Northwestern vs. Michigan

College Search & Selection
261

<p>" Gee, I wonder why Yale law grads don't have to worry about where they rank in the student body"</p>

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are you assuming that all Yale law students get exactly the jobs they want regardless of their rank?

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<p>Of course not - but they don't have to worry about getting a a no. of pretty good offers by their 2L.</p>

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But wouldn't you agree that college performance is probably more important than high school performance? If somebody with a 3.8 GPA at Mich scored an 1150 on the SAT, should their applications be considered already in the "rejected" pile? This doesn't seem to make much sense to me and for somebody who has "also done interviews for Wall St.", it defies my logic that you would think it.

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<p>Studies have shown that HS performance is a good indicator for college performance (of course, there are exceptions) - compare students that have been accepted into a university's honors program with those in the general student body.</p>

<p>Of course, the best bet would be those that have done well in HS and college.</p>

<p>Logical? No?</p>

262

<p>we're talking about employment though ... as somebody whose worked on wall street as a recruiter, have you ever asked for high school stats?</p>

<p>"Studies have shown that HS performance is a good indicator for college performance"
I've never seen any study, but for argument's sake, I'll just agree that it's true. But see here, the student bodies at both NU and Mich were generally excellent in high school. At Mich, 3 out of every 4 students (including the athletes and the music majors) scored at least 250 or so points better than the national average on the SAT exam. I would hardly call this a weak student body.</p>

263

<p>I don't think anyone is saying that the student body is weak..... just not as strong as the other schools to which it is being compared. This is pretty much a fact.</p>

264

<p>Also studies have shown that it is much more important to future economic success that you are smart than where you went to college. People who were accepted to elite schools but chose to go to a non-elite school did just as well economically. The only exception was minority students who apparently needed the help of a brand name to overcome dicrimination.</p>

265

<p>barrons,
No one argues that there aren't smart people at Michigan. We are arguing that Northwestern just has more of them per capita and that, largely because of the smaller school size, they enjoy a higher touch undergraduate experience. But if your defense of Michigan's excellence is premised on the idea that future economic success and intelligence are not linked to your college, then I think that this "debate" is over. This reasoning says that you should just go the local community college or maybe even the University of Phoenix. Who needs Michigan or Northwestern? </p>

<p>I agree that there are plenty of success stories about students from lowly regarded schools who achieved fabulous things in the work world. I don't deny that for a second and frankly I make that argument often in my railings against the Education Establishment. Rankings are way overrated, but yet Michigan posters constantly seek association with higher ranked institutions. I don't recall ever having seen a Michigan poster equating Michigan to a lower ranked school. </p>

<p>Let me try a different tack. Tell me if you think of the following pairings as equal undergraduate institutions:
1) Duke and UNC/UVA
2) Vanderbilt and UF
3) Rice and UT
4) Stanford and UCB</p>

<p>I suspect that you don't consider any of these pairings as undergraduate equals (although you may have hesitated a moment on Stanford/UCB). However, if my instincts are wrong and you do consider the above examples as equals, then I can understand the reasoning that you believe Michigan and Northwestern are equals. However, if you think that the above are not equals, then IMO you’ll have an even tougher time making the argument that Michigan is an equal to Northwestern.</p>

266

<p>"We are arguing that Northwestern just has more of them per capita"</p>

<p>nobody is really denying this, but people are questioning if this is what we should truly use to call one school better than the other. Granted, the state school will always lose this one. </p>

<p>My argument is that it doesn't matter really - both schools are highly recruited by the top employers and students at both school will be given an equal shot at landing a job at an elite place.</p>

267

<p>Barrons, if it's any consolation, even though I was born and mostly raised in Michigan, I always had a soft spot in my heart for U of Wisconsin. When my family lived in the Chicago area, I would take visitors to Madison as readily as I'd take them to the Sears Tower (I have an extreme extreme exteme exreme fear of heights, despite the fact that I'm 6'6" and spent a thousand hours on Navy EP-3 planes). I even bought a pair of Wisconsin gym shorts and proudly wore them while in the Navy.</p>

<p>People seem to have a hard time comprehending colleges like Michigan and Wisconsin, which have LITERALLY world-class faculties even though they accept more than 50% of their applicants. The GREAT-faculty-not-rejecting-most-2400-SAT-applicants paradigm is incomprehensible to folks whose identity lies east of the Hudson. But to those of us in the REAL world, it's not such a mystery.</p>

268

<p>I would easily go to UVa vs Duke. I have been to both, worked with grads of both and see no major difference. I think C'Ville is way better than Durham. Same for UNC. The only one that might give me pause is Vandy-UF. I think UF still has some weak areas but is getting better. I worked with a Vandy grad and a UF grad and the uF grad was much brighter but the Vandy girl was very socially graceful and well bred. If you are smart enough to get into Rice you would get into Plan II at UT and Austin rocks--I lived there for three years. Stanford is great but Berkeley is far more interesting and you can get a world class education there so even.</p>

<p>And I have also spent 5 years in Evanston and been to AA a bunch of times and UM has far more political and advanced social thinking. NU is for country club conformists.</p>

269

<p>gomestar -
[quote]
I've never seen any study, but for argument's sake, I'll just agree that it's true. But see here, the student bodies at both NU and Mich were generally excellent in high school. At Mich, 3 out of every 4 students (including the athletes and the music majors) scored at least 250 or so points better than the national average on the SAT exam. I would hardly call this a weak student body.

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<p>Sorry - that criteria isn't what most people would consider "excellence."</p>

<p>OK - once again, are there students at UoM who would have fit in at Harvard, Penn, Stanford, NU, etc.? Yes. But there is also a significant % of UoM students who wouldn't have fit in (based on their HS academic record).</p>

<p>Only 20-25% or so of UoM students score above 1400 on their SATs (and 38% over 30 on their ACT) - that leaves a lot of students who don't fit the profile of what generally is considered "excellence" (we're talking 15,000+ students - and I'm being pretty generous).</p>

<p>With regard to HS stats - many Wall St firms won't interview anyone out of college w/o a 1400+ on the SATs (didn't I already state this?)</p>

<p>barrons -
[quote]
Also studies have shown that it is much more important to future economic success that you are smart than where you went to college. People who were accepted to elite schools but chose to go to a non-elite school did just as well economically.

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<p>Uhh - I think that's the same thing I was stating (and referring to). While some may argue that SAT and ACT scores aren't the best indicator of "smartness" - they're the best we have (and the UoM student body, overall, is lagging somewhat significantly in this dept. on a % basis).</p>

<p>Look - Wisconsin and Illinois have faculties almost esteemed as UoM, but why are they, generally, not considered as good of a school as UoM? A large part has to do with the make-up of the student body.</p>

<p>Same with Cal in relation to Stanford or UVA in relation to Duke. One can't really state that one school's faculty is better than the other - but the academic qualifications of the student body, otoh...</p>

<p>barrons - your last post is pretty much nothing but personal conjecture.</p>

270

<p>"that criteria isn't what most people would consider "excellence.""</p>

<p>are you kidding me??? Remember, I was describing the student body of a top-25 (out of 3,000 or so) research university in the US, and you're saying most people wouldn't consider the student body to be excellent. That is quite the arrogant statement!</p>

<p>"Only 20-25% or so of UoM students score above 1400 on their SATs"</p>

<p>Correction: 25% scored above a 1420, so it's probably 27-30% scored above a 1400. Not bad for 26,000 undergrads.</p>

271

<p>
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are you kidding me??? Remember, I was describing the student body of a top-25 (out of 3,000 or so) research university in the US, and you're saying most people wouldn't consider the student body to be excellent. That is quite the arrogant statement!

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<p>Give me a break! We're talking about Wall St. firms which tend to be pretty picky about who they hire (and I was referring to the "250 or so points better than the national average on the SAT exam" criteria that you used - sorry, but that's not generally regarded as "excellence"). It's not arrogance, it's reality.</p>

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Correction: 25% scored above a 1420, so it's probably 27-30% scored above a 1400. Not bad for 26,000 undergrads.

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<p>Well, that's just about the mean score for an NU undergrad, and that leaves about 18,500 Mich students who didn't.</p>

<p>Gee, I wonder which student body a Wall St. employer is generally going to have more confidence in? (Once again - this doesn't mean that Mich grads don't get hired.)</p>

272

<p>K&s, only in your little world do firms approach campuses according ot mean SAT scores. Only to you (and other misguided undergraduate students) is intelligence measured by mean SAT scores. Do you realize that the mean SAT score of CEOs and Presidents is well under 1300 (under 1400 if you recenter the scores)? Besides, you say that 18,000 Michigan students have sub 1400 SAT scores? So what? Well over 7,000 Michigan undergrads have scored 1400+ on the SAT. At Northwestern, that number is well below 5,000. </p>

<p>But that doesn't matter. Employers know SAT scores as reported by universities mean very little. They know that in some schools, the numbers are skewed by students who took a bunch of SAT prep-classes and by the way the university chooses to report scores. Private universities add a good 40-50 points to their means and ranges with that gimmick alone. </p>

<p>In the real world, employers approach campuses according to the overal quality of the university. Can you tell me how many Northwestern undergrads were actually hired by Wall Street firms last year? 30? Maybe 40? Keep in mind that of all of NU's 1,800 or so undergrads who graduated last year, only 500 or so landed full time jobs. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.northwestern.edu/careers/surveyoutcomes/employers.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.northwestern.edu/careers/surveyoutcomes/employers.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Of those 500 or so, I am sure a sizeable number went into Engineering, Journalism and teaching. How many of the remaining students landed jobs in Wall Street? Like I said, it is probably well under 100, most likely under 50. </p>

<p>From Ross alone, 80 or so undergrads were hired by Wall Street's top firms last year. That's just the top companies like Goldman Sachs, Lazard, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche, JP Morgran, CS First Boston, UBS, McKinsey, Bain, BCG and Booz Allen. Altogether, about 150 (40%) of Ross' 350graduating undergrads landed jobs on Wall Street. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2006.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2006.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>That's just Ross mind you. LSA and Engineering aren't as well equipped to keep track of employment statistics, but I can tell you that some major Wall Street Firms, like Godlman Sachs and McKinsey, prefer hiring at Michigan's college of LSA and others, like UBS and Booz Allen, prefer hiring at Michigan's college of Engineering. </p>

<p>At any rate, it is pretty clear that Wall Street hires hundreds of Michigan undergrads annually. Hundreds as in over 200. Maybe NU has equally impressive numbers, but I somehow doubt it.</p>

273

<p>The most frustrating aspect of this discussion is the continued efforts of the Michigan supporters to cherry pick your information. No one has claimed that there aren't some very good students at Michigan, but we're talking about the whole school. You can't just pick the top 20% and say that is the school. On that metric, there would be literally dozens of colleges that would claim a level of excellence similar to or above the level that Michigan boosters aspire to. I'd like to see some argument from the Michigan supporters in defense of the bottom 50% or bottom 25% of Michigan students (and feel free to compare these to Northwestern's bottom 50% or bottom 25%). Or do those students just not count when you consider a school's quality?</p>

274

<p>barrons,
Your post # 268 is completely anecdotal and says nothing about the institutional quality of the paired schools. No one argues that you can't have a quality experience at UNC/UVA/UT/UF/UCB. They are all good schools and there are some very good students at each of them (just as there are at Michigan). But at the undergraduate institutional level, do you really mean to say that you consider these pairs as equals (or even the state schools are superior)? Your logic says that, if you worked with a graduate from the University of Utah and another graduate from Harvard, and you found the Utah grad to be smarter and a more effective worker, you would conclude that Utah is equal to or better than Harvard. While your judgement might be accurate in that instance with those individuals, I suspect that you would find very few who would agree with that conclusion about the institutional merit of the two schools.</p>

275

<p>Hawkette: You have al ot to learn. If you think that having poeple of so called "lower quality" affects the abiltiy of the large pool of talented students who are in honors programs etc and represents in absolute numbers a pool as large as all of NU than you must be an elitist or naive. You have no evidence that an average number makes any difference. Look program by program you will find a lot of universities around the country who are great. How can you even try to compare a state university that has 200 programs to a private. I venture to say that in many departments students at Berkeley, UCLA, UW, Illinois, Texas and the like are as good or better. Having the diverse student body probaly adds to the greatnesss rather than to reducing it. You do not know how NU would do educating the folks below the so-called top tier because they would not be there to have a chance. If you think you can take a magazine and try to pretend you can take a list of metrics, most of which have nothing to do with value added l factors or learning and say that that implies that a smaller private school shown as 10 versus on at 20 is better than you have a real problem. Of course if you want contact with profs etc you would then have to admit that NU is infereior ot Olin, Harvey Mudd, Amherst and a whole slug of smaller places. Does it bother you that NU according to your rankings is not as good as Cal Tech? Do you want to go there to study business? Hey it is ranked higher and is smaller and therefore better so says US news. Obviously the top 50 or more schools on any list are great and to say one is better than the other gives way to much credit to a magazine and certainly trivalizes the whole education process. Oh, and by the way, a top student could go to Phoenix online and probably end up just as successful as one who thinks that going to any top college is what matters. Oh, I know it is about alumi connections--well some of those state schools have lots of those too. Way to many of us are swayed by higher ed marketing without realizing that good people are good. The school has much less to do with that than many people think. Using real education metrics I think would jostle the education rankings so much that you will never have elite universites releasing them. Good students often attain greatness, in spite of, rather than because of the school. But if you need the crutch of carrying around a US News and trying to use it to tell a person why he or she is better of at number 5 versus 10 versus 30 that is fine. Just do not think it really means much. It sounds like ordering from a Chinese restaurant menu.</p>

276

<p>
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I don't think anyone is saying that the student body is weak

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<p>No, but they are saying things like "Michigan is a very good state school." I don't have a big dog in this fight, as I think I have a pretty good grasp on where Michigan stands, for real, in the academic community, but I also don't pretend our undergraduate student body resembles that of the most elite privates. </p>

<p>But to say Michigan is a "very good state school" strikes me as skewed. </p>

<p>There are 629 public 4-year schools in this country, and among them Michigan is generously granted the description "very good." Golly, thanks! LOL</p>

<p>What's an excellent state school, I wonder?</p>

<p>FWIW, I would be similarly surprised if someone gave the "very good" rating to Wisconsin.</p>

277

<p>oldoldad,
I like the passion of your response and it may surprise you that I agree with much of it. </p>

<p>While I have not historically been an active poster on CC, I have recently participated in a few threads and if you check the record, you will see that I am NOT a subscriber to the USNWR rankings and their methodology. I do think that a lot of their data can be useful in comparing schools (like Michigan and Northwestern) and that some judgments can be made using that data. However, I also think that there is a large bias in the methodology in favor of schools in what I describe as the Education Establishment. I believe very strongly that there is great, underrated intelligence to be found in many parts of the country, including at schools with lower prestige than the Ivies (or even Northwestern or Michigan). The cream will rise to the top regardless of whether they attended Michigan, Northwestern or the University of Phoenix. </p>

<p>I think USNWR's use of the Peer Assessment and the arbitrary weightings given to various categories create a result that will be accepted by the powers that be in the academic world while still creating enough buzz and controversy to sell a lot of magazines. IMO, if the survey were being done from a Tucson, Arizona perspective or a Lexington, Kentucky perspective or a Tampa, Florida perspective rather than a Northeast/California mainstream media perspective, the results would look quite different. Furthermore, if you asked employers rather than academics about the relative worth of various undergraduate institutions, then again I believe that the results would look quite different. Having said all of that, there is still useful, factual, quantitative data in the USNWR reports and it is that which I have often referenced in making my comparisons, including in this thread as it relates to Michigan and Northwestern.</p>

<p>Re your argument about size and how this adds to the breadth and diversity of academic offerings, I concur that these are all to the benefit of a large school like Michigan. However, I believe that size also has its disadvantages in terms of overall student quality, class size, financial support on a per capita basis to support faculty and students, etc. I have consistently said that it is up to the individual to make his/her own inquiry on the consequences of these differences and decide of their importance. Based on the quantitative data, Northwestern does appear to have a statistical advantage over Michigan and I believe that most dispassionate observers would also reach that conclusion, but it does not necessarily follow that Northwestern is always the better choice or that Michigan does not have some very good students. Still, the Michigan posters have been unwilling (and given that we are now at post # 277, I would say unable) to provide any type of substantive response other than opinions (some of which are more than a decade old) to demonstrate that Michigan, as an undergraduate institution, is the equal of Northwestern. </p>

<p>Finally, a last word about rankings. I understand the thinking that the top 50 USNWR schools are all very good and all can provide an excellent education (although I don't agree that they are equally good as you imply). Still, I just can't remember any Michigan supporters ever conceding that Michigan could be the equal of a school ranked below them (how about UT, how about Tulane, how about U Washington, how about Penn State, etc.) while they consistently claim that they are the equal (or superior) of Northwestern or some other higher ranked school.</p>

278

<p>hoedown,
Let's not get caught up in nomenclature. Michigan is clearly in the first rank of state schools nationally. If you would prefer, I accept that it is an excellent state university. On a national scale including publics and private, I would still classify it as very good as I would only apply the excellent label to a relative handful of schools. I don't believe in grade inflation.</p>

279

<p>lol hoedown, I was thinking the same thing about the "very good state school"</p>

<p>Hawkette, it sounds like oldolddad has a grounded, realistic assessment of the way things are... the somewhat trivial nature of collere rankings, taking certain statistics with a grain of salt... </p>

<p>The SAT does NOT tell the whole story... did you happen to read my little anecdote earlier? My friend would've been the near the bottom of an elite private class according to his SAT score (1360), as he didn't have parents shelling out ridiculous amounts of money for prep courses. </p>

<p>He later got a 36 on his MCAT and is studying medicine at UCSF... although his SAT score may not indicate it, clearly he is every bit as smart as a given Harvard undergraduate... furthermore, it is very likely that if he had grown up in a wealthy home, and had parents that sent him to the best college-prep private school, and paid for SAT prep courses, he likely would've been in the top percentile.... the ability is there, but the resources weren't.</p>

<p>There are ALOT of cases, especially with regards to Michigan being a public, that extremely talented students lack an SAT score that would indicate their level of ability. and here you are, quick to judge such students because you seem to have this conception of the SAT being the defining method by which to judge the competence of a student body.</p>

<p>You're in a bubble man... I'll grant you that the SAT does have significance, especially when the gap is ostensibly wide... but I'm not sure an assertion like yours has any merit between Michigan and Northwestern... especially when you consider the size and diversity of Michigan's courses of study, and the fact that Michigan is public and more likely to find students like my friend previously mentioned.</p>

280

<p>oldoldad,</p>

<p>I thought of an analogy that might demonstrate the importance of considering the "average" quality of a school. Consider a college baseball team-let's call them the Blue team-that plays in a highly competitive league and has a great third baseman, several other very good players and the balance of the team is just ok or even occasionally weak. Consider another team-let's call them the Purple team- in the same league, but it has a stronger lineup top to bottom, including on the bench. Both teams have good managers and play in high quality stadiums and use high quality equipment. </p>

<p>Most observers would probably consider the Purple team as the better team, but that consideration does not mean that the third baseman from the Blue team is not great and won't go on to play in the professional leagues. I know it's simple and I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but isn't this somewhat analogous to Michigan and Northwestern? I'm not sure why you are so quick to throw out the average quality of a school's student body. Yes, it is an individual experience, but the environment is definitely impacted by who is there with you. </p>

<p>kazz,
I'm not sure what SAT comment you are referring to. I actually agree with you that there is much more to consider than SATs in comparing schools and posted as much in Michigan's defense on another thread comparing Michigan to Boston College. Also, I think that anecdotes have very little value in making a judgment about the overall quality of an institution.</p>