The Best Universities in 1910 and 1925

[goldenboy8784]

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@bclintonk

Purely an artifact of small numbers v large numbers, my boy. If you took the stats of the top 1,650 students in Michigan’s entering class, they would outshine the credentials of the 1,650 students in Harvard’s entering class. Do the math. For the class of 2014, a full 25% of Harvard’s entering class had SAT CR+M scores below 1390, and/or ACT scores below 31. The top quartile of Michigan’s entering class–which works out to 1,624 students, awfully close to 1,650–had SAT CR+M scores of 1440 or higher, and/or ACT scores of 31 or higher. The top quartile at Michigan also had unweighted HS GPAs of 3.9 or higher, and they were all in the top 10% of their graduating class (in fact, 90% of Michigan’s entering class were). Harvard doesn’t tell us about HS GPAs, but it’s a safe bet that some were below 3.9. And 5% were not in the top 10% of their HS class.</p>

<p>Bottom line, if you exchanged the top 1,650 students in Michigan’s entering class for the 1,650 in Harvard’s, Harvard’s raw US News score would go up a bit, because statistically, looking at the things US News measures (SAT/ACT scores plus percentage in top 10% of HS class), Harvard’s entering class stats would be stronger if it had Michigan’s top 1,650 students rather than the 1,650 it’s stuck with.

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<p>Of all the arguments you’ve made on this site bclintonk, this ranks up there as one of the most inane. The strength of Harvard’s student body goes well beyond what simple statistical measures like GPAs and SAT/ACT scores could ever begin to measure. If we look past the data noise and simply look at how successful Harvard graduates are vis-a-vis Michigan alums post graduation, you will quickly see that there are perhaps 100 or so kids at U of M in any given graduating class that are “Harvard caliber”.</p>

<p>If what you were saying was true (the top 1,650 Michigan students were equivalent to the top 1,650 Harvard students), then would you agree that Michigan would be as well represented as Harvard on an absolute level at the elite professional programs and jobs especially considering U of M is 4 times larger as well? Reality begs to differ.</p>

<p>Yale Law School 2010-11
<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer;
Harvard: 80
University of Michigan: 8</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins School of Medicine 2009-10
<a href=“http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/sebin/u/p/SOMCatalog0910.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/sebin/u/p/SOMCatalog0910.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
Harvard: 39
University of Michigan: 12</p>

<p>Washington University School of Medicine:
Undergraduate Primary Institutions of Matriculating Students, 1995 – 2011
[Who</a> Chooses WU](<a href=“http://medadmissions.wustl.edu/HowtoApply/selectionprocess/Pages/WhoChoosesWU.aspx]Who”>http://medadmissions.wustl.edu/HowtoApply/selectionprocess/Pages/WhoChoosesWU.aspx)
Harvard: 88
University of Michigan: 48</p>

<p>I could go on forever but you get the point. Harvard could have a perfect 4.0 GPA range and an SAT one that ranged from just 2350-2400 if it so desired but its willing to take well-calculated institutional risks on some of the students it really wants, even if it means lowering their UNSWR selectivity index. Ranking Harvard out of the top 5 would hurt the USNWR brand a lot more than it would hurt the Harvard brand and Robert Morse knows this.</p>