Toledo 13, Michigan 10

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
121

<p>we won! :)</p>

122

<p>Finally Michigan won and will get to sing the Victors after quite a while!</p>

123

<p>See, on a quick read I didn't realize he'd already given us a ballpark number. </p>

<p>So what he is claiming is that Michigan reserves over 1,000 spots in the freshman class for rich but undeserving kids whose parents have made a special arrangement with Michigan to look the other way in return for a monetary contributions. According to him, EACH year, there are 1,000 students or more who are admitted via this special arrangement. That's quite a claim. And to think I was ready to go the mat arguing with you if you claimed it was as high as 100 freshmen a year!</p>

124

<p>

Uh, I actually got into Harvard and turned it down to go to Duke. Unlike you, I'm not a tool and I realized that Duke could provide me with similar academic opportunities and resources that Harvard could and I could have a much more well-rounded and fun college experience in the process. Like I said, I'm not bashing Michigan. I think its a top state school. You're the one who thinks Duke engineering is "mediocre".</p>

<p>People are plenty impressed when they hear I go to Duke wherever I go in the country. It definitely turns more heads than UMich does. It might not in Singapore or something, but I have no concern with what internationals think whatsoever.</p>

<p>

Again, I'm not "hurling insults". I'm merely stating facts and correcting false claims about Michigan's prowess. I'm not insecure at all about Duke. If I was insecure, like many of you on this board are about Michigan, I would never have turned down Harvard in the first place.</p>

<p>At Duke, I did well academically in all my classes. I studied abroad in Turkey for a semester and I did community service over the summer in Kenya. I'm part of a good fraternity and I go out 4 nights a week. This summer, I interned at Morgan Stanley and I will be making the switch to Consulting and will start consulting full-time for one of the Big 3 firms next year. Gee, I sure have a lot to be insecure about.:rolleyes:</p>

<p>

How does any of this even matter? Obviously Michigan has more breadth in engineering disciplines because it's a large state school. FYI, most Duke engineers go into Finance, Consulting and Med School. Less than a third actually do engineering after they graduate. All the major tech/engineering/pharmaceutical companies still recruit here though.</p>

<p>This year at the Career Fair, there were more engineering firms present than there were students that were actively pursuing those jobs. Seniors in my frat who were engineers worked at places like Google, Boeing, Microsoft, Cisco, Medtronic, etc. Do you really think engineering firms don't respect Duke when the CEOs of Cisco and Medtronic are both Duke grads?</p>

125

<p>alright dilksy I'll admit I definitely WAY OVEREXAGGERATED by about like 4000 people, but the number of kids at my high with 25-26 ACTs and 3.9-4.0 GPAs (in schedules with barely any APs with weak ECs)) that got in over some of my good friends with 31-32 ACTs and 3.9 GPAs(in loaded AP and honors schedules with far superior extracurrics) made me want to punch these mooch kids in the face, I thought something was fishy but never had any proof until many of the kids this year admitted that their parents' connections with admissions officers or knew top donors that name dropped their kid and got them into Michigan over some of my best friends, I took that personally since I see that some of my best friends worked endlessly on their dream to get into UMich only to get screwed over by kids lucky enough to know the right person that knows someone else that can just name drop them to get into the school</p>

126

<p>Ramen, like at every school, some deserving students will be denied and others, seemingly less worthy, will get in. However, it is important to remember that Michigan is one of the most selective universities in the US. It is not super-selective like HYPSM or Caltech, but it is one of the 25 or 30 most selective national research universities. According to the USNWR, which is admittedly always wrong when it comes to statistical measures, Michigan is the 19th most selective university in the nation. </p>

<p>I think a lot of those students who claim that they were admitted didn't actually get in. As an Alumni Recruiter, Michigan sends me a complete list of students admitted into Michigan from the UAE every year. Each year for the last four years, Michigan has admitted anywhere from 1-4 students from the top schools in the UAE. Those students are always shocked to hear that only 1-4 were admitted from their schools. The number of students who claim to have been admitted is closer to 10. The majority of those students lied abvout being admitted. Unless you actually saw the acceptance or saw those students taking classes at Michigan-Ann Arbor, don't be too quick to believe.</p>

127

<p>
[quote]
Obviously Michigan has more breadth in engineering disciplines because it's a large state school.

[/quote]

This is a very weak response since none of Duke's traditional engineering disciplines (chemical, civil, electrical and mechanical) are ranked. How can you claim that Duke's engineering is "highly regarded"?</p>

<p>
[quote]
This year at the Career Fair, there were more engineering firms present than there were students that were actively pursuing those jobs. Seniors in my frat who were engineers worked at places like Google, Boeing, Microsoft, Cisco, Medtronic, etc. Do you really think engineering firms don't respect Duke when the CEOs of Cisco and Medtronic are both Duke grads?

[/quote]

I presume you are not an engineer. Engineering is a very broad and diverse field. It was quite clear that many major engineering employers are not recruiting at Duke. This was debated at length at an earlier thread - UC Berkeley vs. Duke. I'll just repeat part of my responses here:</p>

<p>"As Sam Lee and others have pointed out, your Duke Career Fair reference is sorely lacking as far as engineering jobs are concerned. It's not just lacking in numbers, but it's quite clear that major engineering employers are not recruiting at Pratt ... thus Duke engineers are not recruited for the most lucrative engineering jobs. Entire industry segments are missing, for example:</p>

<p>Where are the major employers in the energy sector, like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips?
Or the chemical sector like Dow and Dupont?
Or the pharmaceutical sector like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lily?
Or the IT sector (except for IBM and Cisco) like Intel, AMD, HP, Sun Microsystems, Apple and Texas Instrument?
Where are the recruiters from the Silicon Valley?
Where are the major manufacturers like Motorola, 3M, GE and GM?
Where the Japanese and Korean companies like Sony and Samsung?</p>

<p>I can go on and on but you get the picture..."
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/536223-uc-berkeley-vs-duke-34.html#post1060733029%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/536223-uc-berkeley-vs-duke-34.html#post1060733029&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>p.s. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, graduated with a bachelor degree in business from WVU (1971), and an MBA from Indiana (1975). Chamber only attended Duke (Pratt) for a year (1967). It's quite a stretch to count him as a Duke engineering grad.</p>

128

<p>To add to what Alexandre said, candidates do not accurately know where they really fit in compared to others. You might THINK your friends were better applicants than the "mooch kids," but how do you or they know that? Have you read their essays? Seen their recommendations? Know how admissions readers consider the curriculum they took? Know when their applications were fully complete? There are many things that go into the rating of an applicant, and issues like timing can further make a difference.</p>

<p>The number of kids who successfully "buy" their way into Michigan is a lot smaller than you think.</p>

129

<p>I would expect private schools like Duke to have a much higher percentage of students whose wealthy parents bought their way onto campus. Maybe someone is projecting here?</p>

130

<p>

It is highly regarded by employers and the graduate school admissions officers because it has the Duke name attached to it. I personally don't think the strength of individual disciplines matter all that much because at the undergraduate level, it is the quality of the undergraduate education that matters since the material is more or less the same and students aren't advanced enough to do any breakthrough research. What Pratt offers is a highly personalized curriculum for students that emphasizes collaboration and flexibility to enrich one's learning with liberal arts classes. 2/3 of Duke engineers are BME and a majority of the rest plan on working for Wall Street. For those handful of Duke engineers that actually want to go onto graduate school in one of the traditional engineering fields and do high level research, the opportunities are almost endless and the faculty will bend over backwards to help this sort of rare student out.</p>

<p>This is why Yale Engineering is also underrated. There's like a crazy ratio of one engineering building, a handful of labs and an army of professors FOR EVERY ONE STUDENT that is seriously interested in pure engineering because so few of those students exist and schools like Duke and Yale are so small and have such large academic resources/endowment.</p>

<p>

  1. First of all, there is a HUGE SIZE DIFFERENCE between Michigan COE and Pratt. UMich's College of Engineering has about 1300-1400 students in any given year while Pratt's numbers fluctutate from about 300-350. Thus, the COE is almost 5 times as large. Obviously, more employers are going to be interested in coming. Duke doesn't even offer Chemical Engineering or Materials Engineering or Nuclear Engineering or whatever so why would these companies bother showing up? All the top biotech firms show up in droves because that's what Duke students are interested and Duke offers a top-notch BME department.</p>

<ol>
<li>Most Duke engineers go to Wall Street, Consulting or Med School. There simply aren't enough students interested in going the IT or manufacturing route to justify those companies showing up. Duke Engineering is much, much smaller than Michigan's COE as I've said before. If kids in Michigan's COE had as much success in Wall Street and Consulting recruitment, then as many engineering firms wouldn't show up because supply would exceed demand.</li>
</ol>

131

<p>I don't think it is possible to compare Engineering at schools like Brown, Duke or Vanderbilt and Engineering at Schools like Cornell, Michigan and Northwestern. Most Engineering students at Brown, Duke or Vanderbilt don't intend to pursue serious careers in Engineering. At schools like Cornell, Michigan and Northwestern, Engineering students chose to attend those schools precisely for their Engineering programs. Every single major IBank and MC seriously recruits at all of those schools listed above, but the vast majority of Engineering students at schools like Cornell and Michigan would rather be Engineers at cutting edge technology companies than Consultants or IBankers.</p>