Trying to decide between Michigan, Stanford and Duke(PLEASE HELP!)

College Search & Selection
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<p>“^No, I mean that I don’t agree with your college ranking system which consists of HYPSM and then the next 20-25 schools in a two-tier system. I think there are multiple tiers within the next group of schools that are not HYPSM.”</p>

<p>Actually, ring<em>of</em>fire, I think the next “tier” after the top 5 is made up of 17 schools, not 20-25. This said, I don’t think there is a big difference between tiers. </p>

<p>“Schools like Duke, Dartmouth and Penn are on a different level than schools like UCLA, Boston College, USC and Michigan.”</p>

<p>Like I said, we are all entitled to our opinion.</p>

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<p>The PA of Michigan and Duke are equal at 4.4 at USWR. Looks like a peer to me.</p>

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<p>What do you expect from a person who:</p>

<p>1) Insinuates that Duke is on par with Harvard
2) Claims that Duke is clearly better than Brown, Cal, Chicago, Cornell, JHU and Northwestern
3) States that Rice is “not in the same league” as Duke</p>

<p>He openly expressed his genuine belief that he knows more about universities than CEO’s of global companies such as Paribas and Goldman Sachs, Economics professors at leading programs such as Chicago, Columbia and Penn and the members of the Peer Assessment Survey (which is made up of university presidents and deans of undergraduate admissions).</p>

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<p>I know this type Alexandre. Strictly into prestige. Probably grew up in a wealthy suburb and thinks that a top public school is beneath his abilities. At the same time, frustrated he wasn’t good enough to get into a top 5 school. So what does he do? All you have to do is read post after post. Luckily, I learned how to use the ignore feature located “under my control panel” at the top of this website.</p>

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  1. I definitely don’t believe this to be true at the undergraduate or graduate level. Don’t put words in my mouth. HYPSM are the top 5 schools in the country.</p>

<p>2) Duke and Chicago are peer schools with regards to undergraduate quality. I do believe that both of these schools are superior to the rest for various reasons at the undergraduate level but do think that the “institutional prestige” of all these schools are similar.</p>

<p>3) Duke is better than Rice. Period. This is not up for debate in my eyes. I suppose you’re entitled to your opinion.</p>

<p>I do know more about universities than old men who are in senior leadership positions in companies. I have gone through the process recently and have a plethora of testimonials of RECENT college students/grads to support my beliefs. My knowledge of American universities is quite vast. Most academics and business leaders are far removed from their last college class and are involved in many serious matters to be concerned with keeping track of institutional prestige changes among America’s colleges.</p>

<p>The PA is a joke IMHO and I am more knowledgeable than most of these US presidents of universities such as Mr. Machen at Florida and the Clemson man. The Peer Assessment score is slowly starting to be revealed for the fraud that it is.</p>

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<p>and he typed this with a straight face… LOL.</p>

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<p>It sounds like he was stomping on his feet as he typed it too. What a rant!</p>

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<p>“For undergrad, Michigan is a fringe top 25 school and is not by any shape or form comparable to Duke, unless you concede that all colleges from Harvard to NYU are essentially the same, which is fine as well.”</p>

<p>Ring<em>of</em>fire, for your statement above to work, you must either believe that Duke is at least as good as Harvard or that you believe that NYU is clearly better than Michigan. So, either you have no sense of logic and makecomments without thinking or you genuinely believe that Duke is equal to Harvard. </p>

<p>“Duke is clearly better than Brown, Cornell, Cal, John Hopkins and Northwestern.”</p>

<p>This was posted by you a mere 48 hours ago on the Undergraduate BME and Mathematics thread (post 39). </p>

<p>As for Rice, the words you used were “not in the same league”. It is one thing to be better, it is another to not be in the same league. For example, Roger Federer is a better tennis player than Andy Murray, but they are both in the same league. As much as you may wish it otherwise, a university that is only arguably among the top 10 in the US, like Duke, is not in the different league from a university that is definitely ranked among the top 25, like Rice. Those universities are very much in the same league. </p>

<p>In short, my post above was entirely accurate. I did not put words in your mouth, I merely provided you with the rope for you to hang yourself.</p>

<p>Oh, and by the way ring<em>of</em>fire, you need to learn humility. It is good to be confident, but to believe that you know more about a topic as deep, broad and substantial as education and universities than men and women who have decades of experience over you, is unhealthy and disrespectful. You are in essence saying that you are wiser and smarter than they are. Just because you went through college more recently does not make you a better judge of academic institutions, any more than being a new employee at a Management Consulting firm is not going to make you a more knowledgeable or able consultant than senior partners. There is a reason why people are made CEOs of companies and presidents of universities. There is an intangible quality to time that must be lived through to understand.</p>

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<p>Not necessarily. I think he’s saying that the difference between NYU and Michigan is either less than or equal to the difference between Michigan and Duke, which is the difference between Duke and Harvard. Not that I agree with this line of reasoning, because the question becomes where do you stop, but I understand his point.</p>

<p>Alexandre, even though ring<em>of</em>fire should learn humility, it’s for a different reason all together. I think for someone who has spent a lot of time on CC (and the traits that come with that :)) you can learn enough about colleges to have a very strong opinion about them. Also, I wouldn’t necessarily look to CEOs to determine which schools are the best, and as ring<em>of</em>fire pointed out, you really don’t know what these Presidents honestly think. While I wouldn’t go so far that I know more than they do, I’d say I know enough to disagree or reject a person, or even a group’s belief about a college if I feel strongly about it-regardless of how long they’ve been around.</p>

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<p>i didn’t read all the replies. in cases like this i say to choose one of to cheaper OOS options (in your case, i would chose stanford). you only have the chance at this scholarship now. if things don’twork out you can always transfer to your instate school (michigan.)</p>

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<p>I bet he thinks Duke is as good as Stanford too Morsmordre. Duke is not clearly better than any of the top 20 or so schools after HYPSM. If it were considered so, it’s PA at USNWR would be higher. Alexandre got it right with his assumption. The comment he quoted was basically saying that Duke is as good as Harvard, if Michigan were as good as Duke. Well, academically Michigan is as good as Duke. Harvard however, is a step above both.</p>

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<p>I agree with you MikeWozowski. Stanford should be the choice. If the OP dislikes it after a year, he can always transfer back to Michigan.</p>

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Look, where do you draw the line? You arbitrarily claim that there are 20 or so schools besides HYPSM that belong in the same tier. By neglecting to account for clear differences within this tier, you are misrepresenting the quality of these schools.</p>

<p>If Michigan is as good as Duke, then why aren’t both these schools as good as Harvard? What makes HYPSM so special? With regards to selectivity, student body stregth and undergraduate focus, Duke is much closer to Harvard than Michigan is to Duke.</p>

<p>Basically, you and Alex are trying to devise a clever way to make Michigan appear like a better school than it really is. </p>

<p>What are both of you going to say next year when Michigan ranks at about #30 on USNews and its PA score drops below Duke?:wink: Believe me, that day is coming.</p>

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<p>Hmm…at least as far as prestigious faculty awards/memberships (NAS, NAE, and AAAS) go, JHU, Cal, Michigan, and Northwestern are better than Duke. I am sure Duke is better in some ways. But to be “clearly better”, the school got to be better in all major categories. That’s where the line should be drawn, IMHO. Maybe the clear edge in prestige can override this line but that only applies to HYPSM.</p>

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<p>“Look, where do you draw the line? You arbitrarily claim that there are 20 or so schools besides HYPSM that belong in the same tier. By neglecting to account for clear differences within this tier, you are misrepresenting the quality of these schools.”</p>

<p>It is you are are misrepresenting the quality of these schools. Rice “is not in the same league” as Duke? Duke is “clearly better” than Brown, Cal, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern?</p>

<p>“If Michigan is as good as Duke, then why aren’t both these schools as good as Harvard? What makes HYPSM so special? With regards to selectivity, student body stregth and undergraduate focus, Duke is much closer to Harvard than Michigan is to Duke.”</p>

<p>What makes HYPSM so special? Gee, let me see? They each produced over 40 nobel prize winners? They are all ranked in the top 10 in virtually every field? Their peer assessment score is either 4.8 or 4.9/5.0? Their endowment is over $10 billion.</p>

<p>“Basically, you and Alex are trying to devise a clever way to make Michigan appear like a better school than it really is.”</p>

<p>Really? I have compared Michigan to UT-Austin and UIUC and Wisconsin-Madison as often as I have compared to Cal, Cornell, Northwestern and Penn.</p>

<p>“What are both of you going to say next year when Michigan ranks at about #30 on USNews and its PA score drops below Duke? Believe me, that day is coming.”</p>

<p>I couldn’t care less about what the USNWR does. And personally, the lower it ranks Michigan, the less credibility it will have. As for PA, the day Michigan’s PA drops to 0.3 points lower than Duke, I will admit that Duke is a better university. As long as those two schools have similar PAs, they are equal as far as I am concerned.</p>

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<p>“Actually, ring<em>of</em>fire, I think the next “tier” after the top 5 is made up of 17 schools…”</p>

<p>lol, sorry, you consider Georgetown a “third tier” school?</p>

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<p>Michigan’s PA has dropped. It’s not down at Duke’s level.</p>

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<p>Correction to above. “It’s NOW down to Duke’s level.”</p>

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I don’t understand how having a handful of faculty members who have produced high-level research improves the school’s reputation. There are very few famous academic scholars that most educated people even associate with a certain school(Friedman-Chicago, Pinker-Harvard, etc.). Anyhow, at all of these schools, the number of faculty members who have famous awards/memberships constitute less than like 1% of the school’s overall quality. What about the remaining 99% of faculty members? How do we know how acclaimed they are? What if these acclaimed professors aren’t even good professors? My best instructor at Duke was a 3rd year PhD student…I kid you not. He had a knack for teaching and the small seminar-style classroom made the class incredible overall.</p>

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They have produced a great amount of nobel prize winners because they have been around for centuries and have like a 3 century headstart on a school like Duke. Besides, these individuals constitute a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the alumni of these five schools.</p>

<p>They are ranked top 10 in most graduate departments. How does this apply to the undergraduate level? Is there clear evidence that HYPSM students do more high-level research than Duke or Penn students?</p>

<p>The PA just reinforces the status quo. University presidents have grown up knowing that Harvard and Yale were the best schools in the country so they just mark 5 every time they get the form. Does the PA score reflect reality? It’s hard to tell.</p>

<p>I don’t really understand what the endowment has to do with anything. They have a high endowment since they’ve been around since the age of dinosaurs. Does a Harvard student have some sort of special resource that Caltech or Penn students don’t have access to? Please enlighten me o wise Alexandre.</p>

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Alright, so Wisconsin and Caltech are peers? Is it so Alex?</p>

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<p>LOL. he continues.</p>