrads (26,100 full time and 900 part time). Michigan lists factulty that teach both undergraduate AND graduate students, and includes ALL students taught by that faculty. So Dental, Law, Medical and Pharmacy school students and faculty are not included…among others, since they only enroll graduate students. However, undergraduate and graduate students in the college of Engineering, LSA and Ross are included, as the faculty in those colleges is shared by both undergraduate and graduate students. Private universities include only undergraduate students. If you look at Caltech’s common data set or Harvard’s common data set, you will see that they only include undergraduate students in their data. Harvard has large Business, Law and Medical schools that only enroll graduate students, so those students and their faculty should not be included anyway. But Harvard also has many PhD students in the traditional disciplines, and those should be included. Caltech’s entire student body should be included as all of its major fields of study are open to undergrads.</p>

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<p>Goldenboy, Collegeboard is often inaccurate. This is such a case. Michigan’s admissions website, which is the official source of all information regarding Michigan admissions, clearly states that Michigan only considers the highest score in a single sitting. rjkofnovi has already provided a link. Feel free to call the University to check for yourself if you like.</p>

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<p>The common data set only requests info for undergraduate students, not graduate students. It’s Michigan’s choice to do what is contrary to the information being requested. Moreover, I’m not sure how Michigan arrives at it’s numbers.</p>

<p>Faculty to student ratio is calculated in Section I2 here:</p>

<p><a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning;

<p>It says 35,994 students. </p>

<p>The breakdown of students is here:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ro.umich.edu/report/11fa130.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ro.umich.edu/report/11fa130.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Summing all undergraduates + LSA + Engineering grad students does not arrive at nearly 36000. And summing all undergraduates and non-professional graduate students from the above link also does not work (it’s actually grossly over).</p>

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<p>“The common data set only requests info for undergraduate students, not graduate students.”</p>

<p>Come on Blah, graduate students command so much attention from faculty that not including them defeats the purpose of the exercise. Universities who brag about their student to faculty ratios are, in essence, attempting to comfort students and their parents into believing that students will be well looked after. Caltech including only 900 of its 3,300 students in its student to faculty ratio is very misleading. There is a reason why all public universities and some private universities (Brown and MIT for example) list graduate students; it is misleading not to do so. And even if it were not the “right thing to do”, the USNWR should make a clear distinction. Caltech’s 3:1 ratio is a joke. It should be 11:1.</p>

<p>“Moreover, I’m not sure how Michigan arrives at it’s numbers.”</p>

<p>Michigan has 27,000 undergraduate students. Therefore, it included 9,000 graduate students in its student to faculty ratio. That seems about right. Here’s how I came to the rought estimate:</p>

<p>Michigan has ~ 15,000 graduate students. Of those, ~5,300 belong to graduate programs that do not enroll undergraduate students. That leaves fewer than 1,000 graduate students that are unaccounted for. I am not sure how Michigan calculates the total exactly, but 9,000 certainly seems within the realm of reality. Below are some numbers that should clarify things:</p>

<p>9,000 graduate students included in the student:faculty ratio
1,200 Law students
1,200 Medical students
1,000 Public Health students
600 Dentistry students
600 Social Work students
400 Information Students
300 Pharmacy students
TOTAL: 14,300</p>

<p>Unaccounted graduate students: ~900</p>

<p><a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning;

<p>That being said, all data provided by universities, public or private (including Michigan), should be carefully audited by third parties. SAT/ACTs, student to faculty ratios, class sizes, financial resources etc… But it is clear so far that private universities are more prone to manipulating data than public universities.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>There isn’t an M7 these days anymore, Goldenboy. It probably exists a long time ago. But today, both Berkeley-Haas and Dartmouth-Tuck can make a valid claim to be as good as Columbia, if not slightly better than it. So, stop saying M7 when you’re actually referring to the top business schools of today.</p>

<p>[Best</a> Business School Rankings | MBA Program Rankings | US News](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/mba-rankings]Best”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/mba-rankings)</p>