Michigan's rep

<p>Well, unless you think very poorly of Princeton, "Princeton is about the same"</p>

<p>I think he meant princeton is similar to harvard and columbia and yale are slightly worse than those 2</p>

<p>If he thought Princeton was similar to Harvard than he wouldn't say that 'Harvard is the only superior ivy.' Superior implies superior to Michigan. That interpretation also would leave 'Michigan shouldn't be flattered to be listed as a new ivy' to be explained, but I feel a bit silly arguing over interpretations of a forum post.</p>

<p>Samwise is right...at least I think so. Reading Daniel's post, he is saying that we shouldn't care about the Newsweek article because Michigan established its reputation a while back, and I personally agree. Academically, Michigan has been on par with most of the Ivies for over a century. </p>

<p>But Newsweek is not talking about quality or meaningful reputation, it is talking about popularity, and Michigan has not been as popular as deserved until recently. In that regard, Newsweek recognition is nice to see.</p>

<p>It should have said "Harvard is the only ivy superior to Michigan." The point was that UMichigan is good enough that it doesn't need comparisons to Ivies to look good because it's already better than most of them. I said I don't go to Michigan to show that I'm not a UM troll. I go to UChicago, which isn't quite as good as UMichigan in general, but I'm headed for grad econ and I don't have the EC's for Princeton.</p>

<p>I don't consider Harvard an ideal anything, but it's faculty is better over a wider range than anybody else's, excepting Stanford and Berkeley, which aren't Ivies. </p>

<p>The article is space-filler because it's just a list of really good colleges, not an actual group of anything resembling "new Ivies". If anything fits that category, it's Duke and Stanford. Few schools on the list are really similar to the Ivies or have the same type of snob appeal. </p>

<p>Michigan, Berkeley, and UVA (and Chapel Hill and Madison, which get even less love on CC) aren't just impressive considering they're public. They're extremely impressive period.</p>

<p>This goes back to my initial post on this thread...about a university's reptutation being a direct derivative of the intended audience. We must all remember who's the target reader of the Newsweek article. </p>

<p>It isn't the professors or adcoms at top universities, or fortune 500 corporate recruiters, or the highly educated. Newsweek is targeting your every day student and their not-so-knowledgeable (about universities mind you) parents. To the former, Michigan is, as daniel suggests, in the same league as schools like Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Cornell and Cal (has been for over a century). To the latter, in this case Newsweek's unwitting reader, Michigan does not belong to that select group. </p>

<p>Luckily, Michigan does not have to attract all of the best students, only 5,000 or so each year! hehe!!!</p>

<p>Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding, danielvojtash. I thought you meant that Michigan was being pretentious in thinking that it could be listed as an Ivy. The part about "Harvard being the superior Ivy" sounded like you were saying that Harvard is the Ivy and Michigan is nothing. That's why I mentioned the part about Michigan being ranked higher in many fields than some Ivies.</p>

<p>Yeah, sorry about that. I should've phrased it better.</p>

<p>ok, sorry about that. as u can tell, i'm not an english major.</p>

<p>Another happy ending on College Confidential...</p>

<p>LOLL :):)
haha! (damn i needed something to fill the char limit)</p>

<p>As far as I can see, Newsweek didn't bother posting a concise list on their web pages, so here it is. I find this to be a strange, poorly-defined group of schools as well.</p>

<p>Boston College
Bowdoin College
Carnegie Mellon
Harvey Mudd and Pomona
Colby College
Colgate University
Davidson College
Emory University
Kenyon College
Macalester College
University of Michigan
New York University
UNC-CH
Notre Dame University
Olin College of Engineering
Reed College
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rice University
University of Rochester
Skidmore College
Tufts University
UCLA
Vanderbilt University
University of Virginia
Washington University in St. Louis</p>

<p>I applied to 4 (NYU, RPI, CMU, Tufts) of those schools and got into 3. LOL
chose UMICH :)</p>

<p>I applied to (UCBerkeley, UNC, Michigan, Cornell, UIUC). Got turned down by UNC but got into UCBerkeley and UIUC. Was waitlisted and accepted to Cornell but couldn't afford to go. But I'm 100% sure now that Michigan was the right decision.</p>

<p>Ohh ya def.... I'm so happy I chose UMICH. School hasn't started yet and I got the most amazing impression from orientation.. so I'm more than glad!</p>

<p>I live 5 minutes from Skidmore and 30 from Rochester Polytechnic Institutes. I wouldnt exactly call them new ivies. They are decent schools, but they havent attracted the students to make them anywhere near as competitive.</p>

<p>i've never even heard of skidmore and rochester polytechnic.</p>

<p>That Newsweek list is horrendous.</p>

<p>Where's Stanford? MIT? Berkeley? CalTech? Duke? Johns Hopkins? Chicago? Northwestern?</p>

<p>I can't believe people actually are talking about it.</p>

<p>I think people are just reading too deeply into the article. The only point they were try to get across was that you dont have to go to the harvards and the yales to get a great education and great experience.</p>

<p>The point is that the list is full of schools that 1) are not ivies, but are fantastic schools nonetheless, and 2) are not always considered to be ivy-caliber. Stanford, MIT, etc. aren't on the list because everybody knows that Stanford is better than 75% of the Ivies.</p>

<p>Michigan is on the list because, although people like ourselves have done enough research to know that it's a world-class institution, not everybody knows this. Hence:</p>

<p>"Where are you going to school?"
"Michigan."
"State?"</p>

<p>I guess the point is that as long as somebody is getting the word out, it's a good thing.</p>