<p>I also wonder the following:</p>
<p>1) Average time spent preparing for the SAT/ACT by students at top privates vs top publics</p>
<p>2) Average number of times the SAT/ACT was taken by students at top privates vs top publics</p>
<p>3) The percentage of students who took SAT/ACT prep courses at top privates vs top publics</p>
<p>4) The effect of superscoring on the overall results.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Except that your explanation doesn't hold up at all. The fact is, the 700+ math SATs are highly concentrated at six super-elite publics: Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, UIUC, Texas, and Wisconsin. After that the publics drop off really rapidly. Penn State, UNC Chapel Hill, and the University of Washington have roughly half as many as the top publics. The "other" UCs have 1/4 to 1/3 as many. And if you were to go down the list of public universities you'd find both the percentage and the absolute numbers of 700+ SATs generally in the 1,500 to 3,000 range, far below the super-elite publics at the top of this list.. Respectable, to be sure. But it doesn't explain the 10,000+ numbers of the top schools in this group, which are certainly no larger on average than their peers in other states. Nor is there any reason to believe instate students in Michigan, California, Illinois, Texas, and Wisconsin are on average smarter than students in other states. So the only plausible explanation is that high-scoring kids are positively ATTRACTED to these schools and attend them in rather stunningly high numbers that dwarf the numbers at the Ivies.</p>
<p>Another thing people do not take into consideration is that at many publics, not only are standardized tests de-emphasized and scores reported not superscored, but many students attend programs that are not offered at elite private institutions. Programs such as Nursing, Kinesiology, Music, Agriculture, Education. Such students have lower test scores, take classes separately from Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Business students and make up 20%-30% of the undergraduate student body population. Most private universities do not have such students and a few of those that do will not include those students in their admissions statistics. </p>
<p>Even with those students counted among the total student body at elite public universities, the top 40%-50% of students are on par with the top 60%-75% of the students at elite private universities (not including Caltech, MIT and HYP of course). Considering the fact that elite publics are 2-6 times larger than elite privates, that private universities over-emphasize standarized testing and superscore their scores for statistical reporting purposes and have undergraduate student populations almost entirely made up of Arts and Sciences, Business and Engineering students, it is pretty impressive that half the students at publics are of such high calibre.</p>
<p>There really isn't much that separates the top student bodies at elite private universities and elite public universities, which is why I firmly believe that quality of faculty, quality of facilities and depth and breadth of curriculae, and not quality of student bodies (which is hard to measure and impossible to compare due to differences in majors and admissions philosophies), that separate the best universities from the rest. Looking merely at admissions statistics without taking into consideration all the other factors I listed above, one could legitimately surmise that WUSTL is better than Stanford and that Caltech is superior to MIT. Obviously, it is not the stastical strength of the student bodies at those universities that determines the overal quality of those universities.</p>
<p>yes, but you also have to look at the average SAT scores of those states. i dont have the exact statistics, but from what i have looked at earlier those states also have the highest average SATs in the country. i agree with you that the students at those schools aren't necessarily smarter than students at the other schools. my guess would be that the students in the states with higher average SATs were more prepared to take the exam. </p>
<p>i am sure that more out of state students are drawn to schools like illinois, berkeley, michigan, etc. than schools say iowa, maine, etc. but i dont think the number is large enough to explain how illinois has more than 2x the number of top scorers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>wow, that's quite an improvement, hawkette. haha.</p>
<p>
[quote]
one could legitimately surmise that WUSTL is better than Stanford and that Caltech is superior to MIT.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well since Stanfurd is "Junior University"...down on a farm.... :D</p>
<p>. . . . </p>
<p>If you don't like the data or the way that I have presented it, then please be my guest and create your own. . . . </p>
<p>bc,
In response to your post # 95 about the financial status of the state of Michigan,</p>
<p>"despite Michigan's well publicized economic woes, the State of Michigan appears to be in better fiscal shape than places like California, Arizona, or Florida."</p>
<p>I recently came across a source that might challenge part of this statement. Standard & Poors rates the various states and assigns the state of Michigan a rating of AA-. State peers with this rating are West Virginia and Kentucky. Only two states (Louisiana and California) are lower. All other states have a higher bond rating. Not exactly a clarion call for the fiscal situation of Michigan. </p>
<p>I would agree that California's immediate problems are more grave than those of nearly every other state and this may have real consequences on funding for higher education in the Golden State. One solution for them is to increase their mix of OOS students and thus raise more money from tuition.</p>
<p>Sorry I was out of town.</p>
<p>I can't divulge material that U-M does not make public, but I can clear up a few things:</p>
<p>1) U-M's applicant mix. Sorry, bclintonk, but U-M does in fact get more OOS applicants than IS--and by a wide margin. </p>
<p>2) U-M's yield rate. U-M has a comfortably high yield rate for IS students, which is why it doesn't need a huge IS applicant pool to get the class it wants.</p>
<p>3) U-M's competitors for OOS students. College Board research shows that the top colleges for cross-admits include Illinois, Wisconsin, Cornell, WashU, Northwestern, BU, NYU, CMU. Minnesota is nowhere near the top.</p>
<p>3) U-M's competition with MSU. It does and it doesn't compete with MSU, depends on how you look at it. Sure, a lot of U-M applicants also apply there, but if they get admitted to U-M they overwhelmingly make the choice to attend U-M. There are, of course, top high school students in Michigan who decline to apply to U-M, and it's possible that some of them are applying to MSU instead. That's harder to measure but a topic I'm currently interested in. U-M has been content with its share of in-state apps but lately I'm wondering who the U is not getting and whether, as the population declines, U-M should be more aggressive about pursuing the superstars who don't apply.</p>
<p>Even though Hoedown is not at liberty to share data with us, I am! I would estimate that roughly 16,000-18,000 OOS apply to Michigan annually. Of those 5,000-7,000 are admitted and of those, 1,800-2,000 enroll. I stand by my estimate that 30%+ of admitted OOS students enroll. </p>
<p>OOS students who enroll into Michigan most commonly pick Michigan over the following schools:</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Duke University
New York University
Northwestern University
Pennsylvania State University
University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Pennsylvania
University of Texas-Austin
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Washington University-St Louis</p>
<p>hoedown,
Thank you for your clarifying statements. </p>
<p>Can you comment at all on the differences in yield vs other schools with which U Michigan competes most frequently for OOS students, including:</p>
<p>U Illinois
U Wisconsin
Cornell
Wash U
Northwestern
Boston University
NYU
Carnegie Mellon </p>
<p>Alex,
If you already had the information about the IS/OOS split, I wish you'd shared it a few days ago. It might've lowered the rancor of some recent exchanges. </p>
<p>As for your numbers, I think if you do the math, you will find that they confirm my earlier points about the OOS yield for U Michigan.</p>
<p>The numbers just don't work unless you assign a 72%+ IS admission rate and a 47-58% IS yield rate. I think that both of these assumptions would be wrong. Using your assumptions, here is how the numbers look:</p>
<p>Apps , Accepts , Accept Rate , Enrolls , Yield , </p>
<p>Alexandre Estimate # 1<br>
27474 , 13826 , 50% , 5992 , 43% , Total
11474 , 8826 , 77% , 4192 , 47% , IS
16000 , 5000 , 31% , 1800 , 36% , OOS</p>
<p>Alexandre Estimate # 2<br>
27474 , 13826 , 50% , 5992 , 43% , Total
10474 , 7826 , 75% , 4092 , 52% , IS
17000 , 6000 , 35% , 1900 , 32% , OOS</p>
<p>Alexandre Estimate # 3<br>
27474 , 13826 , 50% , 5992 , 43% , Total
9474 , 6826 , 72% , 3992 , 58% , IS
18000 , 7000 , 39% , 2000 , 29% , OOS</p>
<p>IMO, none of the above look like reasonable results for the IS students.</p>
<p>I'm guessing that U Michigan's IS admissions rate is about 60% and its IS yield rate is about 65%. Do these sound reasonable to you? </p>
<p>If I am correct, then that would result in a 44% acceptance rate and a 25% yield for OOS students. Here are the numbers:</p>
<p>Apps , Accepts , Accept Rate , Enrolls , Yield </p>
<p>hawkette's Estimate<br>
27474 , 13826 , 50% , 5992 , 43% , Total
10474 , 6284.4 , 60% , 4092 , 65% , IS
17000 , 7541.6 , 44% , 1900 , 25% , OOS</p>
<p>Hawkette, using last year's admissions numbers, here's how I would estimate the breakdown of IS and OOS (including international students) applicants:</p>
<p>TOTAL (Official figures)
Applied: 29,000
Admitted: 12,000
Percent admitted: 41%
Enrolled: 5,700
Yield: 48%</p>
<p>Office</a> of Undergraduate Admissions: About Michigan</p>
<p>IN STATE (estimates):
Applied: 12,000
Admitted: 6,500
Percent admitted: 54%
Enrolled: 3,750
Yield: 58%</p>
<p>OUT OF STATE-Including international applicants (estimates)
Applied: 17,000
Admitted: 5,500
Percent admitted: 32%
Enrolled: 1,950
Yield: 35%</p>
<p>Those numbers are far more plausible. </p>
<p>As for the cross admit yield with other universities, there is no way of knowing. From the limited exposure I have had, I'd say Michigan wins as many cross admits as it loses to the schools I listed above. I would be seriously surprised if Michigan won or lost more than 65% of the cross admits over/to any of those schools.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, I would say OOS applicants are very prestige-conscious in their college choice behavior. Once admitted, their choices seem to follow the rankings. So schools which are regarded as "better" than U-M are those against which U-M loses more students, and U-M wins out over those against which U-M is "better" The quotes are a nod to the fact that CCers have spent many pages arguing over that stuff. So Cornell and Northwestern (for example) get more of the students admitted to both, while U-M stomps Boston U (for example). What's interesting is how well U-M does against Illinois and Wisconsin, given that some proportion of the cross-admits are in-state for those schools and would save substantially if they chose them. U-M's yield rate against those schools is very strong.</p>
<p>Surprisingly Hoedown, Michigan seems to do very well vs Cornell over here (in Dubai). Of the 15 or so students who were admitted into both in the last 4 years, 9 went to Michigan and 2 went to a third university. Northwestern does a little better. 6 out of 9 opted to attend Northwestern over Michigan and the other 3 went for Michigan. I would say that Michigan probably wins close to 50% of its cross-admits vs Cornell but only about 35% of its cross-admits vs Northwestern. </p>
<p>I agree with your assessment of BU, Illinois and Wisconsin. Michigan wins about 80% of the cross admits with those schools.</p>
<p>^ Interesting data for Dubai there, Alex. I'm very interested about Dubai becuase it is a world-class open city and the only of its kind in the Arab world. What about UMich vs Cal, UMich vs Stanford and UMich vs UCLA?</p>
<p>hey what about MSU? the honors college hands out tons of money to OOS students-why ignore that? and since when did the thread for OOS students get turned into a U of M battle?</p>
<p>RML, Dubai is not an "world-class open city", trust me! </p>
<p>Dubai high schoolers will typically chose Cal over Michigan. Cal has a HUGE international reputation, second only to Harvard. </p>
<p>I have not known any student who had to chose between Michigan and UCLA. </p>
<p>The only two students in Dubai that I know of who got into Michigan and Stanford chose to attend the latter.</p>
<p>"and since when did the thread for OOS students get turned into a U of M battle?"</p>
<p>I am not quite sure why that happended Farmgirl. Go back to the begining of the thread and read the first few posts. They may offer some explanation for the digression.</p>
<p>I have never heard of an OOS student who chose Michigan over Penn or Duke. Maybe for Ross, the LSA scholarship or Shipmans, but it definitely isn't typical.</p>
<p>I have to agree with you, ring of fire. Never heard of any OOS that would choose Michigan over an Ivy League school or over the "Harvard of the South"..</p>
<p>^ I have a Filipino friend who chose Michigan over Stanford, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Cornell, NYU, Rice and USC. I can provide his name (through pm) if you want. He's an athlete (swimmer) and I think he was offered free tuition at Michigan.</p>