<p>"57% of students at Miami are from out of state. "</p>
<p>Miami is tropical, the dominant language isn’t English, and the majority of residents aren’t from the USA, so for those reasons its like Miami isn’t really part of the United States. Instead of being a large city in the southern United States, its like the New York City of the Caribbean, and I think that explains why there are so many OOS students. One of my professors went there and said a lot of the students there are from affluent families in the Caribbean. It’s got to be an interesting place to attend for college.</p>
Southeast 5074
Mid-Atlantic 1863
Midwest 696
New England 600
West 356
Southwest 227
US abroad 160
Guam/Puerto Rico/VI 41</p>
<p>Asia 254
South America 150
Europe 135
Middle East 122
Caribbean 77
Canada 33
Mexico 25
Africa 16
Central America 13
Southeast Asia 8
Australia 4
British Virgin Islands 1</p>
<p>Miami: 27%
Other Florida: 22%
Other US: 41%
International: 11%</p>
<p>
I’m assuming you’re referencing the NRC ranking, which has the two essentially tied.</p>
<p>A lot has changed in the last decade, though, and Miami’s program is now significantly stronger through the recruitment of high-profile faculty (both tenured and adjunct) like Ellen Prager. It’s a bit difficult for Maryland to cling to superiority in marine science when it lacks expertise in two of the four primary areas of oceanographic research.</p>
<p>I just asked my D and she said so far on here floor and in a few classes she has met students from China (lots of them), Trinidad, Japan, Norway, Sweden, France, Great Britain, South Africa, and Hungary. And she is only a freshmen!</p>
<p>^
U Miami’s Fact Book. As is so often the case, it’s a wealth of information.</p>
<p>It should be added that Miami has more to offer than marine science. The communications school is highly regarded, as is the music school (particularly jazz). Miami is also one of very few schools to offer a BArch program.</p>
<p>“U Miami and U Maryland are good examples of how lower tiers of colleges are improving their competitive position.”</p>
<p>Out of thousands and thousands of colleges, what kind of perspective must you have to take two colleges ranked just outside of the top 50 and call them “lower tier”? Are you serious? These colleges are already both great institutions to all, but apparently, you? The top 20% of Both of these schools is and has been a good overlap for the “Ivy” type caliber student. The bottom 20% is WELL above average.</p>
<p>I am a strong proponent that student body quality IS a great indicator of educational quality. I am not sure why this isn’t more reflected in the rankings. ALL colleges “get” this and if you don’t believe me, try looking for the GREAT (non minority) applicant with a 1200 SAT score in the halls of Harvard, Stanford or MIT.</p>
<p>After all, out of ~170 hours in a week, you spend ~50 sleeping, 15 hours in class and the other 100+ hours interacting with the student body. And when you are in class, the first two years at large and/or elite schools is spent taking most of your classes in lecture halls with TA’s or adjuncts lecturing. Again, study groups, tutoring, water cooler (or beer tap) chats, note sharing, idea sharing, intellectual arguing, exploring different political, moral and sociological issues, “solving the worlds problems” and conjuring up the next Wal Mart or grand entrepreneurial venture: All done with other students. Most of this activity is well outside the classroom scope. In fact, a great student body will take the foundations taught in class as a basis for interaction and idea generation.</p>
<p>The idea that faculty is infinitely, or even a lot more important than student body is VERY arrogant, school-centric and in my opinion, just wrong. Many of the “best” faculty are lousy teachers.</p>
<p>Wal Mart was invented by a guy who attended Mizzou. Microsoft by a Washington State grad and a Harvard dropout. There is no pattern for who starts the next big business but Google–Umd and Umich.</p>
<p>One big downside of Miami is that they don’t meet 100% of full need. Yes, they do offer automatic tuition discounts for high testers, but even then such discount is not great for middle class families.</p>
<p>“Wal Mart was invented by a guy who attended Mizzou. Microsoft by a Washington State grad and a Harvard dropout. There is no pattern for who starts the next big business but Google–Umd and Umich.”</p>
<p>That’s great…my point is that, in general- the brighter and more talented the student body, the more varied and accomplished both the alumni and drop outs are. This IS a trend. Go to Wikipedia and look at “famous” alumni of different schools. Start with the “high SAT schools” and work down. Adjust the numbers of listed prominent alumni for school size. The trend is there and obvious. </p>
<p>Note, by trend, I am discounting “anecdotes” of college dropouts and people who went to less prestigious schools then went on to great accomplishments. Again, this is to my point though, as GREAT and SMART STUDENTS will, in general go on to great accomplishments, regardless of the school they attend. In general, the smarter students tend to aggregate at the higher ranked schools.</p>
<p>Put this way- does anyone really think that the Harvard business school transforms people to be great managers? I highly doubt that the education one receives as a Harvard MBA is much different than the education at most top 50 and deff. top 25 programs. However, the recruiters who show up to recruit on Harvard’s campus know that Harvard has pre-filtered the MBA students and no one really makes it INTO Harvard unless they are IQ smart (high GMAT) and have already shown themselves to be successful type A managers. These people would wind up as successful managers with or without Harvard. Also, MOST of the work at a program like this is hinged on a HIGH degree of team work and minimal professor interaction. Seems Harvard knows that if you assemble a lot of smart, motivated people, force them to interact and challenge them, it will culminate in the best learning experience. This is true, to a lesser degree about the undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>It is common sense to me that student body quality (SAT/GPA to a lesser degree, and overall leadership) is FAR more indicative of a school’s holistic educational experience than faculty quality.</p>
<p>My caveat is that this only holds true in undergraduate school. Non- professional Graduate school (MFA, ME, MA, MS, PhD etc) is a different story- faculty accomplishment is almost everything there.</p>
<p>What has been shown as smart kids can do well whether they go to Ivy or State U. No significant difference in earning when linked to SAT scores.</p>
<p>bclintonk’s LAC elitism is so not refreshing…Yes, the Amherst, Middleburry and Williams-educated people were so smart, they almost bundled enough Mortgage Backed Securities to destroy the economy. As bad as Midwesterners and Southeasterners fawn over State Us with huge athletic budgets, Northeasterners have a Not Educated Here arrogance that is just as repulsive.</p>
<p>Been all over the country and quite a few places in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. Guess what folks, the world your children are going into isn’t the 1960s - 1980s USA-dominated one. Brazil is about to have the globe’s fifth largest economy (with energy self-sufficiency), China makes every consumer good imaginable and the Middle East still has the most proven oil reserves. Sorry UMiami’s Freshman retention rate is .4 under 90% (maybe two more New Yorkers got home sick that year, knocking it down). Do you want a school that is focused on what your world was or one which is focused on what THEIR world will be?</p>
<p>Stanford’s SAT (vis-a-vis Harvard’s and MIT’s) is freely accessible information that anyone with half a brain can google within seconds. (Oh, by the way, who invented Google again???) Thanks for pointing this out for the umpteenth time in yet another thread entirely unrelated to Stanford.</p>
<p>What exactly do you teach, Professor? Library science 101 at the local community college?</p>
<p>“Can’t compare Stanford’s SAT with Harvard and MIT’s. Stanford’s is much lower.”</p>
<p>Professor, Stanford’s mean SAT score is 40 point slower than MIT’s and 50 points lower than Harvard’s. That’s hardly “much lower”. It is insignificantly lower. 40 or 50 points is 1 or 2 mistakes on the Math section. If a student takes the SAT once with little practice and then takes it again with much more practice, he/she will raise their SAT score, on average, by 100 points per section.</p>
<p>Stanford SAT average is lower because it admits hundreds of Division I athletes. Those athletes don’t have time to practice for the SAT 5 hours a day. They have to practice they chosen sport instead. Remove those division I athletes from the equation and Stanford’s mean SAt score jumps from 1440 to 1480.</p>