<p>you gotta add up total costs and fees to be more accurate. </p>
<p>and yes, everyone is right that the higher costing schools are "better"</p>
<p>hawkette,
You're just repeating the same data. What analysis did you perform to arrive at the conclusion that you say objective observers would agree on?</p>
<p>alex,
Get over myself?!! LOL. You're so completely in the bag for U Michigan that you aren't able to accept any facts or argument that might somehow place the school alongside fine schools such as UCLA, U North Carolina, U Wisconsin, NYU, Boston College, Tulane, etc. But the reality is that these are the true peers when the student body is measured as a whole. And I might add that I think highly of these schools and, unlike you, I give them their due. </p>
<p>As for your declarations about cross admit yields, once again you provide absolutely nothing to back up your claims other than your own vanity about your school. Not only that, the facts absolutely, positively do not support your fantasy that "against most of the top 15 universities, U Michigan's yield would be in the 50% range." The facts are:</p>
<p>Total U Michigan Yield: 43%
% of IS Students: 68%</p>
<p>It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you're no where near 50% against Top 15 schools. Heck, I bet you're not much above 50% for your IS students, much less for OOS students. If your admission and enrollment patterns are anything like U Virginia (which makes a very full disclosure of its yields for total, IS and OOS which are 48%, 63%, and 33% ), it is far more likely that U Michigan's OOS yield is less than 30%. </p>
<p>Finally, re the National Merit Scholar numbers, I agree that this should not be a huge factor in judging student bodies, but no matter how you slice it, U Michigan's per capita numbers (1% of incoming students) place it far down the list when you compare the USNWR Top 50 universities. I can provide a full listing if you require one. </p>
<p>nefer,
I'm not sure what else you are looking for. The statistical evidence is pretty overwhelming and self-evident (though perhaps not to those looking at it through maize and blue glasses). </p>
<p>SAT CR: U Michigan 37th out of 51 national universities; 7th out of 17 publics</p>
<p>SAT Math: U Michigan 30th out of 51 universities; tied with UCLA for 4th out of 17 publics</p>
<p>ACT: U Michigan 25th out of 41 national universities; 2nd out of 13 publics</p>
<p>Top 10% students: U Michigan 16th out of 51 national universities; 7th out of 17 publics</p>
<p>Acceptance Rate: U Michigan 40th out of 51 national universities; 8th out of 17 publics</p>
<p>I stand by my statement that objective measurements of U Michigan's student body would not place it in the Top 25-30 national universities.</p>
<p>Number of students with math SAT scores (and ACT equivalent) over 700</p>
<p>9,000+</p>
<p>Tokenadult , how many students scored above 31 in math?</p>
<p>
[quote]
You're so completely in the bag for U Michigan that you aren't able to accept any facts or argument that might somehow place the school alongside fine schools such as UCLA, U North Carolina, U Wisconsin, NYU, Boston College, Tulane, etc.
[/quote]
Add in faculty strength and the only schools out of this group that can hold a candle to Michigan are Wisconsin and UCLA (+ NYU in specialty areas).</p>
<p>So, you basically eyeballed the data as you presented them, and conclude that these objective measurements trivially lead to your conclusion objectively? How?
Let me give you an example of an objective analysis of your data. Ignoring the ACT score table because not all schools reported ACT scores, I can conclude that only 9 schools rank higher than Michigan in all your categories -- namely, Caltech, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley, U Penn, Yale and Wash U.
This analysis would be worthless to me. That's my subjective opinion. Yet, it is a rational, objective process. Logical, no assumptions. Your claim is not objective. That's all.</p>
<p>For faculty strength, lets look at National Academy of Science membership. I would also look at National Academy of Engineering and American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership, but those member directories are either closed or would take too long to sift through.</p>
<p>National Academy of Science membership for the USNWR Top 50:
1. Harvard: 151
2. Stanford: 131
3. Berkeley: 130
4. MIT: 109
5. Princeton: 74
6. Caltech: 72
7. UCSD: 65
8. Yale: 60
9. Columbia: 46
10. Washington: 44
11. Wisconsin: 43
12. Chicago: 41
13. Cornell: 38
14. Penn: 33
15. UCLA: 31
16. NYU: 28
16. UC Santa Barbara: 28
18. Illinois: 26
19. UC Irvine: 22
20. Johns Hopkins: 21
21. Michigan: 20
21. UC Davis: 20
23. Duke: 18
24. Northwestern: 16
24. Washington University, St. Louis: 16
26. Texas: 15
27. Penn State: 14
28. Brown: 11
28. Florida: 11
30. UNC: 10
30. USC: 10
32. Brandeis: 8
32. Rochester: 8
34. Carnegie Mellon: 7
35. Yeshiva: 6
36. Vanderbilt: 4
36. Virginia: 4
38. Rice: 3
39. Case Western: 2
39. Emory: 2
39. Lehigh: 2
42. Dartmouth: 1
42. Georgia Tech: 1
42. Tufts: 1
42. Tulane: 1
46. Boston College: 0
46. Georgetown: 0
46. Notre Dame: 0
46. Wake Forest: 0
46. William & Mary: 0</p>
<p>nefer,
I'm not sure if you're claiming that as your analysis or suggesting that it's the nature of my analysis (it's not). </p>
<p>Anyway, I don't know if you checked out the converse of your "analysis." The only schools that U Michigan beat in all measurements were schools ranked in the 40s (U Washington, Penn State, U Texas, Yeshiva). </p>
<p>Look, it's obvious that you and Alex are suggesting the merit of the elements being compared is the issue and not how U Michigan compares vs. other schools. It's a classic defense-if you can't win on the facts, try to undermine their relevancy. But for these metrics, I'm not buying it and I doubt many objective observers, such as college admissions counselors themselves, would either. </p>
<p>Do you or other U Michigan supporters have other student body-related data to present or compare or other, hopefully more substantive, arguments to make? </p>
<p>If not, shall we move on to the 2nd foundation of a strong undergraduate academic environment?</p>
<p>"2. Small classes sizes that permit and promote interaction with profs and classmates
3. Faculty that make undergraduate teaching a priority by working closely with these students, deliver a good classroom experience and work for an institution that has this reputation."</p>
<p>Does Harvard meet this criteria?</p>
<p>"3. Less acclaimed for Classroom Teaching Excellence vs most Top 20 privates"</p>
<p>"I don't know what the "Classroom Teaching Excellence" things refers to, but don't worry, chemgrad, it cannot POSSIBLY be that 1995 survey. How do we know? Because there is NO DATA anywhere in that 1995 survey that addresses "Classroom excellence." "</p>
<p>Is Hoedown, correct?</p>
<p>Less acclaimed? Please explain this.</p>
<p>That's nonsense, hawkette.
I never questioned the relevancy of the facts you presented. That's a different issue, which I don't care to talk about, because I am not interested in ranking schools. I am not arguing that I have a better ranking method or that you consider different/more data. All I am questioning is your assertion that "objective observers" would agree on YOUR conclusion from the YOUR data. You can pretend that I am incapable of objective thinking. I am only asking you to educate me on HOW an "objective" observer arrives at the conclusion.
You seem to have a habit of attributing hidden motives to people's intentions. I think that's more of a reflection on yourself than anything else. I don't care if you or anyone in this forum says school X is fabulous and school Y is not worth a bucket of spit as long as it's their opinion. And I get a laugh out of it.</p>
<p>Here's another example of the kind of objective analyses I am thinking of.
It's been said that the GPA and the board scores are the two most important factors in admission decisions. The top 10% data is not a very good measure of the classroom performance, but I will have to do. I am going to assume that the both factors are equally important in assessing the academic stengths of the students, because I haven't seen any data that suggests otherwise.</p>
<p>What are your assumptions? Breaking the SAT score down into two subcategories arbitrarily like you did does not make it more important than the other criteria, unless that is your assumption. If the class rank were reported in terms of two components, say, humanities rank and sciences rank, would you consider the aggregate twice as important relative to other criteria? Neither would I.
The acceptance rate is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with the strength of the student body. If school X and school Y have the identical student body stats, the stengths of the student bodies are equal, regardless of the rates at which the schools admitted their students from their respective applicant pools.
If you don't see this, you are making another common mistake: all variables are assumed to be independent. The acceptance rate should not be used as an indedependent factor in assessing the strength of the student body because it was one of the factors that determined the strength of the accepted students in the first place.
Remember you are assessing the strength of the student body, who have already been admitted and matriculated. This is different from the "selectivity" rating by USNews, a nebulous concept that is supposed to measure the degree of difficulty of gaining acceptance into a particular school. For that, they are justified in using the acceptance rate in their formula.</p>
<p>Based on this, I assign a 50% weight to the board score rank, and 50% weight to the top 10% rank. Using the SAT scores,
Michigan rank score = (SAT CR rank + SAT Math rank) / 2 * 0.5 + top 10% rank * 0.5 = (37+30)/2<em>0.5+16</em>0.5=24.75.
This is just its composite rank score, not its student body strength rank. To generate the student body rank, the rank score for every school has to be computed and the schools have to be rank-ordered based on the composite score. I've just done that, and there are 23 universities that outrank Michigan.
The UC top 10% data is suspicious. It's certainly wrong. Removing UCLA and UCSD but leaving in Berkeley yields in 21 schools outranking Michigan.</p>
<p>If I use the ACT scores, 17 universities outrank Michigan. But only 40 out of 50 schools reported ACT scores. If I assume that the ACT scores parallel the SAT scores in student selection, It can be estimated that 17 * 5/4 = 21 schools outrank Michigan by that metric. Remove UCLA and UCSD, and I end up with 19 schools.
Is this a good ranking? I don't know. Does it put Michigan in a better light than your claim? Not much worth a damn. All I am saying is you ought to leave "objective observers" out of your claims if you can't support them in an objective manner.</p>
<p>Using objective data does not make a person's views objective.</p>
<p>Deciding what objective data to use is subjective.</p>
<p>Everything in USNWR rankings is subjective.</p>
<p>Everything.</p>
<p>Hawkette's rankings are totally subjective.</p>
<p>Rankings like EA are fantasy.</p>
<p>"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you're no where near 50% against Top 15 schools. Heck, I bet you're not much above 50% for your IS students, much less for OOS students. If your admission and enrollment patterns are anything like U Virginia (which makes a very full disclosure of its yields for total, IS and OOS which are 48%, 63%, and 33% ), it is far more likely that U Michigan's OOS yield is less than 30%."</p>
<p>Hawkette, why would Michigan's yield for OOS applicants be under 30%? I am not sure where it would be exactly, but I would estimate at roughly 30%-35%. That's not far from the typical yield at many top 20 private universities. </p>
<p>Duke University: 40%
University of Chicago: 38%
Vanderbilt University: 37%
Northwestern University: 34%
Rice University: 32%</p>
<p>Although I did not bother looking them up, I am fairly certain that the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University and Emory University also have yield rates in the 25%-35% range. </p>
<p>With the exception of the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford and the top 2 or 3 Catholic/Jesuit universities, very few private universities have yields significantly over 40%.</p>
<p>As such, I do not see why Michigan's yield rate of 30%-35% for OOS students is any indication that in cross-admit cases, Michigan would not hold its own. In my experience, albeit limited in numbers, Michigan does well against its peer private universities...certainly much better than 20%.</p>
<p>Alexandre is right on the yield point, of course.</p>
<p>Yield at some additional top privates:
Caltech 38%
WUSTL 30%
Johns Hopkins 30%
Carnegie Mellon 28%
Emory 28%</p>
<p>So here's a consolidated list of non Ivy, MIT, Stanford or Catholic top 20 private universities:</p>
<p>Duke University: 40%
Caltech 38%
University of Chicago: 38%
Vanderbilt University: 37%
Northwestern University: 34%
Rice University: 32%
Johns Hopkins 30%
WUSTL 30%
Carnegie Mellon 28%
Emory 28%</p>
<p>Most of them have similar yields to University of Michigan OOS students. Hawkette, are you so sure that Michigan would only win 20% of the cross-admits vs those universities? In some case, perhaps, but in the majority of those cases, I would say the cross-admit ratio would be closet to 35%-50%.</p>
<p>Bc and Alex,
Alex is wrong on the yield issue and I can prove it. It’s a matter of what assumptions you want to make about the breakdown of IS/OOS applicants and admits. </p>
<p>It’s really simple arithmetic. Using the USWNR admit rate for U Michigan of 50% and a yield of 43% and an OOS enrollment of 32%, it’s very, very, very hard to construct a scenario where U Michigan’s OOS yield exceeds 30%. If the patterns are anything like those of U Virginia, it’s likely that U Michigan’s OOS yield is around 22%. Do the math. </p>
<p>As for yields, the application, accept, and enroll data is available on USNWR for all of these colleges. Here are the correct numbers for all of the Top 20 schools. I have added the data for U Virginia and U Michigan.</p>
<p>Yield , College ( Applications , Admits , Enrolls )</p>
<p>79% , Harvard ( 22955 , 2108 , 1659 )
70% , Stanford ( 23958 , 2464 , 1722 )
69% , Yale ( 19323 , 1911 , 1320 )
69% , MIT ( 12445 , 1553 , 1067 )
68% , Princeton ( 18942 , 1838 , 1244 )
66% , U Penn ( 22645 , 3628 , 2397 )
59% , Columbia ( 21343 , 2255 , 1333 )
56% , Brown ( 19097 , 2669 , 1484 )
56% , Notre Dame ( 14503 , 3549 , 1991 )
52% , Dartmouth ( 14176 , 2166 , 1116 )
47% , Cornell ( 30383 , 6503 , 3055 )
42% , Duke ( 17748 , 4077 , 1700 )
39% , Vanderbilt ( 12911 , 4238 , 1673 )
38% , Caltech ( 3597 , 607 , 231 )
36% , U Chicago ( 10362 , 3597 , 1300 )
34% , Northwestern ( 21930 , 5872 , 1981 )
34% , Wash U ( 22428 , 3887 , 1338 )
33% , Johns Hopkins ( 14848 , 3603 , 1206 )
33% , Rice ( 8968 , 2251 , 742 )
30% , Emory ( 15366 , 4175 , 1235 )</p>
<p>52% , U Virginia OVERALL ( 17798 , 6273 , 3248 )
67% , U Virginia IS ( 7090 , 3349 , 2244 )
34% , U Virginia OOS (31%) ( 10708 , 2924 , 1004 )</p>
<p>43% , U Michigan OVERALL ( 27474 , 13826 , 5992 )
??? , U Michigan IS ( ??? , ??? , ??? )
??? , U Michigan OOS ( ??? , ??? , ??? )</p>
<p>U Michigan Estimate (using U Virginia's % of IS applicants and yield as a guide)<br>
43% , U Michigan OVERALL ( 27474 , 13826 , 5992 )
67% , U Michigan IS ( 10990 , 6594 , 4418 )
22% , U Michigan OOS ( 16484 , 7232 , 1574 )</p>
<p>^ hawkette,</p>
<p>I find it impossible to believe Michigan gets only 10,990 in-state applicants, or that it gets 50% more OOS applicants than in-state applicants. Michigan's sister school, Michigan State, gets 24,436 applicants and its entering class is only 8% OOS. If MSU's OOS admit rate and yield are at all comparable to its in-state admit rate and yield, that means Michigan State is getting something like 22,000 in-state applications. It's a slightly bigger school than Michigan and has its own in-state following and certain programs Michigan doesn't have, so I wouldn't be surprised if its in-state applicant pool is a little larger. But I very much doubt MSU gets twice as many Michigan kids applying as the University of Michigan, generally regarded as a significantly better school. Michigan, by the way, has one of the highest rates of instate kids attending instate schools of any state in the country, something like 89%, I believe. With instate publics on everyone's radar screens in Michigan and the University of Michigan having the highest profile of them all, the number of instate applicants has got to be much, much higher. and the number of OOS applicants correspondingly lower.</p>
<p>More likely, Virginia's 10,708 OOS applicants represent something like the top number of kids who will apply to an OOS public known for strong academics. UC Berkeley, for example, gets about 9,000 OOS applications (including internationals). Your estimate of 16,000+ OOS applicants at Michigan seems way too high, probably at least 50% too high.</p>
<p>So let's flip your assumptions and say Michigan gets 16,848 in-state applications and 10,990 OOS. That's probably conservative; I'd guess more likely 2-to-1 instate over OOS, but let's just use your numbers. Then assuming approximately a 50% admit rate for both in-state and OOS, we'd get something like this:</p>
<p>yield, admit rate, school (applications, admits, enrolls)</p>
<p>43%, 50% Michigan OVERALL (27474, 13826, 5992)
53%, 50% Michigan INSTATE (16484, 8331, 4418)
29%, 50% Michigan OOS (10990, 5495, 1574)</p>
<p>This is very close to alexandre's estimate of Michigan's OOS yield. But it has to be a low-end estimate because it assumes Michigan's admit rate is the same for in-state and OOS---i.e., that on a percentage basis, instate applicants get no break at all over OOS. This is almost certainly wrong; the instate admit rate is probably higher, meaning the number of instate admits is larger and the instate yield correspondingly lower. By the same token, then, the number of OOS admits must be smaller, and the OOS yield correspondingly higher than the 29% I show here. </p>
<p>Virginia's OOS admit rate is only 27%, as compared with a 47% instate admit rate. A proportional advantage for instate applicants at Michigan would look something like this:</p>
<p>yield, admit rate, school (applications, admits, enrolls)</p>
<p>43%, 50% Michigan OVERALL (27474 13826 5992)
45%, 60% Michigan INSTATE (16484, 9890, 4418)
40%, 38% Michigan OOS (10990, 3936, 1574)</p>
<p>I'd note that Michigan State's yield---again, almost entirely in-state---is 42%. Michigan's instate yield is probably higher than MSU's because a lot of instate cross-applicants have Michigan as their first choice school and MSU as their backup. So a 45% instate yield doesn't seem unreasonable. But the instate acceptance rate could be lower, and the instate yield correspondingly higher. But that means the OOS acceptance rate would have to be a little higher, and the OOs yield correspondingly lower. So this estimate of 40% OOS yield seems at the high end of the plausible range.</p>
<p>A reasonable middle-range estimate, then, assuming a 42% OOS admit rate and a correspondingly higher instate admit rate, might look something like this:</p>
<p>yield, admit rate, school (applicants, admits, enrolls)</p>
<p>43%, 50% Michigan OVERALL (27474, 13826, 5992)
48%, 56% Michigan INSTATE (16484, 9210, 4418)
34%, 42% Michigan OOS (10990, 4616, 1574) </p>
<p>Bottom line, I think alexandre's estimated OOS yield of somewhere in the 30+ percent range is probably spot-on.</p>
<p>fwiw: Cal Berkeley has an instate yield of 44% and OOS yield of 22%.</p>
<p>I decided to check out the last 5 years at my daughter's California high school.</p>
<p>Michigan 27% yield.
Duke 20% yield.
Harvard 83% yield.
Northwestern..33% yield
Rice..averages less than 1 application a year. Nobody has gotten into the school in the last 5 year.
Notre Dame...nobody has applied there in the last 5 years.
Nobody out of about 300 students a year.</p>
<p>Although Michigan's yield is less, more students apply and more students go there than the above schools. Not even close.</p>
<p>Oh yeah. Stanford 55% yield.</p>