<p>US News and World Report? Are you serious? You need to take a deeper dive children, so start with the Shanghai rankings and do your own research on what else is out there and what the relative criteria used by each ranking system is. Then ask yourself whether the university’s diversity of meal plans, design integrity of its gothic architecture and rejection rate really mean anything. Talk about hype - you need to take a fresh view absent university marketing hype. Honestly, US News? No wonder you are on the Michigan board.</p>
<p>bohligtomack, like I said, I do not understand what Engineering, Mathematics or Biology rankings have to do with the OP’s request. He is purely interested in liberal arts and law school. Michigan Law, which is clearly stronger than Wisconsin or UIUC, gives preference to Michigan undergrads and does not require Michigan students with 3.8+ GPAs to submit the LSAT. Those are facts, that should not be ignored. </p>
<p>As for the ARWU rankings, I am afraid Chinese rankings of American universities do not interest me, nor do British rankings of American universities. The only thing that ARWU measures is the reputation of US universities in China. Again, the OP did not ask for this. </p>
<p>Regardless of which ranking you look at however, Michigan, Wisconsin and UIUC will be roughly equal in Engineering, Mathematics and the Life Sciences. Michigan and Wisconsin are also roughly equal in the Humanities and Social Sciences, although Michigan is clearly better than UIUC in that regard. </p>
<p>I will repeat my original statement. Given the OP’s present and future academic interests, Michigan would be his best option if money is not a factor and UIUC would be the best option otherwise.</p>
<p>It is a fine choice for liberal arts and social sciences, and the speed ramp into Michigan Law is interesting, but its hardly compelling because its simply not definitive. And single-sourcing your university rankings, no matter what field you are looking into is - well, let’s just say that even at Michigan, single-sourcing your research is frowned on. Have a nice day.</p>
<p>There are other factors to consider…aside from just a route to Law school, this will be where the student spends 4 important years of their life, with all the growth and learning that goes with it. Then it stays a part of their persona for many years after. </p>
<p>For an Ill resident, UIUC is the lowest cost and a great option, but UMich has a more nationwide profile and broader atmosphere. UW is in between, and has a bit more party culture. Different kids will be attracted to each of these options. This is interesting to me because these 3 schools are often finalists for many good students from the Chicago area.</p>
<p>"You Need to Get Out More </p>
<hr>
<p>US News and World Report? Are you serious? You need to take a deeper dive children, so start with the Shanghai rankings and do your own research on what else is out there and what the relative criteria used by each ranking system is. Then ask yourself whether the university’s diversity of meal plans, design integrity of its gothic architecture and rejection rate really mean anything. Talk about hype - you need to take a fresh view absent university marketing hype. Honestly, US News? No wonder you are on the Michigan board."</p>
<p>Alexandre lives in the middle east. I’m sure he has gotten out quite a bit more than the average poster here on CC. The “children” you are addressing here are more than likely your contemporaries.</p>
<p>Yup. Pretty sure Alexandre gets out a fair amount 
He certainly seems to know where to find the best restaurants in a large number of world cities anyway!</p>
<p>OP, I will, however, echo an earlier sentiment of Alexandre’s – acquire the most cost-effective undergrad that you can if money is even remotely an issue. Law is no longer a clear ticket to financial success, and there is something of a “glut” on the market. I know several young talented lawyers who are really suffering due to their astronomical student loans from expensive schools who just can’t generate enough in terms of new billables to rationalize the loan cost!</p>
<p>So I’d be inclined to go in-state, especially when you have a strong U., unless the others offered merit to make costs comparable.</p>
<p>
This is no longer true as Dean Zeafross of Michigan Law has disbanded this program as of July of last year due to taking a lot of criticism from peer law school for trying to “game the rankings” by admitting under qualified Michigan undergrads.</p>
<p>[Law</a> Librarian Blog: RIP Michigan Law’s Wolverine Scholars Program](<a href=“http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2011/11/rip-michigan-laws-wolverine-scholars-program.html]Law”>http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2011/11/rip-michigan-laws-wolverine-scholars-program.html)</p>
<p>“The law prof blogosphere criticism didn’t stop Michigan Law but the school now has killed the Wolverine Scholars program.”</p>
<p>Some more links:</p>
<p>[The</a> Life and Death of the Michigan ‘Wolverine Scholars’ Program Above the Law: A Legal Web Site ? News, Commentary, and Opinions on Law Firms, Lawyers, Law School, Law Suits, Judges and Courts](<a href=“The Life and Death of the Michigan 'Wolverine Scholars' Program - Above the Law”>The Life and Death of the Michigan 'Wolverine Scholars' Program - Above the Law)</p>
<p>[The</a> Beginning and End of the Michigan ‘Wolverine Scholars’ Program | JD Journal](<a href=“http://www.jdjournal.com/2011/11/21/the-beginning-and-end-of-the-michigan-wolverine-scholars-program/]The”>http://www.jdjournal.com/2011/11/21/the-beginning-and-end-of-the-michigan-wolverine-scholars-program/)</p>
<p>Also Alexandre, Wolverine Scholars used to only admit 5-6 Michigan undergrads through this informal process anyway. It’s misleading and frankly dishonest on your part to suggest that any Michigan undergrad with a 3.8 could stroll right into Michigan Law. This was clearly never the case.</p>
<p>Back to original topic: go for the cheapest option available to you. Pay a premium to attend Michigan if you think it is a much better fit for you, not because it gives you some imaginary edge in law school admissions.</p>
<p>“If the OP has a 3.8 GPA at Michigan, he does not even need to submit his LSAT to Michigan Law school.”</p>
<p>Actually, Alexandre that is no longer true. That program was recently cancelled.</p>
<p>Uh. Never Mind.</p>
<p>“It’s misleading and frankly dishonest on your part to suggest that any Michigan undergrad with a 3.8 could stroll right into Michigan Law. This was clearly never the case.”</p>
<p>It’s misleading and frankly obnoxious on your part to put words in people’s mouths that we never expressed. Please quote the line where Alexandre suggested that anyone with a 3.8 would automatically get into Michigan law.</p>
<p>“It’s misleading and frankly obnoxious on your part to put words in people’s mouths that we never expressed. Please quote the line where Alexandre suggested that anyone with a 3.8 would automatically get into Michigan law.” </p>
<p>I agree completely. </p>
<p>Goldenboy if your going to make unfounded accusations of “dishonesty,” please get your jollies by trolling somewhere else. Also, your post contradicts itself. First, you say that the program was criticized for “admitting under qualified Michigan undergrads.” Then you say that only the program only “admit[ted] 5-6 Michigan undergrads” per year. That is a lot of trouble to go through to admit 5 “underqualified undergrads.” </p>
<p>In fact, you were being dishonest in making such a claim. The only complaint against the program is that by requiring a GPA higher than the average admit, the program was guaranteed to pull up GPA (although with only 5 or 6 students, it could not pull it up much), while guaranteeing not to pull down the average LSAT score because there was no LSAT score. </p>
<p>Even that problem was probably more theoretical than actual. As LSAT scores do correlate with GPA, if you have an above average GPA for your school, you are likely (although certainly not guaranteed) to have an above average LSAT score for your school.</p>
<p>I stand corrected. My information regarding the LSAT exemption for 3.8+ Michigan students was obviously outdated. It does not change the fact that law schools give preference to their own undergrads and Michigan is no exception. As such, Michigan undergrads have the edge when applying into at least one T14 Law school. </p>
<p>So, to make myself clear:
- Attending Michigan will give an applicant the edge over an applicant of equal quality from UIUC or Wisconsin when applying to Michigan law school. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>OTHO, attending Michigan (or any other elite university) will not give an applicant the edge over an applicant of equal quality from UIUC or Wisconsin when applying to other law schools. </p></li>
<li><p>Even if Michigan is stronger than UIUC in the Humanities and Social Sciences, it does not prepare students better for Law school</p></li>
<li><p>In the case of the OP, assuming he gets no FA or merit scholarship, Michigan will cost $100,000K more than UIUC over four years. If the OP’s parents are well off and money is not an issue, attending Michigan MAY be worth it. If the OP’s parents are not well off, UIUC is the way to go.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I agree with Alexandre’s recent post; I would pick Michigan over Wisconsin and UIUC even if it costed a $100K but I value being around the strongest group of students when given a chance, I like Ann Arbor and my parents are fairly well off so that amount is not that big of a deal to us.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Let me quote what Alexandre said…</p>
<p>"Michigan Law, which is clearly stronger than Wisconsin or UIUC, gives preference to Michigan undergrads and does not require Michigan students with 3.8+ GPAs to submit the LSAT. Those are facts, that should not be ignored. "</p>
<p>How else can these post be interpreted? Alexandre stated that it was a fact that Michigan students with 3.8+s don’t have to submit the LSAT and thus implied that such students would get into UM Law without taking the LSAT.</p>
<p>
Uh, how is that not gaming the ranking? U of M Law administered a program with the clear intention of manipulating the numerical variables in one direction or another and without any other institutional motive in mind.</p>
<p>
Lets use some logical reasoning skills here. You apply to the Wolverine Scholars program in your junior year I believe so a Michigan student who chooses not to take the LSAT would forfeit his/her chances at any other law school in the country besides Michigan’s Law School so he/she clearly wouldn’t have done well on the exam or wasn’t confident in the ability to do so.</p>
<p>Remember, you can get admitted to Michigan Law through the regular admissions process, so the only student who would skip the test and apply to this program is one that knew beforehand that Michigan Law was a major reach and that the Wolverines Scholars program would have been the only way for him/her to get admitted to a school of that caliber (UVA, Duke, Boalt, Penn and Northwestern).</p>
<p>"Let me quote what Alexandre said…</p>
<p>"Michigan Law, which is clearly stronger than Wisconsin or UIUC, gives preference to Michigan undergrads and does not require Michigan students with 3.8+ GPAs to submit the LSAT. Those are facts, that should not be ignored. "</p>
<p>How else can these post be interpreted? Alexandre stated that it was a fact that Michigan students with 3.8+s don’t have to submit the LSAT and thus implied that such students would get into UM Law without taking the LSAT."</p>
<p>“How else can these post be interpreted?”</p>
<p>goldenboy8784. You are a graduate of Duke University. I assume you are a pretty intelligent person. Perhaps I am incorrect. How else could I interpret the above comment?</p>
<p>
Methinks perchance the author of this sentence has not studied law at all, or sufficiently to know that one cannot ascribe “clear intent” when there are other reasonable motives for the action at hand ;)</p>
<p>Eg., perhaps Michigan law is able to correlate this gpa historically to it’s admit level, or given the known grade deflation of it’s own school, can confidently predict the value of students at this achievement level.</p>
<p>Wisconsin econ has easily passed by UM which has lost many top people while UW was hiring same including one of UM’s top people. For the rest of the liberal arts each has some better and some worse depts. But both are very strong across the board. And both are better than UIUC by a comfortable margin today.</p>
<p>“You apply to the Wolverine Scholars program in your junior year I believe so a Michigan student who chooses not to take the LSAT would forfeit his/her chances at any other law school in the country besides Michigan’s Law School so he/she clearly wouldn’t have done well on the exam or wasn’t confident in the ability to do so.”</p>
<p>Goldenboy, that statement is totally false. Applying as a Wolverine Scholar is NOT the law school equivalent of Early Decision. If you are accepted as a Wolverine Scholar, you were free to apply to any other law school, as your acceptance date for the Wolverine Scholar progaram was the same as for regular admits to Michigan Law School. I am a lawyer, and I can guarantee you that if such a program had been available to me, I would have applied as a Wolverine Scholar and if I was accepted I would still have applied to Harvard, Stanford and Yale (but no place else because Michigan is the equal of the other top law schools) and I would NOT have applied to safery law schools.</p>
<p>“Remember, you can get admitted to Michigan Law through the regular admissions process, so the only student who would skip the test and apply to this program is one that knew beforehand that Michigan Law was a major reach and that the Wolverines Scholars program would have been the only way for him/her to get admitted to a school of that caliber (UVA, Duke, Boalt, Penn and Northwestern).”</p>
<p>That statement is also totally false. It is harder for UM students to be admitted as a Wolverine Scholar than as a regular admit. Which is proven by the following statement:
“of the 66 people who have been denied as Wolverine Scholars in the last two seasons, 14 were subsequently admitted in the regular admissions pool.”
[Revisiting</a> the Wolverine Scholars Program Career Center Blog](<a href=“http://blog.careercenter.dsa.umich.edu/2011/06/01/revisiting-the-wolverine-scholars-program/]Revisiting”>http://blog.careercenter.dsa.umich.edu/2011/06/01/revisiting-the-wolverine-scholars-program/)</p>
<p>If being a Wolverine Scholar was, to use your words, “would have been the only way for him/her to get admitted to a school of that caliber,” then the number who were admitted regular after not being admitted as a Wolverine Scholar would have been 0, not 12.</p>
<p>Simply put, you don’t have a clue.</p>
<p>“Wisconsin econ has easily passed by UM which has lost many top people while UW was hiring same including one of UM’s top people.”</p>
<p>barrons, your statement would suggest that Wisconsin is far superior to Michigan in Econ. Only 8 Econ departments in the nation have the depth, breadth and quality of Economics faculty to be significantly better than Michigan, and Wisconsin is not one of them. Michigan has lost only a handful of notable faculty members but has also gained several equally important members in recent years. All in all, Michigan’s Economics department has neither declined nor improved in recent years. Wisconsin has indeed been on the move and improved from slightly weaker than Michigan to slightly better than Michigan in Econ. One must remember that a department as complex as Economics, which often has a faculty that numbers well over 70 spread across several subdivisions and shares faculty with several other programs, does not improve or decline drastically simply by hiring a half dozen star professors. </p>
<p>At the moment, I would say that the top Economics departments in the nation are Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Stanford closely followed by Cal, Northwestern and Yale. Those are the top 8 and the only Economics departments I would qualify as being significantly better than Michigan in that field. Next would come Columbia, Penn and Wisconsin, closely followed by CMU, Michigan, Minnesota, NYU, UCLA and UCSD.</p>
<p>
Alexandre, wow!! Your ranking of economics programs almost exactly mirrors the new NRC’s Regression Based Quality Measure rankings besides your exclusion of Duke, Wash U and U of Maryland-College Park as well as the slight overestimation of Northwestern.</p>
<p>Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw’s economics blog:</p>
<p>[Greg</a> Mankiw’s Blog: New NRC Rankings](<a href=“http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-nrc-rankings.html]Greg”>Greg Mankiw's Blog: New NRC Rankings)</p>
<p>leads us here…</p>
<p>[Ranking</a> of Economics Graduate Schools — PhDs.org Graduate School Guide](<a href=“http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/economics/rank/_M______________________________________________________________U]Ranking”>http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/economics/rank/_M______________________________________________________________U)</p>
<p>TIER 1
Harvard
University of Chicago
MIT
Berkeley
Princeton
Stanford
Yale</p>
<p>Tier 2
University of Maryland-College Park (ladies and gentleman, your shocker)
Penn
Wisconsin
Northwestern
Columbia</p>
<p>Tier 3
Brown
Minnesota
UCLA
Cal Tech
Michigan
Wash U
Cornell
Duke
UCSD</p>
<p>Wisconsin is indeed better than Michigan in Economics now at the graduate level. I wonder if even undergraduate Terps would believe me if I told them their Economics program at the graduate level is better than Cornell, Duke and Michigan’s. ;)</p>
<p>^^^^I’m not surprised at all. There are quiite a few schools with better departments than Duke across many disciplines.</p>
<p>goldenboy, as usual, I do not agree with the NRC, although their Econ ratings are much more in line with reality. Then again, I am not sure the NRC is supposed to be interpreted as a ranking. Maryland, Brown and WUSTL are excellent, but they are not quite on par with the schools rated next to them. Northwestern should be be rated higher. Caltech, although excellent in some respects, is way too limited to be ranked as high as Michigan, Minnesota and UCLA. NYU and CMU should be ranked higher.</p>