<p>Never thought I’d see anyone on this forum say that…</p>
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<p>We both know Michigan is just one of a handful of exceptions. I do agree that the ‘private > public’ rule is nonsense though (It’s even more true outside the U.S.)</p>
<p>Yes, not all publics universities are UCLA, Michigan or Berkeley; but it’s also important to remember that not all privates are Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.</p>
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<p>And neither does anyone else on the forum. But hey, who cares about consensus? Certainly not the flat-earthers.</p>
<p>^It’s not an exception. He got the numbers wrong; it’s not “similar sized” anyway you look at. Even with that 11:1 (overstated by the way, see my post above) vs 16:1, they are still not “similar size”</p>
<p>Publics are cheaper and of better values for many people. But there IS a difference between ~700 econ majors at UCLA for the class of, say, 2016 vs ~200 at places like Duke. Whether one personally thinks this difference is real is in the eyes of the beholder. But factually, they are not of similar size. Many people may overspend for the privates, but they are not so stupid to the point that they pay much more for similarly crowded classes, gym, etc.</p>
<p>Let me add a bit to the discussion by pointing out that Mich has pretty much one of the weakest ug student bodies of any top 30 school ( definitely weaker than cal or UVA). The quoted sat stats for mich are very misleading since only 34% of michigan students take sat. Majority of 80% take ACT and the results are quite low: the average is barely 29, which corresponds roughly to 1920 on sat. This is easily 300-200 points below top 20 privates and 100-150 below other top publics.</p>
<p>Obviously 50 points one way or another is no big deal, but mich really sticks out compared to its supposed peers. I found those numbers very surprising.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, it is pointless to debate this. We each have our opinions that will not alter. But NU’s s:f ratio, if calculated the way public universities do, is 11:1. That is not “overstated”, it is a fact. If you think an 11:1 ratio is outstanding while a 16:1 ratio is horrible, that’s perfectly ok. Most people would not differentiate. If you think a freshman class with 300 or 400 students is far worse than a freshman class with 200 or 300 students, again, you would be within your right to do so, but most of us couldn’t care less. (700 student classes do not exist at Michigan since there are no auditoriums that can sit more than 500, and even then, there are only a handful of such auditoriums and they are seldom used). The fact is, when comparing similar classes at Michigan and at a top private university, the difference will not be significant. I have compared notes with students who attended private universities, and it was clear that for similar classes, private universities did not offer smaller classes.</p>
<p>I also disagree with your assertion that graduate students do not command as much of the faculty’s time as undergraduate students. PhD students may not take classes beyond their second year, but they demand much time from faculty to supervise their research, collaborate on publications and advise on their thesis. To suggest that PhD students do not take up faculty time is not accurate.</p>
<p>krzysmis, I don’t know where you got your data from. For one, the average ACT at Michigan is 30, not 29. I know, I know, a 1 point difference is meaningless, but I am correcting you for the sake of accuracy. For the last two years, the mid 50% ACT range at Michigan was 28-32, and the average, it is safe to assume, is approximately 30. </p>
<p>But like I said, there is no difference between a 29 and a 30 average…or between a 30 and a 31 average. But your claim that UVA and Cal have students with stronger ACT (or SAT) averages is not accurate. UVa’s mid 50% ACT range is also 28-32. Cal’s is 28-33. Obviously, Cal and UVa do not have higher mid 50% ACT ranges than Michigan. In fact, they’s mid 50% ACT ranges are identical to Michigan’s. Brown’s mid 50% ACT range is 29-33, Cornell’s is 30-33 and Emory’s is 29-32. So even some private elites do not have significantly higher mid 50% ACT ranges than the public elites. There is a handful of private universities with impressive ACT averages (32 or 33), but the majority are more like Brown, Cornell, Emory, Georgetown etc… </p>
<p>Also, I am not sure why we are converting ACT to SAT figures. There is no official conversion, so it is best to compare SAT to SAT and ACT to ACT. 34% of Michigan’s freshmen submitted SAT results. That is by no means a trivial number. Michigan’s mean SAT is 1360 (2020 if you include the W section). UVa’s is also 1360 (2030 including the W section) and Cal’s is 1375 (2040 if you include the W section). Again, those are all identical. Most private elites have SAT means in the 1400-1450 range (2100-2180 including the W section). In other words, the top 3 publics enroll freshman classes with roughly equal standardized test averages, while most private elites have SAT averages that are anywhere from 40-90 points (80-160 if you include the W section) higher. Honestly, I am not sure where you came out with the 300 point difference. Even Harvard and Caltech’s SAT average is only 200 points higher than Cal, Michigan and UVa. But most private elites do not have have much higher SAT averages. On average, most private elites have ACT averages that ate 0-1.5 points higher than Michigan, Cal or UVa, and SAT averages that are 20-30 points higher for each section of the SAT. This is truly negligible.</p>
<p>It should be noted that elite universities with slightly lower ACT/SAT ranges and averages (including the likes of Brown, Cal, Cornell, Emory, Michigan and UVa) do not necessarily have weaker students, but rather, deemphasize standardized test scores and choose to focus on other metrics, such as GPA, high school course rigor etc…</p>
<p>As a faculty member at a major research university that has extensive graduate programs, let me confirm that graduate students take up more faculty time, on a per capita basis, than undergrads. That’s partly because graduate-level courses tend to be much smaller, so the amount of time a faculty member puts into teaching, coaching, mentoring, etc., 6 or 8 grad students is easily the equivalent of the amount of time that same faculty member would spend on a class of 20 or 50 or 100 undergrads. The most time-draining of all are Ph.D. students, because supervising a dissertation is an enormous time commitment, all for a single student. Sam Lee has the time relationship exactly backwards on this.</p>
<p>Alexandre is also absolutely right that almost all private universities exclude graduate students from their calculated S/F ratios, while almost all public universities include graduate students. The public universities’ approach is, in my opinion, the more honest and accurate calculation, but whichever method you prefer, it must be acknowledged that S/F ratios are simply not comparing apples to apples when calculated in such radically different ways.</p>
<p>^Alexandre,
I was specificly disputing your "similar-sized’ claim; since a lot of graduate students don’t take classes, the difference is therefore larger than 11:1 vs 16:1. Including bunch of PhD students that don’t take any class is masking the magnitude of the difference. Also, the way that publics calculate includes the faculty who teach only the graduate students (since they include the graduate students); when the privates exclude the grad students, they would also exclude the faculty that teach only grad students for consistency sake. Once you consider these two, I do think the difference is closer to 7:1 vs 16:1 than 11:1 vs 16:1. I have already said that this difference may not matter to some or many but it’s misleading to say they are “similar size”. </p>
<p>I do agree with you and bclintonk that the faculty do spend significant amount of time on research and the PhDs mentoring (I never said otherwise; not sure why you two put words into my mouth). But do not co-mingle the two as far as the class size goes.</p>
<p>By the way, since I am a recreational swimmer, I checked out the great facilities you mentioned about Michigan. Turns out I would be significantly worse off if I went to Michigan as far as getting my swimming workout goes. The do have a nice Olympic size pool but it’s available only to the varsity team! The rest of the 40,000 students or so are limited to share two old 25-yard pools and there are a total of only 11 lanes combined. How can that be deemed adequate is mind-blogging (my private gym near my home alone has 7 25-yard lanes and still get crowded at times). The difference between student-athletes and the rest is outrageous to me.</p>
<p>Because the whole point in having small class sizes is that the faculty are able to give the students more attention. By omitting graduate student, who are heavily demanding of faculty attention, you don’t give an accurate assessment of how much time the faculty can actually give to undergraduates. </p>
<p>How much this time from faculty to undergraduates actually matters varies on the university. At UCLA, there were only a handful of undergraduates who went to office hours on periods that weren’t midterms/finals. (That’s not very surprising. College-aged students are generally busy with a number of other responsibilities.)</p>
<p>You are confusing quantification and qualification. I see your point and you can put that on top of the math. There may not be meaningful difference between a class of 150 vs a class of 300 for the reasons you mentioned. But that doesn’t mean you can all of a sudden say the class size is 150 when it’s actually 300.</p>
<p>I am not saying top privates are better as I have already mentioned all those differences, which are meaningful to some but insignificant for others, are not free. Elite privates cost more for many people (unless there’s generous FA) and that’s why the flagship publics are of greater values and better for many.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, you are missing the point. If Michigan calculated its ratio as NU did, its ratio would be 12:1. So it is either 7:1 vs 12:1 or 11:1 vs 16:1. 7:1 vs 16:1 does not exist. </p>
<p>And while Michigan does not have 8 olympic swimming pools, we do have Michael Phelps! ;)</p>
<p>No, this is not true. The instructions on the Common Data Set say that in calculating S/F ratios, schools should exclude any faculty who teach in “stand-alone” graduate/professional programs, as well any graduate/professional students in stand-alone graduate/professional programs. So clearly law and medical students and faculty should be excluded, as well as students and faculty in graduate business schools, graduate social work programs, M.Div. programs, etc, that are not open to undergrads. But the clear implication is that in non-“stand-alone” graduate programs–e.g., Masters and/or Ph.D. programs in the sciences, engineering, humanities, and social sciences, where typically the same faculty teach both grad students and undergrads–both the graduate students and the faculty should be counted.</p>
<p>If you look at each school’s Common Data Set, you’ll see that almost all publics follow these instructions scrupulously–their S/F ratio is calculated on the basis of a number of students that far exceeds their undergrad population, i.e., grad students in non-“stand-alone” programs are counted as per the instructions. But the S/F ratio is also based on a faculty count that is less than the university’s total number of faculty, indicating that they are (most likely) properly excluding faculty who teach in stand-alone graduate/professional programs.</p>
<p>Privates do it differently. Most properly exclude faculty teaching in stand-alone grad programs, but their student count for purposes of calculating S/F ratio is almost invariably equal to their undergraduate population, i.e., they don’t include any grad students, whether in stand-alone or non-stand-alone programs. Obviously this gives them more favorable S/F ratios, and S/F ratios that can’t be compared to those of the publics because they’re not calculated the same way. I’d say the privates are flagrantly violating the CDS instructions; they’d probably say they’re just interpreting the instructions differently, but whatever, it just doesn’t give you a comparable figure.</p>
<p>A few privates take an even more aggressive approach and calculate a S/F ratio based only on their undergraduate count, then compare that to a faculty count that includes all faculty. Penn is an example of this.</p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<p>Northwestern:
Total FTE faculty: 1,392 (CDS line I-1)
FTE faculty in stand/alone grad/prof programs: 262 (CDS line I-1)
FTE faculty for S/F ratio: 1,173 (CDS line I-2)
FTE students (grad + undergrad): 19,968 (CDS line B1)
FTE undergrads: 8,472 (CDS line B1)
Students for S/F ratio: 8,438 (CDS line I-2)
S/F ratio: 7:1 (CDS line I-2)
[S/F ratio using Penn’s methodology: 6:1]</p>
<p>Michigan:
Total FTE faculty: 2,773
FTE faculty in stand/alone grad/prof programs: 446
FTE faculty for S/F ratio: 2,327
FTE students (grad + undergrad): 43,426
FTE undergrads: 27,979
Students for S/F ratio: 36,738
S/F ratio: 16:1
[S/F ratio using Northwestern’s methodology: 12:1]
[S/F ratio using Penn’s methodology: 10:1] </p>
<p>Wisconsin:
Total FTE faculty: 2,519
FTE faculty in stand/alone grad/prof programs: 395
FTE faculty for S/F ratio: 2,124
FTE students (grad + undergrad): 42,441
FTE undergrads: 30,367
Students for S/F ratio: 36,548
S/F ratio: 17:1
[S/F ratio using Northwestern’s methodology: 14:1]
[S/F ratio using Penn’s methodology: 12:1]</p>
<p>Penn
Total FTE faculty: 1,663
FTE faculty in stand/alone grad/prof programs: 0
FTE faculty for S/F ratio: 1,663
FTE students (grad + undergrad): 19,919
FTE undergrads: 9,779
Students for S/F ratio: 9,604
S/F ratio: 6:1
[S/F ratio using Michigan/Wisconsin methodology and taking at face value the claim that Penn has no stand-alone grad/professional programs: 12:1]</p>
<p>Plainly, three different methodologies at work here. Michigan and Wisconsin include large numbers of grad students for purposes of calculating S/F ratios. Northwestern and Penn exclude all grad students from that calculation. In addition, Penn includes all faculty in calculating its S/F ratio, claiming none teach in stand-alone graduate/professional programs.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I was responding to Sam Lee’s equally whimsical question that “Stanford had 2 olympic sized swimming pools, does Michigan have 8?” My own answer was not intended to be serious.</p>