<p>Here is an interesting article from a couple of years ago from, “Public Univeristy Honors”</p>
<p>Notice what happens to UCB and Michigan when these two criteria are eliminated:</p>
<p>“We do not include the graduation rate itself as a metric because in doing so we would create a magnifying effect; i.e., the graduation rate would multiply an effect that is already strongly present in the other factors. We have also excluded a metric for Alumni Giving and Financial Resources, in part because the former strongly favors private universities and because U.S. News appears to include different components for public universities in the Financial Resources category. Therefore, in essence, we are analyzing the universities in a way that considers the due impact of funding but does not over-emphasize that impact.” </p>
<p>Below is an adjusted ranking of the top 25 national universities in 2012:</p>
That’s because the financial resources category doesn’t include invested endowment money. It uses annual expenditures, which is a very stupid measure of “financial resources”. It only rewards high spending and an institution could be in debt up to its eyeballs and still rank high in “financial resources”. </p>
<p>UCLA’s financial resources rating is higher than Berkeley’s because it includes medical school and medical research spending. Spending that has nothing to do with undergrads. Pound for pound, taking out medical research spending, Berkeley likely spends more resources on undergrads than UCLA because it has a smaller undergrad population.</p>
<p>USNWR definition of “Financial Resources”:
“Financial resources (10 percent): Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms and hospitals doesn’t count.”</p>
<p>“Interesting. The mid 50 ACT for UCLA is so wide (28-34). The admission mid 50 ACT for UMich 2014 is 30-33.”</p>
<p>The interquartile ACT above was provided by another poster, but the ACT below is what is on the school’s “official” site.
So rather than the 28-34 just above, the actual posted/cited figure is 25-32, which is even wider than the initially posted number.</p>
<p>Cayton: “I don’t deny the CDS information you’re posting here, but I must ask this question: given that you think UCLA should have no problem attracting a stronger cohort of students than it currently has, and given that its admission standards are similar to Berkeley’s and likely similar to that of Michigan’s, <em>and</em> that its level of prestige is similar to these two other schools, <em>why</em> do you think UCLA’s cohort is a little weaker, with regard to SAT/ACT scores(Don’t know about GPA), than Michigan’s?”</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, I have no theory on this. It seems that the cohort admitted is far stronger than the cohort enrolled. One has to assume that this is a function of yield: the yield is low enough that more attractive schools (along whatever dimensions…perhaps “merely” financial) win out relative to attracting the stronger candidates? Again, I simply don’t have a good theory/speculation. It isn’t clear to me how accurate/honest schools are with their reporting. I think there is a certain burnishing/positioning that goes on on the accessible/visible part of the web site and the CDS is somewhat in the background and the former is more readily quoted than the latter…I don’t think either UCLA or Michigan is unique in this regard.</p>
The mid 50 of 25-32 is for enrolled freshmen at UCLA. The mid 50 for UMich enrolled freshmen from the same year (2013-2104) is 28-32. It seems UCLA puts lower weight on scores than UMich leading to a wider range.
Also, UCLA uses UC GPA in the CDS while UMich uses uwGPA in 4.0 max scale. If you read the CDS from UCLA, the average HS GPA of freshmen is 4.29 (in C12). So it is not surprising at all they have 94.2% >3.75. On UCLA’s official site, the mid 50 GPA was 4.13-4.5 in a 5.0 scale which match pretty much the CDS description. So one cannot conclude UCLA has higher admission GPA than UMich at all.</p>
<p>Found more info on the UCLA admission GPA:
<a href=“http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_fr/Frosh_Prof13.htm”>http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_fr/Frosh_Prof13.htm</a>
In 4.0 max scale, the admission average GPA at UCLA is 3.88 (vs 3.85 at UMich) and 3.84 for enrolled freshmen (vs 3.82 at UMich). So there is no significant difference between the 2 schools in terms of admission GPA.
Interesting, the in state admission rate at UCLA is around half of OOS at UCLA while it is the opposite at UMich. This is mainly due to the resident populations (and applicants) of the 2 states.</p>
<p>I did suggest that UCLA had to compete with Berkeley for these students. I believe Berkeley’s yields are generally higher by a few percentage points, so that may have to do with it.</p>
<p>UCLA may also have to compete with Stanford University, to a much smaller extent, as well as Caltech and even USC. All of these schools are in the top 25 according to USNWR.</p>
<p>And again, it’s also likely that this has to do with the fact that there are a lot of underperforming schools in the Los Angeles area. Some hardworking students from these schools apply to UCLA with good grades and SAT/ACT scores, but perhaps not as good as the scores and GPAs of students from better areas. UCLA believes in holistic admissions, so they may be admitting more of these students, who are more likely to attend the school, at the cost of denying admission to other students with higher SAT/ACT scores and GPAs but are otherwise unremarkable. Students from underperforming areas are usually low-income students, and it’s worth noting that UCLA has the highest proportion of pell-grant recipients in their student body of any university in <em>in the country.</em> This can be verified by USNWR rankings. It’s hard to imagine that such a high percentage of pell-grant recipients at the school wouldn’t have an effect on the academic strength of the cohort. Of course, I have no problem with this and I am glad that UCLA does so much for the poorest students who do well in spite of their circumstances, even if their performance, when evaluated out of context, may not be considered impressive.</p>
<p>Just speculation, but these may all be the reasons for UCLA’s slightly weaker cohort, in the absence of other explanations for this phenomenon.</p>
<p>And exactly how can one trust the opinions of a bunch of college presidents about the strength of their schools’ undergraduate programs and the strength of other schools’ undergraduate programs?</p>
<p>A lot of these people have admitted that they weren’t familiar with many of them but still decided to rate them. Others decided to be duplicitous and maliciously give bad ratings to the programs of other schools. Clemson University is one such example.</p>
<p>A former chancellor of UC Berkeley admitted to giving a “5” score to every one of the schools in the UC system, with the exception of UC Santa Cruz and UC Riverside, which he gave them a score of “4” each. There’s something wrong with that, as prestigious as the UC system is.</p>
<p>It’s both comical and saddening that so many people, especially here on college confidential, take the USNWR peer assessment survey seriously. It obviously shows that they haven’t done even elementary research on that metric and the flaws that are inherent in it.</p>
<p>“A former chancellor of UC Berkeley admitted to giving a “5” score to every one of the schools in the UC system…”</p>
<p>Perhaps that is the reason why UCLA is rated so highly?</p>
<p>“It’s both comical and saddening that so many people, especially here on college confidential, take the USNWR peer assessment survey seriously.”</p>
<p>I find it comical that you actually think UCLA is a better university than Michigan based on USNWR rankings. With the information provided, it appears that is not true. </p>
<p>Your logic is a little hard to follow since UCLA’s PA score is lower than Michigan’s. How does that explain why Michigan is ranked lower? Come on, you can do better than that.</p>
<p>And it’s not that I think UCLA’s better than Michigan based on USNWR rankings(But hey, it’s 6 spots higher, lol).</p>
<p>It’s that UCLA beats Michigan in every major college ranking system(I must reiterate by a somewhat small margin) except for QS. Forbes, ARWU, USNWR, Washington Monthly, and Times Higher Education agree with me. Each of these ranking systems comes with their own flaws, but taken together, I think they have at least some value in determining the strength of a given university.</p>
<p>But these rankings can be volatile. Michigan may beat UCLA in some or all of these rankings in the next few years, or perhaps it won’t. Only time will tell.</p>
<p>As I said before, I don’t think you’re debating in good faith(You just attributed UCLA’s high ranking to the fact that the UC Berkeley chancellor gave it a “5” in the PA survey, as if that’s enough to make UCLA #23 in the ranking, even though their PA score is still lower than Michigan’s), so I strongly doubt that you’ll consider this evidence impartially. You certainly haven’t done so with other evidence I presented to you.</p>
<p>" I find it comical that you actually think UCLA is a better university than Michigan based on USNWR rankings. With the information provided, it appears that is not true."</p>
<p>Michigan has a top 10 history department as well.TOP notch. As a history major looking at Mich for graduate school, I’m very much planning on applying. Especially when in my field of history they are ranked #7.</p>
<p>Can’t go wrong with a doctorate from Michigan. Considering how ridiculously competitive the job market in academia is, it helps a lot to go to a top public university for graduate school. Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, and UNC-Chapel Hill are the best when it comes to graduate programs among public schools.</p>
<p>Also, I wish UCLA’s engineering was on Michigan’s level. :(</p>
<p>Cayton, it is a survey. The people who fill it out are able to do what they feel is right. The instructions are written and there aren’t really right or wrong answers…it’s an opinion poll. Out of 1200 collected responses, I’m sure there are some responders trying to game the results, but USNWR says they get washed out. </p>
<p>Bummer about those UCLA engineering rankings… </p>
<p>Even if the responses of those who want to game the rankings are vastly outweighed by those made by people who have no such intentions, it’s pretty foolish to think that any one college president could know enough about the rigor of 10-20 other programs to rate them in a reasonably accurate fashion, let alone rating hundreds of such programs.</p>
<p>And UCLA engineering is #16 in the nation. Very good, but it can be much better!</p>
<p>I believe that UCLA’s slightly weaker cohort is likely due to administrative decisions. They take weaker applicants, who have significantly higher yield rates, and reject stronger applicants who might matriculate at the university. This drives down their test scores, but does increase their diversity (socio-economic in particular, and perhaps first generation.) And that’s something which is very important to the university. It’s no accident that like 40% of UCLA’s student body qualifies for Pell grants. While Berkeley is close to that figure, since UCLA has a larger student population, it means a significantly larger amount of students have Pell grants at UCLA than those at Berkeley.</p>
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<p>Such small differences in rankings are pretty negligible. Does it really matter if Harvard is generally ranked above Stanford in college rankings? Is a one or two rank difference particularly significant? When you read up on it, UMich is actually an extremely strong and well balanced university.</p>
<p>It’s good for people to have pride in their alma maters, but excessive pride can be blinding.</p>
<p>We’ve heard these arguments about the peer assessment numerous times before. </p>
<p>IMHO, peer assessment is a good proxy for faculty strength. Until USNWR develops more objective rating for faculty quality, I support the peer assessment as a critical factor in the ranking. </p>
<p>With regards to prestige differences, you do make a good point. Perhaps I may have overstepped the bounds of reasonableness.</p>
<p>I did suggest earlier that UCLA’s inclination to select certain low-income students with weaker standardized test scores over some students with much higher scores may at least partially explain why their cohorts are generally weaker.</p>
<p>I reiterate my support for such admission decision and am glad that they do it.</p>
<p>@UCBChemEGrad </p>
<p>There are better proxies used by other ranking systems, such as citation frequency or awards won.</p>
Each of these ranking systems comes with their own flaws, but taken together, I think they have at least some value in determining the strength of a given university.</p>