<p>First, before I start, I want to clear up that I still think that Michigan is a very good school and 26 certainly isn't something to scoff at. Any other indication I give isn't intentional.</p>
<p>But I can't see many academic weaknesses with Michigan. Why is it ranked that low? Is it its selectivity or public school status?</p>
<p>It has a lot to do with how they get their rankings</p>
<p>I’d say more but Alexandre will show up soon and he’ll do a much better job and give you facts and figures as well</p>
<p>You should never even look at a ranking of anything until you have read and understood its methodology.</p>
<p>[How</a> U.S. News Calculates the College Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/17/how-us-news-calculates-the-college-rankings]How”>http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/17/how-us-news-calculates-the-college-rankings)</p>
<p>wus good
[“Playing</a> With Numbers” by Nicholas Thompson](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0009.thompson.html]"Playing”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0009.thompson.html)</p>
<p>The USNWR annual “Best College” Rankings are not a measure of academic quality, they are a measure of the quality and strength of undergraduate education that is provided at these schools. If you would like to provide a better system, then I would like to hear it.</p>
<p>Michigan’s #29 in the latest issue by the way.</p>
<p>There’s no way USC should be higher ranked than both Michigan and UCLA (and I’m a USC alum) and no way Michigan should be lower ranked than USC and UCLA. It’s all in the methodology and USNWR’s methodology has serious flaws. Look at the UMiami’s ranking? Are they serious? Their rankings simply don’t pass the “smell test” in some cases and should not be taken as the end all for college rankings. Look at the peer assessment category instead - that’s a better indicator than their so-called objective measures (which really aren’t). Michigan at #29? I take that with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>“You should never even look at a ranking of anything until you have read and understood its methodology.”</p>
<p>Kinda funny about that, since my parents are part of a local network of Chinese parents who gossip about various things, especially college rankings. Besides the Ivys, Stanford, MIT, and those schools, they pull information out of their butts, using their own personal sources. Some speak blindly - my dad thinks that Vanderbilt, Rice, Georgetown (this one probably because of his Syracuse background), and Tufts are not very good colleges (NOT KIDDING ON THIS.), and I know several Chinese parents who looked at USNews and said that USC was much better than Michigan and NYU because professionals ranked them so. </p>
<p>I’m just asking because a) Michigan seems so well-rounded and b) #29 is distorting my parents’ and their friends’ views… A LOT.</p>
<p>LOL what kind of friends do you have?</p>
<p>^ Parents’ friends.</p>
<p>And again, I’m Chinese.</p>
<p>^^ Oh. That sucks for you dude. Michigan,Georgetown, Rice, Tufts, and Vanderbilt are EXCELLENT schools. You need to talk to your parents about the various programs and that USWNR is NOT all-knowing.</p>
<p>@lesdiasbleus</p>
<p>Any ranking system where some of the people who work for the company are quoted as saying</p>
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<p>Shouldn’t really be taken seriously. But your beloved Bluedevils are ranked so highly which is why I’m sure you favor it so greatly. But even your PRESTIGIOUS DUKE EDUCATION should be able to lead you in the direction of questioning their validity…</p>
<p>Also, a particularly eye-opening section of the article ali<em>of</em>arabia posted</p>
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</p>
<p>Tenors, as you probably figured out, the USNWR ranking of colleges is not reliable. Most highly educated people or corporate recruiters will tell you that a ranking of undergraduate institutions that has Michigan out of the top 15 (perhaps even the top 10) is laughable. The same goes for Cal. Those are universities that provide top notch undergraduate education that can only be bested by the likes of Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Stanford and matched by a only two dozen colleges or universities. But if you look at overall quality (faculty, facilties, resources, alumni relations, academic reputation etc…), Michigan is clearly one of the top 10 universities in the nation.</p>
<p>So why does the USNWR rank Michigan so low? There is a motive and then there is a method:</p>
<p>First the motive. The USNWR needs to sell magazines and it quickly realized that the college ranking edition was going to be its cashcow. Believe it or not, the college edition accounts for 25% of the magazine’s annual sales. Think about this for a minute. The USNWR publishes over 50 editions annually and the college rankings edition accounts for a fourth of total sales. The initial rankings when the USNWR first published them back in the 80s only included the experts’ academic rating. Cal and Michigan were both ranked among the top 10 nationally. Knowing that the bulk of its market (the East Coast) would never rely on a ranking that ranked public universities highly, the USNWR quickly started adding criteria that diluted the essance of the ranking. </p>
<p>Now to the methodology. The USNWR started adding criteria to its “formula” that have absolutely nothing to do with academic quality, and they used unfounded excuses to validate those criteria. They connected alumni donations with alumni loyalty and satisfaction and associated class size with quality of instruction. They lumped public universities with private universities in order to compare financial resources committed to scholarships. They compare admissions stats regardless of how universities report admissions data. The latest wrinkle added to the formula is reputation among high school college counselors, most of which are clueless. The list of ridiculous criteria goes on and on and none of the data is audited for consistancy and accuracy. As sone have pointed out above, private universities take their liberty in pursuing alums for donations. Some universities, like Cornell and Dartmouth, have gone so far as to publically humiliate alums who do not donate. Other universities divide large lectures into smaller lectures all taught by the same professor in order to appear to provide students with smaller classes. Some colleges do not include graduate students in their student to faculty ratios while others do. Some universities report superscored SAT averages while others do not. The ranking game has become so competitve that many universities, particularly private universities, are stretching the truth for better positioning. Most public universities do not/cannot play that game. In the end, you have a clear case of comparing apples to oranges.</p>
<p>The only part of the USNWR that is somewhat accurate is the peer assessment score. Many on CC hate it and accuse it of favoring research universities. If that were the case, Johns Hopkins would be #1, Michigan #2, Wisconsin #3, UDub #4 and UCLA #5. Boston College, Brown, Dartmouth, Emory, Georgetown, Rice, Tufts, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest would not even crack the top 50. The fact is, the peer assessment score clearly asks university presidents to rate the quality of undergraduate education at peer institutions. Those university presidents are smart enough to understand such straightforward instructions. Others accuse presidents of favoring their own institution as an excuse to ignore the peer assessment score. However, the USNWR cleans the peer assessment data by removing outliers, negating the effect of presidents overrating their own universities. </p>
<p>According to the Peer Assesment score, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale are always the top 5.</p>
<p>Brown, Cal, Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Northwestern and Penn come after them. </p>
<p>The PA never places schools like Caltech, Columbia, Duke or Penn ahead of MIT or Stanford. It does not ridiculously rank Cal out of the top 20 and Michigan out of the top 25 etc…</p>
<p>Bottom line; Michigan excels in most ways. Regardless of how you look at it, Michigan is one of the top 20 universities in the US in every single criterion. Virtually no school can match that. In fact, most top universities do not crack the top 20 in half the things that Michigan does. That makes it one of the 5 most well-rounded universities and a very strong candidate for top 15 consideration.</p>
<p>^^^^ beautifully said. i rele hope i get accepted :)</p>
<p>From the former President of Stanford University, Gerhard Casper, to the (then) editor of US News and World Report, James Fallows:</p>
<p>" I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university - any more than the quality of a magazine - can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering the method. Let me offer as prima facie evidence two great public universities: the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of California-Berkeley. These clearly are among the very best universities in America - one could make a strong argument for either in the top half-dozen. Yet, in the last three years, the U.S. News formula has assigned them ranks that lead many readers to infer that they are second rate: Michigan 21-24-24, and Berkeley 23-26-27. "</p>
<p>I didn’t read through all of this so I’m sorry if it’s been said already but it’s because the USNWR 1. Has to make the rankings “controversial” to sell magazines, and 2. favors private schools to sell on the East Coast, where most people think a school is better simply because it is private.</p>
<p>So basically the reality of the situation is millions of high school seniors around the country rely on rankings that are mostly based on what will sell magazines to make their college choice. It’s too bad. I hate to rip on USC so much but they are a prime example of a school that plays the ratings game. They have even been caught reporting straight up false numbers in the past. Berkeley, Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, William and Mary, and Washington are in my opinion, all top 30-35 schools. Michigan and Berkeley are definitely top 15. Whatever, I know that intelligent corporate recruiters know this so I really don’t care much what some checkbook journalists have to say.</p>
<p>lol…One of the main reasons UM gets ranked in the 20s…for UNSWR is because of its admission rate that UNSWR considers importantly…</p>
<p>If you guys want a real academic or reputation wise ranking that international students all over the world use…check out the QS Ranking (Number 1 world ranking) or Times Higher Ranking (Number 2 world ranking). They are based on academics.</p>
<p>In both of them, UM is part of the TOP 15 in THE WORLD!!!</p>
<p>QS Ranking:
<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010[/url]”>http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010</a></p>
<p>Times Higher Ranking:
[Top</a> 200 - The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010-2011](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html]Top”>World University Rankings 2010-11 | Times Higher Education (THE))</p>
<p>Times Higher Ranking based on reputation of the university:
[Top</a> Universities by Reputation 2011](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/reputation-rankings.html]Top”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/reputation-rankings.html)</p>
<p>Also, if you look at their websites…they have rankings by like different areas of concentrations…where UM is like always part of the top 15… :)</p>
<p>FWIW, I think the editors at USNWR are geniuses. Knowingly or not, they leveraged their excellent reporting reputation and produced a product that has become the de facto reference source for a rankings obsessed society. There’s just enough logic in the results to keep everyone believing that the rankings matter while having just enough controversy to keep people talking. Frankly, the assessment techniques are irrelevant, as long as HYPMS are at or near the top you could have a room full of chimpanzees with darts deciding the rest of the order. As long as things aren’t ridiculously egregious, the average person on the street as well as here on CC will continue to view USNWR as the definitive, if a bit flawed, source for all things ranking. </p>
<p>From a strictly business perspective it’s freakin’ brilliant.</p>
<p>vinceh, although I agree that the USNWR college rankings edition is a bit of marketing genius, it has become largely irrelevant among the academic and corporate elite. Few people would agree with a ranking that claims to differentiate between universities so accurately, or one that completely misses the mark on several fronts. </p>
<p>This said, as long as you have millions of insecure high schools with poorly-moderately educated parents, the USNWR will sell. The question is, when will the USNWR rankings be properly audited? Clearly, the rankings impact university business. As such, their ought to be held to a standard. When that happens, those rankings will change overnight!</p>
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<p>My guess is never. Why would they? The so-called scandals around the rankings have been with individual schools trying to gerrymander the data. When they come to light it does more to hurt the reputation of the school than USNWR. </p>
<p>As far as it clearly hurting university business I think you’ll have a tough time proving a correlation there. Applications are soaring across the board, there are plenty of schools that admit fewer than half their applicant pool and it’s hard to see how a school admitting 100% of applicants can be hurt. To claim that a rankings change hurt them a school would have to show direct loss of funding or a direct loss of applicants. Tough to prove either way and in the case of the applicant pool it would put the school in the uncomfortable position of having to admit that application fees are a profit center. Seems to me applicants could countersue claiming fraudulent practices if all those “apply, you never know what might happen” speeches were simply designed to increase revenue. Short of someone producing evidence that they paid off USNWR for a ranking increase I think they’re going to be milking that cow for a long time to come.</p>