<p>Those are relative of course. Most schools would be proud of a top 25 department, but at Michigan, that usually does not cut it.</p>
<p>Biology (#14 in the nation)
Chemistry (#21 in the nation)
Computer Science (#14 in the nation)
Physics (#13 in the nation)</p>
<p>Even then, Michigan has produced 3 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, 6 in Medicine and Physiology and 6 in Physics. </p>
<p>That's it!</p>
<p>that's amazing... </p>
<p>Michigan's weakest departments are ranked with most other universities best departments.</p>
<p>I always wondered why Chem was ranked so low here... I was complaining like "C'mon Michigan, kick your chem department into gear!" </p>
<p>complaining about a top 25 chem department! LOL</p>
<p>Yes, Michigan is not very tolerant of having a department ranked out of the top 10. Chemistry is Michigan's lowest ranking department (and Michigan has like 80 departments!), but even then, Michigan's Chemistry department is highly respected at a national level. </p>
<p>But fret not. If you are big into rankings, you can expect Chemistry, Physics and Biology to be ranked in the top 10 very soon. Michigan is investing $300 million in those three departments over the next 5 years. Michigan has slowly been rising in the rankings. In 1995, our Physics and Biology departments were ranked #18 and our Chemistry department wasn't even ranked. No Michigan is improving in those departments and will continue to move upwards over the next few years.</p>
<p>Michigan's math department should be ranked low, as the math classes here are god-awful. They suck at teaching calculus, as they make it 50000000 times harder than it actually is. The TA's are mostly foreign, so alot of them cannot be understood. Other than that, Michigan rules</p>
<p>Michigan's Mathematics department is ranked #8 in the nation. It is actually very good once you reach the 216+ range. But I agree, Michigan is not good at teaching 115, 116 and 215. But that's the same at most top universities.</p>
<p>Most TA's here suck. For example, my biology TA didn't know the difference between northern, southern, and western blotting, and she's a BIOLOGY GRAD STUDENT. All of the professors and lecturers, however, are really awesome.</p>
<p>i'm posting this because i'm not quite convinced with your evidence. first of all, what are the criteria of your source for ranking schools' individual undergrad. (i assume it's for undergrads?) departments? why is michigan usually not ranked in the top 10, even top 20 overall when most of its individual departments seem to be in the top 10 according to your source...? i cannot believe that some of michigan's departments are even in the top 5, with all those 'top of the top' colleges (ivy league, stanford, mit, duke, chicago, etc.) with more academically talented student body. those so-called 'very top schools' would obviously have superb teaching quality as well as talented students... those smart students wouldn't bother to stay at a school if the quality of teaching does not meet their expectations... and i assume that the more talented the students the higher the expectation, so the academic departments will be generally better... i'm really doubtful why michigan's departments are so highly ranked. i'm not trying to offend you or anything... i'm just curious, so can you just explain to me so that I can feel a little more convinced? also, could you show me where i can get all those rankings? thank you.</p>
<p>I use the US News and World Report. Individual departments are ranked at the graduate level only. </p>
<p>As for Michigan, it IS ranked in the top 10 overall. I assume you are alluding to the overall ranking of cundergraduate institutions. Look under academic reputation and you will see Michigan gets a score of 4.6/5.0. That's how university presidents and deans of admissions at universities around the nation rank Michigan. Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Johns Hopkins and Penn all get the same score. Only 8 universities (Cal-Berkeley, Caltech, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale) get higher academic rating scores.</p>
<p>Do not let the complaints about teachers at Michigan discourage you. You have similar complainst at all major research universities, including MIT, Harvard and Stanford. Great researchers and PhD students may be genuiuses, but that does not mean they either enjoy or excell at teaching. </p>
<p>Finally, Michigan's student body is not really weaker than those at schools like Chicago or other top universities (except for Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale of course). But Michigan has many different schools and some schools are less selective than others. For example, the school of Nursing or Kinesiology are indeed easy to get into. But nobody who majors in those fields will interact with students at the colleges of LSA or Engineering on an academic basis. And the students at the colleges of Engineering and LSA are excellent.</p>
<p>Then, since the vast majority of people coming into this discussion forum are interested in undergrads, isn't it meaniningless to post the graduate rankings?
You're claiming that Michigan is among the top 10, considering just the peer assessment score, but is that the only factor? The deans of admissions and college presidents themselves obviously haven't experienced every college in the US, so their judgments must not be that accurate as well.. Even though they are experts in their field, they too are not perfect as humans; that is why college rankings include many factors (retention, graduation, student/faculty, SAT, class rank, admission rate, etc.) besides what people say. You cannot ignore all those other factors put into consideration...
And... you say that Michigan has academically weaker student bodies only because of those in areas relatively easier to get into? When we are considering the univ. as whole, don't we have to count every department there is in a university? Besides, Michigan is not the only school that has 'easier' areas. If other colleges were to consider only their strong schools, their quality of student bodies would also rise. In terms of the student body in LSA or engineering as well, I do not believe they have performed far better than the UMICH average. I may be wrong, but I'm inclined to believe so without a compelling evidence.
I also think that Michigan is a fine school.. but that it is among the top 10 is quite a subjective opinion.. Besides US News rank, many other rankings also put Michigan behind those commonly known elite colleges. I do believe that Michigan is one of the top three public universities, though.</p>
<p>Three points I wish to make:</p>
<p>1) All universities ranked in the top 10 are ranked "subjectively". There is no definite top 10 university. Well, maybe Harvard, Stanford and Princeton. Yale and MIT also make a compeling point.</p>
<p>2) The peer assessment score is actually very accurate. Otherwise, the USNWR would not allocate the most points to it. It counts for 25% of the total rating. Whereas it is true that some Deans and Presidents have limited experience and knowledge, and others may be a little biased and prejudiced, the vast majority of those intellectuals and academics have worked in academe for decades and have been exposed directly or indirectly to dozens of universities. When taken collectively, their combined knowledge is as close to the turth as it gets. Graduation rates and retention are important to be sure. So is student selectivity. Class size is also important. But those are usually all pretty standard. </p>
<p>How do you differentiate between a school that graduates 85% of its students (like Cal, Caltech and Michigan) and a school that graduates 95% (like Brown or Georgetown)? The numbers aren't telling. I agree that a school that graduates 60% or 70% of its students needs to work harder. But once a university graduates 80%+, it then becomes an useless measure. Michigan for example, has 300 student athletes. Many of those hit the pros and sign multi-million dollar before they get a chance to graduate. Also, Michigan has a huge school of Engineering, and Engineering departments always have a lower graduate rate. That explains why relatively speaking, MIT, Cal, Michigan and Caltech have lower graduation rates than other elite universities. </p>
<p>As for selectivity, Michigan is the 18th most selective universaity in the US according to the USNWR. So obviously, Michigan is not hurting. in that regard. Michigan does aim to get more selective, but for now, it is selective enough for a schools that large.</p>
<p>Class sizes don't vary much between top research universities. Let us look at some of the top universities shall we?
UNIVERSITY: Classes with < than 20 students / Classes with > than 50 students
Cal : 54% / 17%
Chicago: 59% / 6%
Cornell: 44% / 23%
Dartmouth: 56% / 9%
Johns Hopkins: 57% / 16%
Michigan: 49% / 16%
MIT: 63% / 15%
Stanford: 69% / 15%
Virginia: 48% / 15%</p>
<p>As you can see, the differences are small. </p>
<p>At any rate, I would say that it is generally acknowledged by academe and corporate America that Michigan is one of the top 10 or 15 universities in the nation. But people's opinion vary and they are entitled to their opinions.</p>
<p>Does U-M have classes on Fridays?</p>
<p>Re: Friday classes</p>
<p>Yes, it does. They're not terribly popular but they are not going away. It creates a space utilization problem when you have everyone trying to crowd their classes into the first four weekdays, so I think there may be push for MORE Friday classes.</p>
<p>Michigan Math - I took Math 185, knowing about the teaching reputation in Math 115 and 116 from posters last year. I thought they would have higher quality teaching at the honors level. It was, by far, the worst taught class I had this past semester. (Fortunately, I took my high school notes and tests with me... and the students basically taught each other.) Also, as I understand it, this teaching problem is well known. Why don't they do something about it?</p>
<p>The Michigan student body is decent, but not amazing. If you go strictly by statistics and numerical judgment of those accepted, it becomes readily apparent that the student body at Umich is not ostensibly amazing by any means. Many of the undergrads that you find that get in are really nothing special. Michigan gets its reputation from the really, really bright kids that go there, and the big time researchers and professors. Strictly by ACT scores, Umich is nothing special, and by academic rigor in high school, etc, Umich's undergrads are also on average nothing amazing. However, there are a fair amount of those amazing people, and they are the ones that make the university shine.</p>
<p>With 25,000 undergrads alone, I wouldn't exactly expect every UM student to be magnificently brilliant. When you compare the combined student body of Michigan, which is 40,000 to an Ivy or other equivalent private school, with populations which probably don't exceed 8,000 at best, you're going to get a more mixed bag with the school that has the bigger population. </p>
<p>Hell, I wouldn't even say that having diversity in overall "brightness" is a bad thing.</p>
<p>Why does it matter how well the incoming Freshman to Michigan did on their ACT and what their high school courseload rigor was? There are far more accurate and reliable measures to evaluate a university like peer assessment, faculty ratings, graduation rates, department rakings, etc.-all of which Michigan performs fantastically in.</p>
<p>The University of Michigan is said by many scholars, intellectuals, and alumni to provide the best undergraduate experience hands down for students out all the schools in this country.</p>
<p>Go Blue!!!:)</p>
<p>Epsilon, with the top half scoring 30+ on their ACT or 1350+ on their SAT, I'd say Michigan student body, given its size, is pretty impressive. Of course, relative to most of Michigan's much smaller private peers, where 75% of their students have such statistics, Michigan does seem a little weaker, but it does not impact the quality of the university or of the experience.</p>
<p>Yeah, that's what I basically said. Although you have a lower incoming class by those stats, Michigan owns in everything else. However, rankings are misleading then because someone who is looking at Michigan because they want an Ivy atmosphere is probably looking at the wrong place.</p>
<p>It's all about the match!</p>
<p>Epsilon, the term "Ivy League" is very misleading. There is absolutely nothing in common between Cornell and Columbia or between Dartmouth and Harvard or between Brown and Princeton or between Yale and Penn. Those universities are all polar opposites. On the other hand, Cornell and Michigan are practically identical. The only difference between those two is the locale and the size. Oh, and the football program at Michigan is also more pronounced! LOL!!! </p>
<p>Seriously though, it is unwise to refer to an "Ivy atmosphere" because there is no such thing. What I will say about Michigan is that it is a university of extremes. On the one had it is a public institution and on the other hand, standing at close to $6 billion, it has the 6th or 7th largest endowment in the nation. On the one hand it is huge but on the other hand, it feels somehow manageable and under control. On the one hand, its students love to have fun and school spirit is outrageous but on the other hand, it is one of the most intellectual environments on Earth. On the one hand, it is committed to the state of Michigan but on the other hand, it is one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse campuses I have visited. On the one hand, it is your typical rah-rah state school but on the other hand, it has one of the most successfull, wealthy, influencial, powerful and rabidely loyal alumni bodies. </p>
<p>In short, Michigan is a unique university. If one is limited or narrowly focused and unable to deal with the many extremes present at Michigan, I agree that the university is a poor fit. Those who need personal attention and meticulous guidance are also best served not coming to Michigan. Also, those obsessed with tiny statistical differences or those who wish to impress the ill-informed may also not feel too happy at Michigan because we do lose the battle against the much smaller elite privates on those fronts. </p>
<p>But most highly capable individuals would have absolutely no issues at Michigan, and that includes experiencing a highly challenging, intellectual, exclusive and fullfilling undergraduate academic experience. I have said it often and I will say it again, with the exception of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, Michigan has no superiors.</p>
<p>Epsilon, I don't believe this is necessarily true. I wanted an Ivy atmosphere plus and chose Michigan for its business program over a lower ranked Ivy business school. Although I'm certainly not referring to Wharton, our Business Management program is ranked even higher than Wharton (1 versus 2).</p>
<p>While our stats might not match up to Wharton, we certainly match up well in comparison to other Ivy and Ivy-like schools. </p>
<p>I'm sure the same can be said for many other UM departments and programs.</p>
<p>I would put Michigan, overall, on a par with Cornell and somewhat ahead of Brown. I have my own opinions for this statement and don't mean to say that either of these universities is not an excellent school. I just believe Michigan is better.</p>
<p>As another example, consider Vanderbilt, which has higher stats and USNews ranking, but not a better peer reputation. Those whose goal it is to get into the highest ranked school they can may choose Vanderbilt over Michigan... and they might have chosen wisely if they want to major in Education or Music... but overall Michigan is a much stronger university and provides a better undergraduate experience.</p>