Preliminary 2013 admissions data

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
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<p>A college’s acceptance rate amounts to 1.5 percent of its US News College ranking. Put otherwise, it constitutes 10 percent of the total 15 percent student selectivity criterion US News uses. </p>

<p>US News attributes the remaining 85 percent of its College Ranking score as follows: student selectivity (22.5 percent), retention (20 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), financial resources (10 percent), graduation rate performance (7.5 percent), and alumni giving (5 percent). </p>

<p>Given this calculus, a school’s lower admission rate alone will not likely have a material impact on its overall US News ranking. </p>

<p>There are also structural factors that make it difficult for a large state school to match the low acceptance rates at top private colleges. Two that readily come to mind are smaller financial aid resources for out-of-state students and the need to accept large numbers of in-state students. </p>

<p>Thus, where a top-15 private university has the financial aid resources and admission freedom to compete for top students across the country and the world, even the most prestigious state university lacks that ability.</p>

<p>As Michigan is an excellent school, all this underscores the inherent flaws in judging a large state school’s prestige primarily on the basis of its US News rankings or acceptance rate.</p>

22

<p>What is Student Selectivity?</p>

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<p>jmilton, I know that. I never said Michigan’s ranking in the USNWR is going to improve. I said its lower acceptance rate will make it more appealing to high school students.</p>

<p>But I agree that Michigan is not likely to improve its ranking significantly in the USNWR. As you point out, public universities must adhere to a certain standard of integrity when it comes to reporting data, especially faculty resources data. Furthermore, as you point out, public universities do not have resources to provide OOS students with as much money as private peers because their IS student population is attending at highly subsidized rates…at the expense of the university, not the state or the tax payer. For these reasons, public universities should not be expected to be competitive with private universities in the USNWR, which is why the USNWR rankings are completely meaningless. A public university is generally stronger than most private universities ranked 10-15 spots ahead of them.</p>

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<p>Student selectivity is defined as follows:</p>

<p>“Student selectivity (15 percent): A school’s academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the students. We factor in the admissions test scores for all enrollees who took the Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT and the Composite ACT score (50 percent of the selectivity score); the proportion of enrolled freshmen at National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes or in the top quarter at Regional Universities and Regional Colleges (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent).” See, [How</a> U.S. News Calculates Its Best Colleges Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/09/11/how-us-news-calculates-its-best-colleges-rankings?page=3]How”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/09/11/how-us-news-calculates-its-best-colleges-rankings?page=3)</p>

<p>In my second paragraph, the first item should be undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent), not “student selectivity (22.5 percent).”</p>

25

<p>Wouldn’t a lower acceptance rate mean we are taking “better” students which means our score in all sections of “Student Selectivity” will increase</p>

26

<p>Not neccessarily, it could just mean that a lot more unqualified OOS applicants are applying. Unless UMich mails out free applications to the entire country like Tulane does, its very unlikely that UMich will continue to see wild application increases each year as there simply aren’t that many qualified students around. The switch to the Common Application only boosts application numbers for a few years. I predict that Michigan’s acceptance rate will settle at about 30% by the end of the decade.</p>

<p>

That’s not a UNSWR-specific thing; society in general judges the value of an object or an institution based on how exclusive and difficult to acquire it is. After all, with regards to a university setting, its the students that a college enrolls and eventually graduates that determine the reputation of the school. The more successful they are in the real world, the more esteemed the school becomes.</p>

<p>All in all UMich has managed to stay a top 5 public university and a top 30 university overall, so its clearly doing something right.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>No it simply means more students are applying. The university already needs to accept around 15,000 to yield 5,000 freshman roughly. And it is that group, students who attend, that determine the graduation rates and retention along with the common data set information. The caliber of the yield is what is important not the number of kids accepted.</p>

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<p>But if more students apply that more to choose from. Michigan can accept the amount they want to by skimming the top third off of that group. A larger pool means a better chance to have better students in that top third. </p>

<p>I feel like the more kids that apply that means the more “better” kids apply pushing out the bottom of the class for these new highly qualified applicants (shift in IS to OOS ratio?). </p>

<p>All of the new students that are applying don’t have to be better than the current pool of applicants. But a larger number means a larger number of students at the top of that group that can push out students at the bottom of that group</p>

29

<p>

Michigan can accept whoever it wants but its the students who actually enroll at the college that will be used by USWNR to rank the university. If a bunch of kids who are targeting the Ivies apply to Michigan for the heck of it with no intention of enrolling, then they would inflate the U’s total application figures but wouldn’t really improve the school’s selectivity since these kids will turn down their offer of admission and not be part of the entering class anyway</p>

<p>That’s why its so difficult for a school to improve its undergraduate reputation. Its a zero-sum game-if Michigan starts enrolling a lot more academic superstars than in years past, then this will come at the expense of another school that typically gobbled up those high stats students before.</p>

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<p>“Not neccessarily, it could just mean that a lot more unqualified OOS applicants are applying. Unless UMich mails out free applications to the entire country like Tulane does, its very unlikely that UMich will continue to see wild application increases each year as there simply aren’t that many qualified students around.”</p>

<p>The number of highly qualified applicants is obviously finite, but that number is much larger than you realise. ± 75,000 Freshmen enrol in top 25 private universities, top 5 public universities and top 25 LACs. Those are all highly selective colleges and universities. That does not include the tens of thousands of gifted students who enrol in lesser colleges for whatever personal reasons (staying close to home, financial, special scholarships, honors colleges, athletic scholarships, “fit” etc…). In short, well over 100,000 (probably closer to 150,000) highly qualified students graduate from high school annually. And the number will grow with the mushrooming number of qualified applicant from Asia. A university like Michigan has the potential of attracting a far larger number of qualified applicants than a smaller university because it can more easily accommodate them. While a school like Harvard can only admit 2,000 students annually and is therefore considered a super reach for virtually any applicant, Michigan can admit 16,000, presenting itself as a more reasonable reach/match. As long as a top university (Michigan is regarded as a top 10 or top 15 university academically) is viewed as a “realistic reach” or a “match”/target", it has the potential of attracting a growing applicant pool until a time that it is no longer considered a “realistic reach”. That is why most top universities stop attracting larger applicant pools once they reach a certain acceptance rate. Given Michigan’s size, broad academic offerings and general appeal, it will attract a far broader range and increasing number of top applicants until it is no longer considered a reasonable reach or match. If this were not the case, Michigan would not have seen an improvement in the quality of its incoming freshmen over the years. And yet, in the last 10 years, the quality of the incoming student population has improved with the growth in applicant pool. I do not see a change in this trend for the next 3-5 years. By then, Michigan will be admitting fewer than 25% of applicants, the mid 50% ACT in the 29-33 or even 30-34 range and mid 50% SAT in the 1300-1500 range.</p>

<p>“The switch to the Common Application only boosts application numbers for a few years. I predict that Michigan’s acceptance rate will settle at about 30% by the end of the decade.”</p>

<p>Michigan is going to breach the 30% mark either this year, or next year. By 2017 (the University’s bicentennial), the university’s acceptance rate will be under 25%. By the end of the decade, the University’s acceptance rate could well be in the teens.</p>

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<p>Michigan’s entering class stats have definitely crept upward along with its increased applications and lower acceptance rates over the last few admissions cycles. I do think better FA for OOS students will be a key factor in determining whether that upward trajectory continues. I am impressed with the university’s overall financial strength, but whether it can carve out enough resources to make attendance attractive to enough highly qualified OOS admits as the percentage of OOS students in the applicant and admit pools rises remains a major question.</p>

<p>Another big question–and again, this is ultimately a financial question–is whether the university can improve its s/f ratio and its ratio of small to large classes. It does much better than most publics on this score, but the number of large classes is still a concern to many OOS students choosing between Michigan and top private colleges and universities.</p>

<p>I say this as the father of a (double-legacy) OOS daughter who was recently accepted to Michigan EA. She loves and deeply respects the school and absolutely adores the town, and can see herself having a happy and successful undergraduate experience there, but she is also drawn to top LACs with lower s/f ratios, more small classes, and almost no large ones. Michigan is currently her top choice but it may not remain there once the LAC acceptances start to roll in. She is aware of Michigan’s “learning communities” which seek to emulate some of the benefits of a smaller and more intimate learning environment while still drawing on the strengths of a major research university, but she’s still not completely sold on the equivalence with a LAC-type environment, and she’s somewhat concerned that a large university will ultimately dump her into more large-lecture classes than she cares to be part of. (For the same reason she’s generally skeptical of private research universities, which are generally not nearly as good as advertised on this score). Time will tell where else she’s admitted and what she decides, but I don’t think her concerns are atypical.</p>

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<p>Actually bclintonk, there is nothing wrong with Michigan’s s/f ratio. The reason it seems higher than its peers is because most of Michigan’s peers are private elites such as Cornell, Northwestern and Penn. The reason why Michigan’s ratio stands at 15:1 while Cornell, NU and Penn and most private elites stand at 6:1-9:1 is because Michigan includes 10,000 graduate students in their calculation, while the private elites only include undergraduate students. If private universities calculated their ratios as Michigan does, their ratio would usually be in the 11:1-12:1 range.</p>

<p>As for class size, Michigan is not that different from most of its peers. Michigan does not load its curriculum with hundreds of seminar classes as most other universities. If it did, it too would have an impressive 70%:10% ratio of classes with fewer than 20 and greater than 50 students. Those seminars are certainly fun, but they do not add much to the academic experience. Most of the people I know who attended universities will required freshmen seminars thought the requirement was pointless, if not a cumbersome hassle. I compared class sizes for similar classes with friends who attended several private peers, and sat in on several undergraduate classes at Cornell personally, and classes were simply not noticeable larger at Michigan. Speaking of Cornell, it is one of the few private universities that does not “game” the class size data by flooding its curriculum with useless seminars. Some universities are so desperate to make class size stats look impressive that they actually split lectures into smaller lectures taught by the same professor. Instead of having one lecture with 130 students, you have three with 40-45 students each. </p>

<p>At Michigan, I was amazed at how intimate classes were in most majors. The advanced Mathematics and Physics classes I took seldom had more than 10 or 15 students, and they were always taught by super star faculty. I hear advanced classes in the humanities (like the Classics and Philosophy) are similar in size. Obviously, popular majors, such as Biology, Economics, English, History, Political Science and Psychology have large-ish classes, even at the advanced levels, but that is the same at private universities given the popularity of those majors. </p>

<p>You mentioned LACs in your post. Comparing Michigan, or any research-intensive university that spends more than $300 million in research annually, to a LAC is pointless. The benefits that a LAC offers are beyond contestation, so are the drawbacks of attending such institutions vas-a-vis far more well rounded research institutions.</p>

<p>In short, Michigan has the quality and resources to provide the best possible undergraduate experience. HYPSM are in a league of their own of course, but most other elite universities offer similar opportunities as Michigan.</p>

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<p>My son is a freshman at Michigan now and loves it. He definitely prefers the intimacy of a small class and had concerns going in about the size of Michigan. Two of his classes last term were 20 students and they were his favorite classes - English and Biology. His other classes were large, however, he said sometimes it’s nice to blend in with the crowd. This term he does not have a class with more than 30 students - they are all relatively small classes. </p>

<p>The opportunities my son is offered at Michigan are mind boggling - the internships, jobs, career planning, clubs, speakers. It’s obvious that Michigan is a world class university, attracting the leaders from and employers in every field. Yes, it’s very expensive out of state tuition for us, but we don’t live in a state with any super strong universities, so it was an easy decision.</p>

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<p>

Do you have proof to back this up Alexandre? All universities are expected to conform to the same standards that are laid out by the CDS. Violation of these standards represent a serious breach of integrity which should be of tantamout imporantance to an institution of higher education.</p>

<p>

Alexandre, most freshman seminars are intended to be a bridge for 1st year students to transition from high school to college in a more controlled manner. I can only speak about my experience at Duke but most of the freshman seminars there are taught by world-class professors and are capped at 15 students so they are all intimate learning experiences.</p>

<p>[Duke</a> University | Trinity College of Arts & Sciences : First-Year Seminars Program](<a href=“http://trinity.duke.edu/first-year-seminars-program]Duke”>http://trinity.duke.edu/first-year-seminars-program)
[Duke</a> University | Trinity College of Arts & Sciences : Spring 2013 Seminars](<a href=“http://trinity.duke.edu/first-year-seminars-program/spring-2013-seminars]Duke”>http://trinity.duke.edu/first-year-seminars-program/spring-2013-seminars)</p>

<p>The fantastic thing about these seminars is that they are truly interdisciplinary and their content cuts across a number of main areas of study, allowing the student to better apply to content to real-world situations.</p>

<p>For a school its size, if UMich is not offerings its undergraduates thousands of seminars to choose from, its seriously doing them a disservice. Most freshman classes will be a large and a seminar allows a 1st year to have a small-group learning experience and form a meaningful relationship between his/her professors and peers.</p>

<p>

This seems less like desparation and more like improving the undergraduate experience. How can a reduction of class sizes ever be seen as anything besides helpful to the students enrolled? You can argue that its an inefficient utilization of resources but clearly schools like Duke and UChicago that are rolling in money have the leeway to misallocate resources to benefit their undergraduate population.</p>

<p>

Very few undergraduates are interested in subjects like Math, Physics, Classics, and Philosophy so their undergraduate class sizes will be small regardless of whether we are talking about a public college, a private school, or an LAC.</p>

<p>

I strongly disagree here. One of the reasons I chose Duke over Michigan was its impressive array of specific fellowships and programs to support undergraduate research, scholarship, and community service. Michigan’s UROP program didn’t offer anywhere near the amount of structure or intimacy I was looking for. This is where the top 10 private schools excel as they are able to offer programs like these:</p>

<p>Preparation to become a Physician Scientist
[Overview[/url</a>]</p>

<p>Mathematics Research Preparation for a PhD
[url=<a href=“http://www.math.duke.edu/vigre/pruv/]PRUV*”>http://www.math.duke.edu/vigre/pruv/]PRUV*</a> Fellowships](<a href=“http://howardhughes.trinity.duke.edu/overview]Overview[/url”>http://howardhughes.trinity.duke.edu/overview)</p>

<p>Funding for Arts-Centered Projects
[Duke</a> University | Undergraduate Research: Benenson Awards in the Arts](<a href=“http://undergraduateresearch.duke.edu/programs/benenson]Duke”>http://undergraduateresearch.duke.edu/programs/benenson)</p>

<p>Structured Civic Engagement Program
[Duke</a> Engage : Home](<a href=“http://dukeengage.duke.edu/]Duke”>http://dukeengage.duke.edu/)</p>

<p>Intensive Summer Research in Engineering
[Pratt</a> Research Fellows Program | Duke Pratt School of Engineering](<a href=“http://www.pratt.duke.edu/undergrad/students/research-fellows]Pratt”>Pratt Research Fellows Program | Duke Pratt School of Engineering)</p>

<p>The list could go on and on but you get the idea. All of these experiences would put an interested student in a cohort of 5-10 likeminded peers led by top-notch faculty to conduct research in a very structured program.</p>

<p>All in all, I think you misjudge private schools far too much Alexandre. They choose to focus more on undergraduates while public schools serve a much larger constituency-different strokes for different folks I suppose.</p>

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<p>“Do you have proof to back this up Alexandre? All universities are expected to conform to the same standards that are laid out by the CDS. Violation of these standards represent a serious breach of integrity which should be of tantamout importance to an institution of higher education.”</p>

<p>I agree. I have said it all along. Duke and most private universities have no integrity when it comes to reporting data that determine their ranking. They lie and cheat to get ahead. Without such lies, most private elites would not be able to separate themselves from top public universities. Cal, Michigan, UCLA, UNC and UVa would all be ranked in the top 20. And it does not take much to prove it in the case of the student to faculty ratio.</p>

<p>Duke’s student to faculty ratio is measured using 6,664 students. According to the same CDS, Duke has 6,680 undergraduate students. In other words, Duke does not even include all of its undergraduate students, and none of its close to 9,000 graduate students. Naturally, many of Duke’s graduate students are enrolled in programs that do not offer undergraduate programs, such as the Business, Law and Medical schools. But I am sure there are thousands of graduate students who are enrolled in programs such as the Arts an Sciences, Public Affairs, Engineering etc…, that are open to undergraduate students. (see sections B and I of Duke CDS for exact details)</p>

<p><a href=“http://ir.provost.duke.edu/facts/cds/Duke%20CDS_2011-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://ir.provost.duke.edu/facts/cds/Duke%20CDS_2011-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Northwestern has 8,475 undergraduate students and 11,493 graduate students. And yet, they only include 8,438 (again, fewer than the total undergraduate population) when calculating their student to faculty ratio. As usually, sections B and I contain all the information you need.</p>

<p>[Common</a> Data Set, University Enrollment - Northwestern University](<a href=“http://enrollment.northwestern.edu/common-data/]Common”>http://enrollment.northwestern.edu/common-data/)</p>

<p>Penn has 9779 undergraduate students, and 10,100 graduate students. And yet, they only include 9,604 students in their student to faculty ratio. Again, this can be verified in sections B and I of the CDS.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.upenn.edu/ir/Common%20Data%20Set/UPenn%20Common%20Data%20Set%202011-12.pdf[/url]”>http://www.upenn.edu/ir/Common%20Data%20Set/UPenn%20Common%20Data%20Set%202011-12.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Arguably the worst culprit is Caltech, because virtually 100% of Caltech graduate students are enrolled in departments that enrol undergraduate students. Caltech has 967 undergraduate students and 1,208 graduate students. And yet, only 967 students are used to calculate their student to faculty ratio. At least they use 100% of their undergraduate students. But without including graduate students, Caltech has an impressive 3:1 ratio, while if you include their graduate students, that ratio would be 7:1. Still impressive, but not quite as impressive as 3:1. </p>

<p>Columbia does not have a CDS, but I would love to see how they calculate their student to faculty ratio!</p>

<p>And it does not stop there. Cornell, Harvard, Stanford all calculate student to faculty ratios the same way. Among private elites, only Brown and MIT seem to include graduate students in their s:f ratios. </p>

<p>Michigan, in the other hand, has 27,979 undergraduate students and 15,447 graduate students. When it calculates it student to faculty ratio, Michigan includes 36,738 students (9,000 more than its total undergraduate student population). Michigan does not include 6,000 graduate students who are enrolled in graduate-only programs such as Public Health (991), Law (1,165), Medicine (1,229), Information (432) and Social Work (662), other programs that are purely graduate (484).</p>

<p><a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning;

<p>Still think I misjudge private schools goldenboy? You will have to forgive me if I do. I guess the deeds of CMC, Emory and GWU, along with the across-the-board blatant misreporting of faculty to student ratios have made me a cynic. Private universities do not choose to focus more on undergraduates, they choose to lie. It is a myth that private universities focus more on undergraduates. It is complete BS! I just happen to know it. Your propaganda won’t work. Members of the academic community and most of the intellectual elites know the truth. Soon, private universities will be exposed for their practices.</p>

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<p>“This seems less like desparation and more like improving the undergraduate experience. How can a reduction of class sizes ever be seen as anything besides helpful to the students enrolled? You can argue that its an inefficient utilization of resources but clearly schools like Duke and UChicago that are rolling in money have the leeway to misallocate resources to benefit their undergraduate population.”</p>

<p>Huh? Goldenboy, are you being intentionally obtuse? Those lectures are not being spilt into smaller lectures taught by different faculty members or by the same faculty member but in different semesters. They are being split into smaller lectures taught by the same professor and in the same semester. The classes may be smaller, but the professor is still teacher all of the students enrolled in all of her/his lectures. In other words, those students are not benefiting one bit from being in a smaller class. Whether all the students are taught in the same classroom or in three separate classrooms, that professor can only handle a certain number of students before personal attention flies out the window!</p>

<p>Again, I am not misjudging private universities, I am merely pointing out their lack of integrity. They manipulate data to give high school students and their parents a false sense of “intimacy” and “personal attention”. If they only knew that they could get as much personal attention and intimacy at a flagship public university, they would probably not bother attending private elites.</p>

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<p>“Very few undergraduates are interested in subjects like Math, Physics, Classics, and Philosophy so their undergraduate class sizes will be small regardless of whether we are talking about a public college, a private school, or an LAC.”</p>

<p>This is partially true. I would not go so far as to say that “very few” undergrads are interested in such subjects. Roughly half the students at Michigan are enrolled in programs that have 100 or fewer students per graduating class. That includes majors such s African Studies, Anthropology, Architecture, Art and Design, Chemistry, Classics, most Engineering majors, History, all languages, Mathematics, Physics, Sociology etc…In fact the majority of majors at Michigan have anywhere for 10-130 students per graduating class. Only Biology and Life Sciences, Business, Economics, English, Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Political Science and Psychology have a large number of students enrolled in them. Those combined make up less than 40% of the undergraduate student body. The remaining students are part of very small departments and usually benefit from very smaller classes. Students enrolled in popular majors at Michigan have similar conditions as students enrolled in those majors at private universities. That is definitely the case with Economics as I extensively compared notes with friends who major in Econ at Chicago, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn and Stanford.</p>

<p>Again, I do not misjudge private universities.</p>

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<p>“Alexandre, most freshman seminars are intended to be a bridge for 1st year students to transition from high school to college in a more controlled manner. I can only speak about my experience at Duke but most of the freshman seminars there are taught by world-class professors and are capped at 15 students so they are all intimate learning experiences.”</p>

<p>I read this in a brochure somewhere! Propaganda again eh? Seminars can certainly be great. I do not doubt that several serve a purpose. The majority of them, however, are only in existence to lower the student to faculty ratio. If the USNWR dropped class size from its rankings, those private universities will do away with most of their seminars.</p>

<p>“For a school its size, if UMich is not offerings its undergraduates thousands of seminars to choose from, its seriously doing them a disservice. Most freshman classes will be a large and a seminar allows a 1st year to have a small-group learning experience and form a meaningful relationship between his/her professors and peers.”</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think seminars have their purpose. Heck, Michigan is the first US university to have used that method of teaching and still does so today. But universities now are abusing them, offering undergrads gimmick seminars simply to pad their numbers. I was browsing through several seminar topics at several private universities, and the content of many of those seminars was pathetic. Students enrolled in those classes have often questioned the purpose of those seminars. They did not befriend the professors and they did not learn much. As for interacting with peers, that can be done in virtually any class and social setting at university. Most classes offer students smaller discussion groups and copious team projects. Seminars do not facilitate that process.</p>

<p>I guess professors at private elites are Gods! They manage to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for their research, conduct the research, write papers and articles, enhance their reputation to warrant the distinction of being “a world class professor” (as you put it), advise a handful of doctoral students, teach graduate students…and on top of all that, manage to teach undergrads in an intimate atmosphere, taking the time to befriend them and take personal care of them. Oh, and on top of all that, they manage to also teach seminars! Wow, those professors truly are herculean! At Michigan, our professors are admittedly a lot less dynamic…but at least they are world class and take their teaching duties very seriously. Unfortunately, they will not befriend underclassmen by the hundreds as they apparently do at Duke and other private elites; they will typically only befriend upperclassmen who take their advanced undergraduate classes seriously. They will not be asked to teach gimmicky seminars as they already teach legitimate courses. At the end of their education, undergrads will not have befriended dozens of professors, but they will have befriended a handful within their major.</p>

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<p>

Come on Alexandre, Duke excludes 2/3 of its part-time students from the CDS as the form instructs the school to do so. Its clearly following the directions outlined here.</p>

<p>Here’s the quote directly from the document:</p>

<p>Report the Fall 2011 ratio of full-time equivalent students (full-time plus 1/3 part time) to full-time equivalent instructional faculty (full time plus 1/3 part time). In the ratio calculations, exclude both faculty and students in stand-alone graduate or professional programs such as medicine, law, veterinary, dentistry, social work, business, or public health in which faculty teach virtually only graduate-level students. Do not count
undergraduate or graduate student teaching assistants as faculty.</p>

<p>Duke had 6,657 full-time undergraduates and 23 part-time undergraduates in the Fall of 2011. According to the formula above, it would use 6,657+(1/3)*23 in the calculation which yields 6,664 exactly when you round down. There’s no discrepancy here.</p>

<p>As far as instructional faculty goes, Duke has 1,173 and if you subtract the 258 that are instructors in stand-alone graduate/professional programs, you get 915 total. Dividing 6664 by 915 yields us a 7/1 student to faculty ratio rounded down. Again, there’s no discrepancy here.</p>

<p>

LOL, why in the world would Duke count these graduate students as part of their overall undergraduate population? These graduate students aren’t enrolled in the same classes as undergraduates and they have a completely different curriculum to adhere to. A professor is capable of teaching one or two undergraduate classes as well as one small graduate section without sacrificing the personal attention he gives to each set of students. Professors are very efficient people who have been teaching classes for decades so they know how to manage their time well.</p>

<p>Alexandre, if we count graduate students as part of our overall total student figure, then we most count graduate students as faculty as well since they teach discussion sections. Would you be ok with that proposal? This would basically cancel out the extra number of students and faculty anyway.</p>

<p>

Alexandre, I disagree with the way you choose to include graduate students in the student to faculty ratio. The CDS never specifically states that you have to include doctoral students in Engineering and the Arts & Sciences as part of the overall student to faculty ratio and rightfully so. My time in an undergraduate classroom with other 18 year-olds plus my professor isn’t diminished by the fact that there are a few other doctoral students the faculty member also advises outside the classroom.</p>

<p>Faculty members have social lives in addition to all these duties. Its their choice how involved they want to be with their undergraduates, their graduates, or both. Since we can’t make generalizations among professors we don’t know, we must assume they can handle all the responsibilities on their plate.</p>

<p>

So, what’s your point? Having smaller classes facilitates more engaging discussions amongst all participants and holds the students more responsible for completing their required readings and problem sets. Its tough to enforce the same level of personal responsibility in classes with over 100 students where those enrolled can easily slip through the cracks and not show up to class and participate.</p>

<p>

Now we’re talking about class sizes so your point here is absurd. In the classroom setting, having fewer students allows that professor to spend a lot more time answering individual questions that students might have or going over additional material.</p>

<p>Are you seriously contesting that splitting a 2 hour lecture with 150 students into 3 sections of 50 students for the same 2 hour span is not beneficial to the student? That is utterly preposterous!</p>

<p>

It would take more than a few misrepresentations in the CDS to lift those 5 publics into the top 20. Whether you like it or not, universities like Wash U, Rice, CMU, Georgetown, and Vanderbilt attract stronger students than all those schools besides Berkeley.</p>

<p>It may not be fair but there’s not much you or I can do to change the infatuation with private universities that middle-class adults and their children have in the U.S.A. No one sees a UNC degree as being on par with Wash U.</p>

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<p>It is pointless to debate with you golden boy, because you lack integrity. I am going to keep your post because it shows have morally ambiguous you are. You actually think it is ok for a university to fudge numbers. The whole point of measuring a s:f ratio is to establish how many students the faculty who teaches undergrads are engaged in teaching/advising. That includes graduate students as they take much of the time of faculty. If Michigan used the same method to measure student:faculty ratio, its ratio would be 11:1, not 15:1. But omitting graduate students from the calculation is misleading as they exhaust much of the faculty’s time and energy. Regardless of where you stand, it is clear that Cal, Michigan, UVa etc… do not measure their student to faculty ratios the same was as the majority of private universities (with the exception of Brown and MIT). So comparing their ratios is pointless.</p>

<p>“Are you seriously contesting that splitting a 2 hour lecture with 150 students into 3 sections of 50 students for the same 2 hour span is not beneficial to the student? That is utterly preposterous!”</p>

<p>I most certainly am contesting it. A class with 40 or 50 students is not going to be intimate. Once a class has more than 15 or 20 students, the professor can no longer approach students individually. Furthermore, whether in a setting of 50 students or 150 students, that professor must still teach 150 students. There is no way that professor can provide the students, whether 50 at a time or all of them at once, with the individual attention you profess exists in such a scenario.</p>

<p>“It would take more than a few misrepresentations in the CDS to lift those 5 publics into the top 20.”</p>

<p>It would indeed. But there are not simply a few. Private universities seem to lie about admissions data as well. Until an audit is carried out on all universities, private and public, selectivity data is no longer a reliable variable. And do not get me started with financial resources. The accounting loopholes used by many private universities are simply ghastly! And alumni donating rates? Possibly the most laughable variable available. Adjusted for fairness, accuracy and consistency, I have no doubt that Cal would be ranked between #6 and #9 and Michigan between #10 and #17.</p>

<p>“Whether you like it or not, universities like Wash U, Rice, CMU, Georgetown, and Vanderbilt attract stronger students than all those schools besides Berkeley.”</p>

<p>Michigan and UVa have similar student quality as Cal. And most elite private universities, including the ones you listed above, do not have significantly stronger student bodies. Again, until the numbers are properly audited for accuracy and consistency, we cannot truly discuss this topic.</p>

<p>“It may not be fair but there’s not much you or I can do to change the infatuation with private universities that middle-class adults and their children have in the U.S.A. No one sees a UNC degree as being on par with Wash U.”</p>

<p>I am not sure how you came to that conclusion. I find this comment rather pathetic actually. I would say that a degree from UNC is as respected as a degree from WUSTL by many Americans, and on average, certainly by Americans with the power to accept applicants from those institutions into graduate school or to hire graduates from those institutions into the workplace. I do agree, however, that to some middle class folks who are not knowledgeable about universities and therefore depend entirely on the USNWR for information, WUSTL would be considered better than UNC, but only slightly. But the majority of highly educated people would not distinguish between UNC and WUSTL.</p>