<ol>
<li><p>If you go to Umich and think the rankings are unfair, well theres nothing you can do. Study your tail off and prove them wrong. Do what you want. I see people getting jobs and grad school acceptances. </p></li>
<li><p>If you are planning on possibly going to umich and think its a low ranked school/ not that great, then dont go here period. I personally dont care if you dont come here. </p></li>
<li><p>You think your school is better than umich? I hope you are enjoying your benz, trophy wife and Bathing Ape.</p></li>
<li><p>Already went to Michigan, well theres not much too do right? I dig yall trying to support mich but yall personally already know what the education provides regardless of ranking</p></li>
</ol>
RJK, how does this not indicate that Michigan doesn’t superscore the SAT? They clearly take all sub scores into consideration. That’s essentially the same thing as admitting to superscoring By the way, I hope you realize that even if Michigan doesn’t superscore SATs for admissions purposes, they could superscore the test scores of their final enrolled student body and report that to the CDS and USNWR. There’s no proof that Michigan doesn’t engage in this practice.</p>
<p>
That CollegeBoard report is accurate as of September of last year. Unless Michigan stopped superscoring very recently, I’m not sure how Collegeboard could make a huge mistake like that. Collegeboard’s test score ranges might not always be up to date but their information regarding score policies and testing options is always accurate.</p>
<p>Even the link rjkofnovi doesn’t give us a definitive answer. Michigan admits that having a high Math sub score would be viewed favorably by the College of Engineering. Like I said in my response to rjk, there’s no evidence to suggest whether schools superscore after the admissions process and report those adjusted scores for their enrolled student body to the CDS and other authorities. It would certainly benefit the school to do so and it would still fall in line with the official policy of “not superscoring for admissions purposes”.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that we live in society where we are innocent until proven guilty. Emory’s stature as a private school is irrelevant and what does matter is that its past admissions dean had no integrity. That has no bearing on UChicago, Caltech, Duke, or whatever.</p>
<p>Public schools manipulate USNWR as well by not including the admissions stats for their massive transfer classes each year which would drastically lower their SAT/ACT score ranges. Other private schools like USC probably do this as well but the top 15 private schools accept so few transfers that this would have no effect on their test score ranges.</p>
<p>Florida and Clemson’s presidents have admitted to lying on the PA form on USNWR when they gave their own schools a “Distinguished” rating and gave far better schools like Penn and Duke lower ratings.</p>
<p>Ultimately though, objective stats are the best we have to compare schools and almost none of those support the notion that Michigan belongs on the same page of USNWR as Penn or Duke.</p>
<p>“Ultimately though, objective stats are the best we have to compare schools and almost none of those support the notion that Michigan belongs on the same page of USNWR as Penn or Duke.”</p>
<p>I believe the PA scores at USNWR are the best way to compare schools. They are the only numbers that are not easily manipulated.</p>
<p>“RJK, how does this not indicate that Michigan doesn’t superscore the SAT? They clearly take all sub scores into consideration. That’s essentially the same thing as admitting to superscoring By the way, I hope you realize that even if Michigan doesn’t superscore SATs for admissions purposes, they could superscore the test scores of their final enrolled student body and report that to the CDS and USNWR. There’s no proof that Michigan doesn’t engage in this practice.”</p>
<p>The comment made that Michigan looks at sub scores, is for placement within the colleges of the university. The website CLEARLY indicates that only scores from ONE SITTING are considered for general admission to the school. This means that the one time the applicant has the highest overall score from taking the tests as many times as he/she desires, then the sub score would be considered. In this case it was for entrance into the College of Engineering. There is no mystery here. The only mystery that I can see from this whole discussion, as well as many others, is why someone from Duke is so completely and totally obsessed with Michigan.</p>
<p>“Public schools manipulate USNWR as well by not including the admissions stats for their massive transfer classes each year which would drastically lower their SAT/ACT score ranges.”</p>
<p>I am not sure I understand your point here. You may be referring to UCs, which are obligated to accept many students from CC. Michigan had a freshman class of 6,200 last year, and a transfer class of 875. Although 875 is not small, relative to the freshman class, it is not that large (~14%). At most private universities (CMU, MIT, Northwestern, Penn, Rice etc…), transfer classes make up 3%-7% of the Freshman class. However, some private elites enroll relatively large transfer classes. For example:</p>
<p>Brown enrolls a freshman class of 1,500 and a transfer class of 135 (9%)
Cornell enrolls a freshman class of 3,300 and a transfer class of 510 (15%)
Vanderbilt enrolls a freshman class of 1,600 and a transfer class of 200 (12%)</p>
<p>Furthermore, SAT data for stransfer students are not included by universities in the calculation of their overall statistics because transfers are usually not required to submit SAT scores. </p>
<p>“The bottom line is that we live in society where we are innocent until proven guilty. Emory’s stature as a private school is irrelevant and what does matter is that its past admissions dean had no integrity. That has no bearing on UChicago, Caltech, Duke, or whatever.”</p>
<p>In the count of lying about SAT scores, you are obviously quite right. As I pointed out above, not all private universities are guilty of this pratice, but I would be surprised if CMC and Emory were isolated cases. I have long supsected this practice and I have so far been accurate.</p>
<p>“Florida and Clemson’s presidents have admitted to lying on the PA form on USNWR when they gave their own schools a “Distinguished” rating and gave far better schools like Penn and Duke lower ratings.”</p>
<p>The USNWR deletes outliers from their PA calculation, so the occasional blip will not be counted. Nevertheless, I have long agreed with Xiggi on this point; The PA must be transparent in order to be trusted. As it stands, participants in the PA are anonymous, and that admittedly leads to unethical behaviour. This said, the PA measures a crucial cirteria; a university’s prestige and respect in academe. In this respect, the PA is telling. If somebody is interested in graduate school, the PA is one of the criteria that is worth looking at.</p>
<p>“Ultimately though, objective stats are the best we have to compare schools and almost none of those support the notion that Michigan belongs on the same page of USNWR as Penn or Duke.”</p>
<p>Objective data is only telling to a degree, and that’s assuming that the data is consistently and accurately reported. Like I said, major research private universities omit large graduate student populations from their student to faculty ratios. Caltech 3:1 ratio is very flattering. If they included graduate students, its ratio would be 11:1. Duke only lists undergraduate students in their student to faculty ratio also. Last I checked, Duke had ~900 graduate Engineering students and an additional 2,400 graduate students enrolled in their arts and science departments. Based on that information alone, Duke’s student to faculty ratio would increase from 7:1 to 10:1. But Duke also has probrams other programs that enroll both undergrads and graduate students, such as the school of Public Affairs/Policy. I would not be surprised that if Duke measured its student to faculty ratio as Michigan does, it would be 11:1. Private universities also have strange ways of classifying classes in order to embellish class size statistics. </p>
<p>Furthermore, some data is simply not telling. Alumni giving rates are derived from several factors, most of which place public universities at a disadvantage and none of which point to alumni success or satisfaction. For one, public universities are not allowed to contact alumni as freely or nearly as aggressively as private universities. For another, public universities have never provided significant incentive to alums to donate, such as giving legacies a significant leg up on the competition. How about alumni size and dependence on alumni giving? LACs are the perfect example of this. Through their histories, LACs have depended greatly on alumni donations to fund many of their costs of operation, and given their relatively small size, the colleges could easily reach a large segment of their alumni population. Publics are on the other extreme. For much of their history, they could easily rely almost entirely on state funding for most of their costs of operations. It is not until the 1970s and 80s that public universities started reaching out to alums, and given the size of their alumni bodies, are unlikely to reach that large a segment. But the key is aggressiveness. Public universities have their hands tied in how aggressively they can solicit their alums.</p>
<p>At any rate, judging a university through statistics would be the same as judging a country through statistics. Countries like Norway and Switzerland beat the US in most statistical data, from education to economic output per capita, and from crime to longevity. Does that mean that Norway and Switzerland are superior to the US? Obviously not. Gerhart Casper said it best in his 1997, that the quality of universities cannot be measured statistically.</p>
<p>I agree that Columbia and Emory need to be more transparent with regards to including statistics of their transfer students. Most private schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Dartmouth, etc. don’t have this issue and have incredibly selective transfer admissions.</p>
<p>“Most private schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Dartmouth, etc. don’t have this issue and have incredibly selective transfer admissions.”</p>
<p>You meant to say:</p>
<p>Most private schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT,and others not quite at their level like Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Dartmouth, etc. don’t have this issue and have incredibly selective transfer admissions.</p>
<p>“Chicago, Dartmouth, and Duke are as selective as HYPSM to transfer into.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t doubting the transfer issue. It was just to clarify that Duke isn’t as prestigious as HYPSM to those neophytes on CC who might have mistaken your post to be an indication that it is.</p>
<p>“Chicago, Dartmouth, and Duke are as selective as HYPSM to transfer into.”</p>
<p>Being as selective as Princeton to transfer into would be some trick. Princeton has not accepted a single tansfer in three decades! As for the other four, I am not sure how you can claim that Chicago, Dartmouth or Duke are as selective to transfer into if none of the schools in question release transfer admissions data other than acceptance rates. Finally, even Chicago, Dartmouth or Duke were truly as selective for transfer as Harvard or Stanford, it does not make them highly regarded or as good. </p>
<p>Now back to the way private universities, save Brown and MIT, calculate their student to faculty ratio. Care to elaborate on their blatant omittion of thousands of graduate students.</p>
<p>I couldn’t find the relevant information for UChicago but Dartmouth and Duke typically take less than 30 transfers each year and can thus afford to be incredibly selective on who they let in-successful applicants typically have 3.8 GPAs or higher in the most rigorous curriculum possible as a baseline.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand your second point but the fact that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, et al. rarely allow transfer students to “backdoor their way” into the university certainly adds to their reputation as employers and graduate schools know they are dealing with the “best and brightest” here.</p>