<p>On another story, I have a Filipina friend who chose Cal Berkeley over Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn and Oxford and Warwick in England. She's also a swimmer and a gold medalist in the Southeast Asian Games. But then I guess this was an extreme case as most students in her high school would choose Harvard over any other school anywhere in the world. But just to justify that things like that happens...</p>
<p>According to the PR, students also consider and "sometimes" (not often) prefer Penn to Michigan. </p>
<p>There are many OOS students who attend Michigan over Penn or Duke because they just prefer the setting and campus culture or because Michigan has a significantly better program in their field of interest. It is ridiculous to state that OOS students do not chose Michigan over Duke or Penn unless they are given financial incentives. There are, at any point in time, hundreds, if not thousands of OOS students at Michigan who got into Ivy League schools and other top 20 private universities and many of them had no special scholraships. I am one such students. I knew dozens of students just like me when I was at Michigan. And as a student recruiter for Michigan in the UAE today, I see several students each year pick Michigan over peer private universities, including Duke and Penn.</p>
<p>
[quote]
He's an athlete (swimmer) and I think he was offered free tuition at Michigan.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Exactly, that's probably the main reason there are situations like that. Free money will occasionally trumpet prestige and quality.</p>
<p>Alexandre, again like i said before. For everyone of your anecdotal accounts I have 10. As someone who has participated for over 8 years in national meetings with students from all over the US, I have never met anyone that would give up an Ivy League School or Duke for Michigan. Those cross admits are not there unless there is money involved. </p>
<p>There are exceptions to every rule. You seem to be one.</p>
<p>MyOpinion, I would assume that RML's friend who was given an athletic scholarship to Michigan was given a similar athletic scholarship to Stanford. I hear Michigan's swimming program is above average afgter all, so if he were recruited by Michigan, there is a chance he were also recruited by Stanford.</p>
<p>And your 8 years of experience is impressive, as are my close to 20 years of experience in the domain of college education. I am (and have been for over three years) closely associated with admissions for the University of Michigan and Cornell. I deal with top students annually. I doubt you have 10 times more exposure than I do. The numbers just don't add up MyOpinion. We do not need to point to anecdotal evidence. There are over 1,000 OOS undergrads at Michigan at any point in time that graduated in the top 1% of their high school class, with 4.0 unweighed GPAs and 1500+ SAT/34+ ACT scores. Of those, less than half receive sizeable scholarships. The remaining 500+ OOS undergrads with those stratosphering stats are paying close to full tuition. Are you telling me that only the exceptions of those 500 chose to attend Michigan over schools like Duke and Penn? Can you prove that the majority of those 500+ students were rejected by all the private elites they applied to? Because the numbers certainly don't bear this out.</p>
<p>And whatever happened to the claim that private elites give out a lot of money to the point where they are almost always cheaper to attend for OOS students? Wouldn't that cancel out whatever scholraship money Michigan may hand out?</p>
<p>MyOpinion, </p>
<p>My friend who chose Michigan over Stanford, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Cornell, NYU, Rice and USC did it for prestige and program strengths, not for the money. His parents are quite wealthy and his father was a former Congressman. He's also very smart or was one of the top students in his class at ISM. He majored politics in college and Michigan is quite strong for politics not to mention that Michigan is quite a recognizable name in many parts of Asia especially in the Philippines. Believe me; his family can afford the full fees of Michigan even if it would ask his family to pay twice as much.</p>
<p>My former professor has a Michigan undergrad as well. He chose it over Yale and he has no regrets about it. (Yes, Yale!) He's now a very proud Michigan alumnus and he donates to his alma mater school annually. Again, if you want his name for verification, I can provide it to you through pm. </p>
<p>I'm sharing you these things because, like what Alexander has said, there were people/students who chose Michigan over other elite private schools even if scholarship privileges weren't involved. As to how many would choose it over other elite private schools, I don't know. All I know is that there were people who did choose it over other elite privates and I think there will be students who will do just the same every year.</p>
<p>Wow, well I just read this whole board and it is a lot to think about.
U-M is an amazing school, and I do not think their is anything wrong with it. There are a TON of factors that could affect all statistics and sometimes no one really knows any exact numbers. For some people U-M is great and for some it isn't. It all depends on a person's unique situation. GL to all of you and your discussion.</p>
<p>P.S. I love to read discussions that compare schools to UVA, because UVA is my top choice school right now! :D</p>
<p>For what it's worth, I'd go to Michigan over every school in the country, HYP, etc. included.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Never heard of any OOS that would choose Michigan over an Ivy League school or over the "Harvard of the South"..
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, it's not typical but it does happen.</p>
<p>I agree Hoedown, it is not typical. It's not like 80% of the out of state student population chose Michigan over private elites and it is not like Michigan has a 50% yield rate for out of state students vs the Ivy League either. </p>
<p>But it does not merely "happen". Saying that "it happens" would suggest that only a handful of students do so each year. That it's an aberration or an exception. What I have seen over the last 18 years would suggest that it is quite common place. From my own graduating class from my high school in Abu Dhabi (the capital of the UAE), a handful of us chose Michigan over Ivies and other private elites. That's just from one school in a far away land! The number of out of state students who chose to attend Michigan at full or near-full cost over elite private universities, especially vs non-Ivy League privates, is substantial, if not staggering. It definitely runs in the hundreds annually. Just from the crop of students I deal with in the UAE each year, anywhere from 5-10 students pick Michigan over elite privates. Last year, students chose Michigan over Columbia, Cornell, Emory, Georgetown, Penn and Rice. </p>
<p>I also think it is important to segregate the Ivies (and Stanford and MIT) from the rest of the privates. Privates like Chicago, Duke, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Rice, Washington University etc... simply do not have the same appeal as the Ivies and MIT & Stanford. If you look at the yield rates of those non-Ivy private universities, they run in the 30%-40%. Ivy League universities (along with MIT and Stanford) typically have yield rates that run around 50%-60%. </p>
<p>The distinction should be made. Michigan holds its own very well vs non-Ivy (not including MIT and Stanford) private elites. In fact, even vs certain Ivies, like Cornell and Penn, Michigan does very well. By very well, I mean anywhere between 30% and 50% yield depending on the private university.</p>
<p>Alex,
Given your perch in Dubai, I don’t dispute your reporting of college selections in that part of the world for the non-US students that you interact with. My arguments in this thread and my perspective, however, are colored by impressions and results that I and others have gathered from USA students. For example, I recently got access to Naviance data from several schools located in the Philly-Boston corridor. The results are interesting and quite a bit different from yours and some of the results were very surprising to me (eg, Northwestern, Rice).</p>
<p>Note: For the colleges listed below, I would expect U Michigan’s results to be generally better among Midwestern OOS applicants and worse among Mid-Atlantic, Southern/Southwestern and Western OOS applicants. </p>
<p>Accept Rate , Yield , College</p>
<p>31% , 83% , Stanford
22% , 82% , Princeton
16% , 82% , Harvard
21% , 78% , Yale
42% , 74% , Notre Dame
22% , 67% , MIT
31% , 63% , Columbia
33% , 58% , Brown
50% , 55% , Univ Penn
56% , 48% , Cornell
26% , 44% , Dartmouth
54% , 43% , U Virginia
48% , 40% , Johns Hopkins
28% , 40% , Vanderbilt
38% , 36% , Wake Forest
60% , 33% , Georgetown
59% , 33% , NYU
54% , 29% , Duke
74% , 28% , Carnegie Mellon
46% , 26% , Wash U StL
67% , 25% , Univ Chicago
51% , 23% , Boston College
50% , 21% , Emory
49% , 20% , U Wisconsin
52% , 19% , U Michigan
68% , 15% , Tulane
36% , 10% , Tufts
41% , 0% , Northwestern
24% , 0% , U North Carolina
40% , 0% , Rice</p>
<p>I think that these numbers support the idea that perspective is everything. From where you sit, U Michigan is a highly attractive college choice. From what I am reading and hearing, I reach a different conclusion with U Michigan being well down the list for OOS students. I am willing to accept that you and I see this differently…but I think you’re wrong for OOS students in the USA. :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
For example, I recently got access to Naviance data from several schools located in the Philly-Boston corridor.
[/quote]
[quote]
I would expect U Michigan’s results to be generally better among Midwestern OOS applicants and worse among Mid-Atlantic, Southern/Southwestern and Western OOS applicants.
[/quote]
What is your sample size? How many schools and how many students?</p>
<p>And how did you extrapolate your data from Philly-Boston to Mid-Alantic, Southern/Southwestern and Western OOS?</p>
<p>GoBlue,
Over 1000 applicants spread over many schools (though fewer than 10) all located in the referenced geography. I do not offer this as a scientific result, but I think it does have some indicative value. I would welcome the comments of others who actually live in this area and/or go to school in this region and whether these numbers are similar to their impressions of/experiences with top students in their high schools. </p>
<p>The comment about the behaviour of students in the Midwest, South/Southwest, and West is my opinion. </p>
<p>Two qualifiers to these (and probably any) Naviance datasets. First, they are affected by which students apply to what schools. This affects the accept rate and the yield rate and sometimes produces results that are out-of-sync with national results. Second, hooked candidates such as athletes, legacies, developmental, etc. are included in the Naviance data. This can sometimes boost a college's accept and yield rates.</p>
<p>I'm a little surprised at Hawkette's numbers.</p>
<p>And it would help to see how many students we are talking about. A school can have large percentages but very low actual students.</p>
<p>Like Notre dame for example. Where I live in Nor Cal, almost nobody cares about Notre Dame.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is from one of the better private schools in Nor Cal and the United States. The student body comes from very wealthy families. </p>
<p>San</a> Francisco University HS: School Profile</p>
<p>Following is a list of the major college and universities where the school’s graduates have enrolled over the past five years. A “zero” indicates no one chose to enroll during this period, though students were admitted. </p>
<p>I'm sorry this is hard to read. It's easier if you click the link.</p>
<p>American University
1 Pomona College
1
Amherst College
5 Princeton University
9
Bard College
1 Reed College
6
Barnard College
8 Rhode Island School of Design
4
Bates
5 Rice University
0
Bennington College 1 St. Andrews University (Scotland) 1
Boston College
1 St. Lawrence University
1
Boston University
9 St. Mary's College of California
0
Bowdoin College
7 Santa Clara University
2
Brandeis University
0 Sarah Lawrence College 3
Brown University
14 Scripps College
1
Bryn Mawr College
0 Seattle University
1
Bucknell University
2 Skidmore College
7
Calif. State Univ., San Luis Obispo
4
Carleton College
4 Smith College 3
Carnegie-Mellon University
0 Stanford University
19 </p>
<p>Claremont McKenna College
7 Swarthmore College
2
Colby College
2 Syracuse University
1
Colgate University
6 Trinity College, CT
8
Colorado College
0 Tufts University
9
Columbia University
16 Tulane University
0
Connecticut College
1 University of Arizona
1
Cooper Union
1 University of California </p>
<p>Cornell University
5 Berkeley
17
Dartmouth College
5 Davis
10
Duke University
6 Irvine
1
Emerson College
5 Los Angeles
31
Emory University 2
Fordham University
1 Riverside 2
George Washington University
2 San Diego
5
Georgetown University
4 Santa Barbara
7
Grinnell College
1 Santa Cruz
11
Hamilton College
2 University of Chicago
5
Hampshire College
2 University of Colorado
2
Harvard University
18 </p>
<p>Harvey Mudd College
0 University of Michigan
4
Haverford College
3 Univ. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
2
Hofstra University 2 University of Oregon
0
Howard University
2 University of Pennsylvania 8
Johns Hopkins University
10 University of Puget Sound
0
Kenyon College
3 University of Rochester
1
Lake Forest College
1 University of San Francisco
1
Lawrence University
2 Univ. of Southern California
7
Lehigh University
1 University of Washington
2
Lewis and Clark College
1 Vanderbilt University
0
Macalester College
5 Vassar College
6
Mass. Institute of Technology
4 Wake Forest University
1
McGill University
0 Washington Univ. in St. Louis
7
Middlebury College
7 Wellesley College
3
Morehouse College
1 Wesleyan University
8
Mount Holyoke College
1 Wheaton College
2
New York University
15 Whitman College
1
Northwestern University
7 Whittier College 0
Oberlin College
3 Willamette University
0
Occidental College
4 Williams College
8
Pitzer College
2 Yale University
17</p>
<p>hawkette</p>
<p>That's a very interesting data but some schools in the top 30 aren't in the list. Can you post the exact details of the top 30?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>dstark,
My information is about acceptance rates and yield rates, not the numbers of students who actually matriculated. Sometimes, otherwise unimpressive schools can have high numbers of matriculates from a given high school based on a history or some type of connection. You can find similar data if you go to websites like those for Hotchkiss, Dalton, etc. </p>
<p>rml,
There were 4 schools in the USNWR Top 30 that were not in the information that I saw and all were in California (UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, and Caltech). For these colleges, there were either no applicants or very, very few applicants. For those that did have applicants, the numbers were so low that the results came out at 100% or 0% and thus gave IMO a false impression. BTW, even Stanford only barely managed to crack the Top 25 for # of applications among national universities and would've ranked far lower if I'd included the LACs which are an important part of the college market for this subset of students/high schools.</p>
<p>"BTW, even Stanford only barely managed to crack the Top 25 for # of applications among national universities and would've ranked far lower if I'd included the LACs which are an important part of the college market for this subset of students/high schools." </p>
<p>That makes my point Hawkette. You have both percentages and absolute numbers.
Let's see the absolute numbers too.</p>
<p>31% , 83% , Stanford</p>
<p>Stanford looks pretty good. Number 1 on your chart.</p>
<p>But then you say it barely cracks the 25 in number of students. That kind of makes a difference.</p>
<p>Actually, both of my numbers are percentages and the top-to-bottom ordering was done based on yield (which was the current topic of the discussion). </p>
<p>OTOH, your data is numbers of students who attended these schools with no attendant numbers reflecting acceptance rate or yield rate. For example, you listed 4 students going to U Michigan. Do you know how many applied and were accepted? Do you know the yield on accepted students and what other schools they also applied? My data does not show this last point, but I think that that can have a material affect on how to interpret any data, including mine. </p>
<p>BTW, I would expect the results from a school in SF to be different from those of students applying from high schools located in the NE. Wouldnt you? Do you consider this high school as representative of a typical private high school in the West?</p>
<p>Hawkette, the numbers you provide in post #250 do not contradict my observations. In fact, they probably support them. Most schools with noticeably higher yield rates than Michigan on your list are East Coast schools, which makes sense given that the high schools surveyed are located in the East Coast and Mid Atlantic. Among Midwestern schools, only Notre Dame (a niche school) has a significantly higher yield. Schools like Duke, Chicago, Rice, Northwestern and WUSTL don't have significantly better yield rates. I am sure if you look at Midwestern high schools, the yield rates would look very different. But I am not sure how the data proves that Michigan does not attract top OOS students. Most other non-East Coast elite universities do not have signiificantly higher yield rates.</p>
<p>hawkette, I don't have more numbers. </p>
<p>I was under the impression that you do have more numbers. How else would you know that Stanford isn't in the top 25?</p>
<p>The school I listed is one of the top private schools in the United States. It is located in Nor Cal.</p>
<p>You can form your own conclusions about whether it is representative of anything or nothing. </p>
<p>The school's web site is lacking in information.
I wish the school listed more information, but to the public, it doesn't.</p>
<p>I just like the info because it shows where students from that school go to college.</p>
<p>Alexandre,</p>
<p>Although I've been critical of some aspects of U Michigan on other occasions, this isn't one of them. But how exactly does Michigan "hold its own very well" against MIT and Stanford? Take Stanford, for example. According to the NY Times, Stanford wins 95% of cross-admit battles against Berkeley and Berkeley is a better school than Michigan. </p>
<p>RML says that his friend chose Michigan over Stanford (only) because of better programs and prestige. But that makes no sense because Stanford has superior programs and much higher prestige, especially in Asia where his friend comes from. There must have been some other compelling reason. Maybe his friend wasn't offered a (prominent) spot on the Stanford swim team? Who knows?</p>
<p>That being said, I can definitely see how someone could choose Michigan over other non-Ivies such as Duke. At my high school in NYC, Duke is considered one of the most overrated schools in the country and isn't really taken seriously. As such, both Duke and Michigan are treated as backup schools for even the second-tier students. The top applicants really have no interest in either, to tell you the truth. Granted I attended arguably the most competitive NYC high school, but still.</p>
<p>That's why I lol when MyOpinion refers to Duke as the "Harvard of the South," which sounds so needy. Not only that, but the term is kind of sad considering that Harvard also wins 95% of cross-admits against Duke. The five percent who do settle for Duke are mainly those who were bribed with "merit" scholarships and ring<em>of</em>fire.</p>