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<p>Well, this is pretty much what the whole public-v.-private argument comes down to, isn’t it? I just don’t think the bottom of the class is all that relevant. It never affected me very much as an undergrad at Michigan. I started out in the honors program in all small classes with top students, comparable to the top half or even the top quartile at the best private schools. By the time I moved into my major as an upperclassman I was taking all small, upper-level or graduate-level classes with really sharp students, in many cases grad students, with one of the top philosophy faculties in the world—better than I could have gotten at a Duke or a Stanford. And all my friends were really, really smart people, who are in fact more numerous, in absolute numbers, than at a Duke or Stanford, and not terribly difficult to find if you go looking for them. So in what way did the credentials of the bottom of the class affect me? They didn’t.</p>
<p>I also don’t think it’s all that difficult to get a great “bottom” if you limit class size to the level that most private schools do. Look, if the top quartile at Michigan and Berkeley are equivalent to the top half at Duke and Stanford (and statistically, they are), then all Michigan and Berkeley would need to do to get a “great bottom” equivalent to Duke and Stanford is cut their class size in half. And in point of fact, the student body at both Duke and Stanford is not half as large, but more like 1/4 as large as Michigan and Berkeley, so in a way I don’t think the privates are doing such a bang-up job here. Michigan and Berkeley won’t cut their class size, of course, because as public universities they have a broader educational mission, to serve not only a small number of the very best students, but a larger absolute number of students, some of whom on paper will inevitably be somewhat less impressively credentialed. But bottom line, Michigan and Berkeley are each attracting and serving twice as many “top” students as a Duke or a Stanford (do the math). I’d say the top publics are the ones accomplishing the more difficult and more impressive feat, especially given that they get punished in the USNews rankings by the fact that their educational mission includes serving a large number of students, not just the elite few.</p>