<p>In the US News World Best U 400, UMich is ranked 15.
World's</a> Best Universities: Top 400 - US News and World Report</p>
<p>But in the US News National Universities rank, U mich is ranked 29
National</a> Universities Rankings - Best College - Education - US News</p>
<p>Why is it like this?</p>
<p>because they used different methodology
In my opinion the national rank concerns more on the undergraduate education, because umich is a little big so it ranks 29; world rank concerns more on the research ability, which is the strenghth of umich</p>
<p>Different Methodologies. USNWR takes the world rankings from QS rankings directly IIRC.</p>
<p>Both rankings are very flawed. The USNWR college rankings (the one that has Michigan at #29) has an interesting methodology. The concepts are sound, but the execution is completely lacking. All the universities that do very well (top 20) in the USNWR except for MIT and Stanford, manipulate data to enhance their faculty resources, financial resources, selectivity rankings and alumni giving rates. If the data were properly reported/audited/calibrated, there would be virtually no difference in the ranking of the top universities except for HYPSM, which would seriously separate themselves from the rest of the top 20. Furthermore, top publics like Cal and Michigan would be ranked between well among the top 20 and several schools ranked between #11 and #30 would drop out of the top 30.</p>
<p>As for the QS ranking, it is also flawed as it takes international student and faculty figures too seriously and again, attempts to measure faculty resources as incorrectly as the USNWR does. The result, schools like Imperial and UCL make the top 10 in the World, while Stanford misses the top 10 and Cal does not even make the top 25.</p>
<p>
No ranking system is perfect but even if you perfectly audited and calibrated the data that USNWR receives, there’s no way Northwestern would ever drop out of the top 30 and there’s no way that Michigan could enter the top 10. Whatever problems you see with USNWR have to do directly with its methodology and not inaccurate information that the staff of the magazine receives from universities.</p>
<p>Blaming top 20 universities for “manipulating data” is a very serious accusation that has no basis whatsoever. Please provide proof of this.</p>
<p>Don’t know why you mentioned Northwestern specifically, but it’s easy to see a school like Vanderbilt jumping out of the top 30. As for Michigan ‘never’ entering the top 10, there once was a time when us news ranked Michigan - and Berkeley - ahead of schools like Dartmouth and MIT < [U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/]U.S”>U.S. News Rankings Through the Years) >. Of course, u.s. wasn’t selling as many copies to its target-east coast audience at the time, so clearly a revision in methodology was needed.</p>
<p>UMich has pretty good international appeal compared to other colleges, which makes up for the difference in rankings globally. Though from a national perspective, it does deserve around a #30 spot.</p>
<p>Where does Michigan rank with recruiters of top consulting, investment banking and leading corporations? And, where does an undergrad degree from Michigan rank with regards of acceptance into leading post-graduate programs (med, law, business).</p>
<p>All things being equal of course in terms of grades, etc. </p>
<p>Do national recruiters make their way in large numbers to Ann Arbor?</p>
<p>Don’t know much about LSA, but for BB-IB & MBB placement, Ross is very tops ~ behind Wharton/HYP. COE is also very good for consulting & more quantitative firms.</p>
<p>Your right on the money Ali. I don’t know why anybody would suspect that I would suggest that Northwestern would drop out of the top 30. Anybody who has read my posts over the years would know that I place Northwestern in the same group as Brown, Cal, Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Penn etc… </p>
<p>As for the USNWR methodology, it is intended to drop public universities out of the public eye. It has succeeded with only one demographic. Unfortunately, it is a very important demographic; high school students, many of whom worship the publication. Luckily, the USNWR will never be taken seriously by academe (including graduate school admissions committees) or corporate recruiters, most of which would fall off their chairs laughing at the suggestion that a university such as Cal or Michigan is ranked anywhere lower than the top 15 or top 20. </p>
<p>Cal is now the only public university with any hope of remaining in the top 25 for more than a year or two. UVa and UCLA will likely drop out next year or the year after that in favor of schools such as Wake Forest, USC and Tufts. In the next five years, we will watch as the USNWR tweaks its formula to drop all public universities out of the top 30, starting with Michigan and UNC next year.</p>
<p>Bottom line, ranking public universities in the top does not sell, and since the USNWR college rankings edition (just 1 of 52 editions) accounts for 25% of the magazines entire revenues. The magazine depends entirely on that one edition and will do what it takes to sell (i.e. keep the Northeast and California markets happy).</p>
<p>Let us examine some tricks some universities observe to help boost their USNWR rankings:</p>
<p>1) SAT/ACT reporting
-Superscoring SAT
-Include only the highest ACT scores</p>
<p>2) Faculty resources:
-Include only undergraduate student population in student to faculty ratio
-Break up large lectures into smaller lectures taught by the same professor</p>
<p>3) Financial resources:
-Include medical school
-Several other accounting tricks that I am not entirely clear on (fuzzy math is not my forte)</p>
<p>4) Alumni donations
-Publically humiliate alums who do not donate
-Pester alums annually to give money
-Beg alums for $5 donations and promise that those $5 will be divided into $1 donations annually for the next 5 years…and they report this one $5 donations annually for the next 5 years.</p>
<p>If public universities like Cal and Michigan did that, they too would be ranked among the top 10 nationally. Too bad our schools have integrity.</p>
<p>But the same ranking places Michigan’s and UCB’s grad schools in the top 10 in almost every program :O</p>
<p>wayneandgarth, recruiters do not approach Michigan as they do smaller private universities. Michigan is so big that recruiters divide and conquer. Most IBanks and consultings recruit heavily at Ross. Ross is one of the top hunting grounds after Wharton, Harvard and Princeton. As ali of arabia pointed out, IBanks also recruit at the CoE, but not quite as heavily and generally not for front office positions. Consulting firms recruit almost as heavily at the CoE as they do at Ross, which is impressive. </p>
<p>LSA unfortunately has a very passive career office. That may well be the university’s Achilles Heel. It would take so little for LSA to become as effective as the CoE at placing students into firms.</p>
<p>When it comes to placement into leading corporations (not including IBanks and Consulting firms) and into top graduate programs, Michigan is again very effective, and that includes LSA. </p>
<p>More Fortune 500 companies recruit at Michigan than at virtually any (if at all) other university in the nation.</p>
<p>According to a 2004 WSJ survey, as a ratio of the total student body, Michigan ranked 18th among national universities in the placement of its students into top professional programs. The WSJ did not take into account regional bias (it focused mainly on East Coast graduate programs), student body academic focus (schools with large Engineering programs and other professional programs such as Nursing, Education, Pharmacy, Architecture, etc… such as Cornell, Northwestern and Caltech did not do as well as universities where Arts and Science student populations make up a large percentage of the overall student body) etc…18th in the nation for a university like Michigan is definitely impressive.</p>
<p>Well their Engineering is the **** and that’s why I came here, so I’m happy</p>
<p>It is much more than Engineering MLDWoody. Yes, Michigan Engineering is generally regarded among the top 6 or 7 programs in the nation, second only to the likes of MIT, Cal and Stanford. It is on par with the likes of Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgia Tech and UIUC. Michigan Engineering alums went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, found companies such as Sun and Google, etc…</p>
<p>But consider that every single year:</p>
<p>1) 50+ Michigan undergrads enroll into Michigan Medical school, which is currently ranked #6 in the US. Another 50 or so enroll into other top 15 Medical schools.</p>
<p>2) Approximately 60 or so Michigan undergrads enroll into Michigan Law school, which is a consus top 10 Law school, arguably a top 5 Law school. Another 50-70 enroll into other N14 Law school, mostly into Harvard, NYU, Columbia and Northwestern.</p>
<p>3) Approximately 50 Michigan alums enrill into Ross MBA each year, which is one of the top 10 MBA programs in the nation. Another 25-30 enroll into HBS, Stanford and Wharton MBA programs and another 50 or so enroll into other top 10 MBA programs, mostly Booth and Kellogg.</p>
<p>4) Although I do not have Engineering matriculation figures, it is safe to say that annually, just as many (if not more) Michigan students are placed into Engineering graduate programs such as MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Caltech, Cal, Cornell, UIUC, Purdue, Georgia Tech etc…</p>
<p>Overall, the number of Michigan students who end up enrolling to top 10 graduate programs runs well in the hundreds (I would estimate between 400 and 600). In terms of sheer numbers, only 3 or 4 universities in the US place more students into top programs than Michigan.</p>
<p>^ Based on that WSJ ‘Feeder’ study, only Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford place more students than Michigan into programs that the WSJ selected as top 5 for grad schools ; if you take into account Engineering, Michigan could easily be one or two by the numbers alone.</p>
<p>ali - thanks - do you have a link to that study or similar?</p>
<p>< <a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights; ></p>
<p>By the numbers: </p>
<p>Harvard (358)
Yale (231)
Stanford (181)
Princeton (174)
Michigan (156)</p>
<p>I realize its more than engineering, but that is the one that I care most about</p>