<p>Mam, between the cities you mentioned, who would you give the edge to in terms of prestige: UM or UVa?</p>
<p>
[quote]
When I was in France, our tourguide knew of UofM b/c he had received his master's in law and languages from the Sorbonne and his boss at the law firm went to Michigan's Law school. Also, when we were in some small village touring a chateau of the Loire valley, one random guy saw my "michigan medical" shirt and asked if I went to the med school and later remarked how outstanding Michigan is!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>When I was in Florence this summer I wore a Michigan shirt and someone on the street yelled out "Go Blue!"</p>
<p>I think this could very well turn into a thread on good "Go Blue!" stories. Last summer I was walkin around downtown Chi-town wearing a Michigan shirt and the saxophone player on the corner played Hail to the Victors as I walked by. He was handsomely rewarded.</p>
<p>lol Chibears... Last year, I went to the MSU vs. Michigan football game in East Lansing with my dad, and while we we leaving, another random student from Michigan who I didn't know just walked past and gave me a high five. (The fact that my dad is a Michigan State alum made that day all the better.)</p>
<p>My above post is a little off topic but hey...</p>
<p>However, on a side not, it really makes my day when others mention the academics or other aspects of the school (besides football) when I tell them that I'm a student there. It happens. For example, when my mom told another adult where I go to school earlier this summer, she said that he responded by saying that I must be really smart. Also, at the grocery store, two cashiers (I'm guessing around the age of college students) questioned me about my Michigan history shirt. I told them that I'm a history major/Spanish minor there, and one of the cashiers said, "Wow... That's a tough school to get into," and then the two of them started talking about the school.</p>
<p>However, I get disappointed when the only thing someone can mention about Michigan is football. :(</p>
<p>Michigan's rep depends largely on whom you ask. </p>
<p>If you ask high school students anywhere in the nation, and the World for that matter, chances are, you will not get the response you'd like. That's because high school students want to impress their fellow students and Michigan is not impressive at first glance. It does not have the funky "Ivy League" tag attached to it or the sub 25% acceptance rate or the 1500 average SAT score. Let us face it, Michigan is a huge state school. </p>
<p>But as Mam pointed out, if you ask high-level professionals (doctors, lawyers, university professors, chief engineers, researchers at major think-tanks and multinational companies with large R&D departments, world class intellectuals, investment bankers, management consultants etc...), especially in major cities like New York (where Michigan reputation is second to none), Paris, London, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, DC, San Francisco etc..., you will generally get a very different response. You see evidence of that everywhere, from Michigan's very high peer assessment score on the USNWR rankings to the highly successful placement rates into top graduate programs to the sort of companies that actively recruit on campus.</p>
<p>Just today i was visiting a friend at work and a women came up and started talking about colleges and i mentioned i was going to UM and it turns out she was an alumni and now works for ABC sports as some producer for college sports.</p>
<p>The other day I was talking to my boyfriend about this kid at our school who REALLY wants to go to UM. "He's screenname is even GoBlue####!!!" I said. My boyfriend didn't get it. "Lots of schools are blue..."</p>
<p>Anyways, just got back from a family dinner with some church friends...very southern and conservative, but physicists, so they know better about Michigan. Dinner was filled with kidding around about how I'm going to come back with some nasal Yankee accents and polluted political beliefs and how I'm going to be the most beautiful girl on campus...because those girls up North are butt ugly (all said in good fun, of course). Of course, Ann Arbor ain't that great, either, right? And snow sucks. Of course, Michigan's nothin' compared to SEC football, either. But at the end, one of our oldest family friends came up to me and said, "You know I was kidding about all that Michigan stuff, right? It's a great school and you'll have a good time at it." Go Blue!</p>
<p>Oh yeah, my boyfriend's actually pretty smart. Going into physics...I can't wait till he realizes Michigan's pretty darn good. Well, not in terms of girls (sorry, but southern girls do have that part beat), but in terms of nerdy physics peps...</p>
<p>I agree with Alexander. Especially in Europe, I remember talking to my father's colleagues that I was going to UM and they were all suprisingly well-informed about the university. But talking to my relatives in Korea/Japan, most of them were still ranting about the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford. It's sad that most Asians still don't see the potential of the University of Michigan.</p>
<pre><code> And I know to some extent what Christine is talking about. I currently reside in Louisville, KY which is home to the largest Southern Baptist Seminary in the nation and right in the middle of the "bible belt". Most people here are radically conservative and intolerant. A lot of kids at school were bashing me for choosing such a "liberal and morally deprived" school. Yeah, I went to a private, Christian school but I'm agnostic. I'm also a PK so you can see how that wonderful that can be. -_-.
</code></pre>
<p>What does PK mean?</p>
<p>Hehe...I attend one of those megachurches...Church of Christ, one step more conservative than Southern Baptist. Even though I have the same conservative beliefs as the church, I'd like to think I'm a little more than a bit more tolerant...like, um, gays, no matter what you think is going to happen to them in the afterlife, are human beings, too (versus being sub-human?)? And not all Asians are Buddhist? Yeah...my area has the most churches per a square mile in the country and they're all Baptist or more conservative.</p>
<p>(WAHHHH!!!! I'm going to miss it, though. Okay, fine. I'm just whiny because half my friends leave for school tomorrow and the other half leaves a week from tommorrow...one of the disadvantages of Northern schools...starting later!)</p>
<p>I often find it strange myself AzureK. Michigan was probalby the first American university to establish official ties with Japan in the late 19th century. And Daewoo has a very special relationship with Michigan. One would expect Michigan to be very highly regarded in Asia, and it is to a certain degree. </p>
<p>However, being Asian myself (West Asian, but still Asian nonetheless), I understand why Michigan isn't as highly regarded as private universities in our part of the World. We Asians have a fixation with exclusivity. To make matters worse, we have highly classified societies. There is nothing exclusive about a school that accepts 50% of its applicants and has over 20,000 students. And a university that charges under $10,000 to 65% of its students cannot appeal to our rigidly classified societies. </p>
<p>As such, Michigan does not really fit the mold of the highly desireable univeristy in Asia. That's because in Asia, exclusivity = quality and prestige. In Europe, where state funded, affordable-to-all education is seen as a societal responsibility and where rigid class distinction is seen as undesirable, society looks to other criteria to determine quality and prestige. Criteria such as quality of faculty, contribution to research and development, alumni success, facilities etc... If one is to look at those criteria, Michigan will make the top of anybody's list.</p>
<p>For better or for worse, Michigan will once again become relatively mega-selective (as it was in the 50s and 60s). Some say that as a state university, Michigan was not designed to be that selective. However, given the supply and demand, Michigan will have no choice but to resemble its smaller, private peers where selectivity is concerned. In two years alone, Michigan's acceptace rate dropped from 62% to 47% and its mean SAT score improved from 1320 to 1370 (1360 to 1410 as measured by private universities).</p>
<p>People in Taiwan seemed much more impressed by UM than in Alabama. But I never noticed a strong degree of exclusivity in Taiwan (maybe I'm just an ignorant tourist...hehe)...</p>
<p>To Christine, PK means Pastor's kid.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know that Yonsei University has a good exchange program with UM but your absolutely right about the exclusivity mentality, especially in Korea. The big three 3 in Korea are: Korea Univ, Seoul Ntl Univ, and Yonsei. With Korea, Exclusivity is strongly affected by the economy of Korea. Since the population is dense and land mass is so small, there are too many people vying for the important positions in companies. So the level of education is increased to meet the requirement standards for getting high-level positions.
The result is kids learning so much in HS that it even makes some American private schools look like a joke. And all this to get into those top 3, which on the international level aren't impressive at all. That's why many Korean parents are so intent on sending their kids to the States for college. I recently met one Korean couple in which the man graduated from Korea Univ and his wife is attending UofL(Tier 2 school). The guy said that for all the hype about KU, it's barely on par with UofL when it comes quality of education, professors, etc. He even said that after taking his National exams which is ,basically, Korea's version of the SATs, he strongly contemplated suicide; because up to that point, that was his "sole" purpose in life. But after taking them, he felt intense relief and emptiness at the same time. He also mentioned that he saw girls feeling the same way as him cry hysterically and have nervous breakdowns. I'm even more glad that I don't live in Korea now.</p>
<p>haha i'm also a pk.</p>
<p>anyways, i'm korean and all of my relatives.. aunts, uncles, grandparents, even my parents, aren't too aware of umich compared to the ivies,mit and stanford.</p>
<p>The pastor's kids on 7th Heaven get drunk, pregnant, and arrested...</p>
<p>Anyways, yeah, I guess I do see a bit of exclusivity. Most of the people I know in Alabama pride themselves on how many generations their family name has been in the area and which battles their ancestors fought in. The Asian mentality that's still present with many kids of Asian-Americans is entirely different. Your family may have millions and billions, but you're still expected to, well, be cheap, and make a trillion by going to the best university possible...lots of degrees after your name is impressive. You're not really measured by how much you've inherited, but more by how much you've earned minus what you've inherited.</p>
<p>I'm Korean as well. Luckily, my parents appreciate the caliber of UM. </p>
<p>Kinda off topic, but do any of you believe in that "fan death". My parents still discourage me from turning the ceiling fan on when I sleep. It's like some kind of Korean urban myth.</p>
<p>hahahahahahhahahahahaha.</p>
<p>not just a ceiling fan, any fan. supposedly, if you sleep with it on, you'll suffocate and die.. haha.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death</a></p>
<p>Hilarious</p>
<p>I know. My parents are so adamant about it. I personally go with the theory that it's an easy way for parents to explain away a suicide. Since something like teen suicide is perceived as a failure on the parent's part, the kid's death is changed from disgraced failure to a tragic and unfortunate accident. </p>
<p>But yeah, I told my parents it's bull*** and they didn't take it to well. haha</p>
<p>If you want to major in liberal arts, Uva and Michigan are about equal. UMich will have a slight edge in the Midwest (including Chicago and grad schools in the Midwest), while UVa is well thought of in the Eastern seaboard. </p>
<p>But if you want to go undegrad business or engineering - forget - Michigan has UVa beat hands down. To be fair, UVa's engineering program is designed to be small...</p>