<p>Hawkette, I cannot assign a grade for an entire student body, certainly not based on standardized scores since Michigan de-emphasizes ACT/SAT scores and does not superscore. But a score of B is very low given the talent level on campus. A- would seem fair, but like I said, I don't see how we can rate the talent of a student body that has thousands of students pursuing different academic disciplines and goals in universities that value different criteria (GPA vs SAT, vs Essays, vs ECs etc...) and report grades (weighed vs unweighed) and SAT/ACT (superscore vs best score in single sitting) differently. But even if Michigan's student body were ranked between #30 and #40 out of 1,000+ universities, how can you give it a B? What would a university at #150 be? F? </p>
<p>As far as endowment, total endowment and endowment per student are both important. Large universities like Cal, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan, Penn, Texas and UVa to name a few benefit from economies of scale. Whether a university has 1,000 undergrads or 30,000 undergrads, a university only needs so many specialized labs, supercomputers, libraries, hospitals, administrations, athletic facilities, observatories and linear accelerators. You should also keep in mind that state schools receive hundreds of millions of dollars each year from state and federal governments. A public university the size of Michigan with an endowment of $150,000/student is very well off because it also receives over $300 million from the state government. Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Penn all have endowments per student that range between $200,000 and $300,000, and none of them get more than $50 million from the state. Michigan's endowment per student among universities is not out of the top 50 unless you include LACs that have fewer than 2,000 students. But in that case, half the Ivy League and the University of Chicago and many other very highly regarded universities don't make the top 25 and barely make the top 50. So let us leave the LACs out of this one because they are at an unfair advantage. Among national universities, Michigan's endowment per student is among the top 25 or so and rising at a faster rate than any other. And none of the schools ranked above it in this criteria receive hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding annually except for UVa. Anyway, at the current rate of growth, Michigan's endowment per student should climb up the ranks very rapidly, but even as it stands now, giving Michigan a score of B for institutional resources is laughable. IF Michigan gets a score of B, what would you give Tufts or Boston College or Georgetown or Cal? C? In terms of institutional resources, Michigan is more like an A-, maybe even A.</p>
<p>According to the latest endowment figures provided by NACUBO:</p>
<h1>1 Princeton University ($1.9 million/student)</h1>
<h1>2 Yale University ($1.8 million/student)</h1>
<h1>3 Harvard University ($1.5 million/student)</h1>
<h1>4 Stanford University ($950,000/student)</h1>
<h1>5 MIT ($800,000/student)</h1>
<h1>5 Rice University ($800,000/student)</h1>
<h1>7 Caltech ($750,000/student)</h1>
<h1>8 Dartmouth College ($600,000/student)</h1>
<h1>9 Northwestern University ($420,000/student)</h1>
<h1>10 Johns Hopkins University ($390,000/student)</h1>
<h1>11 Emory University ($380,000/student)</h1>
<h1>11 University of Notre Dame ($380,000/student)</h1>
<h1>13 Duke University ($375,000/student)</h1>
<h1>14 Universityy of Chicago ($360,000/student)</h1>
<h1>15 Washington University ($350,000/student)</h1>
<h1>16 Brown University ($290,000/student)</h1>
<h1>17 Columbia University ($280,000/student)</h1>
<h1>18 University of Pennsylvania ($265,000/student)</h1>
<h1>19 Vanderbilt University ($260,000/student)</h1>
<h1>20 Cornell University ($220,000/student)</h1>
<h1>21 Yeshiva University ($210,000/student)</h1>
<h1>22 University of Virginia ($180,000/student)</h1>
<h1>23 University of Rochester ($175,000/student)</h1>
<h1>24 Lehigh University ($165,000/student)</h1>
<h1>25 Case Western Reserve University ($160,000/student)</h1>
<h1>26 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor ($150,000/student)</h1>