<p>which school do you think is more suited for a math/econ major? thanks</p>
<p>there'sw no clear answer to this. math/econ are traditional academic disciplines and both schools could teach you equally well. i think your choice should be about personal preference right now.</p>
<p>There's an interesting argument about NW econ vs Michigan's business in the michigan forum...might be worth checking out</p>
<p>I was in the same predicament. I decided on Northwestern. It has one of the best econ programs in the country, up there with Penn, HYP, MIT, Chicago, and others. So if you just want econ, go there. However, if you really want to get directly into business, consider Ross.</p>
<p>Undergraduate Population:
Northwestern: 8023 U Michigan: 25,467</p>
<p>% and Number of In-State Students
Northwestern: 35% (2808) U Michigan: 69% (17,572)</p>
<p>Costs (Tuition & Fees):
Northwestern: $33,559 U Michigan: $9,988 in-state, $30,179 out-of-state</p>
<p>Graduation & Retention Rank
Northwestern: 8th U Michigan: 28th<br>
-% of Students expected to graduate in 6 years:
Northwestern: 91% U Michigan: 77%
-% of students who do graduate in 6 years:
Northwestern: 93% U Michigan: 86%</p>
<p>Faculty Resources Rank:
Northwestern: 9th U Michigan: 69th
-% of classes with 50+ students
Northwestern: 9% U Michigan: 16%
-% of classes with <20 students
Northwestern: 72% U Michigan: 43%
-Faculty/student ratio
Northwestern: 7/1 U Michigan: 15/1</p>
<p>Student Selectivity Rank:
Northwestern: 17th U Michigan: 22nd
-Average SAT/ACT:
Northwestern: 1320-1500 U Michigan: 1220-1410
-% of students ranking in top 10% of high school class
Northwestern: 82% U Michigan: 89%
-% acceptance rate
Northwestern: 30% U Michigan: 57%</p>
<h1>of NMS and % of student body</h1>
<p>Northwestern: 178 (9%) U Michigan: 75 (1%)</p>
<h1>of 1500 scorers and % of student body</h1>
<p>Northwestern: 1998 (25%) U Michigan: 1645 (6%)</p>
<p>Financial Resources Rank:
Northwestern: 14th U Michigan: 31st</p>
<p>Alumni Giving % and Rank:
Northwestern: 29% (29th) U Michigan: 15% (105th)</p>
<p>Peer Assessment:
Northwestern: 4.4 U Michigan: 4.5</p>
<p>On nearly every objective measure, Northwestern presents a stronger face. The student body is clearly superior, the Financial Resources are somewhat stronger and the Faculty Resources are significantly deeper. </p>
<p>One very major difference is the size of the two schools. Northwestern is less than one-third the size of U Michigan. In fact, if you count only Michigan residents at U Michigan, their numbers alone are well more than two times greater than the entire student population at Northwestern. </p>
<p>Among academics as measured by Peer Assessment scoring, the schools are very close with U Michigan having a slight advantage (4.5 to 4.4). This PA strength greatly assists U Michigan in its overall USNWR rank of #24. Ex-PA, U Michigan ranks #34 and would be considered a peer with NYU, Boston College, and UC San Diego. Northwestern, with an overall ranking of #14, would be ranked #12 ex-PA. Its peers would be Columbia, Brown and Rice. </p>
<p>U Michigan is an excellent state university. Northwestern is an excellent university. You can have a terrific experience at either school, but Northwestern is qualitatively stronger and carries greater prestige.</p>
<p>Jeez 4.4 and 4.5? No wonder thier rankings are so far up, Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, and Notre Dame's among others peer rankings are crap.</p>
<p>i wouldn't call rice, emory, vanderbilt, gtown, or nd's peer assessments crap. They're all around 4--which is the 2nd to highest rating you can get. only the very best schools are over 4.5...and NW and Michigan are extremely good schools.</p>
<p>Theres a pretty big gap between 3.9 and 4.5, considering HYP is a 4.6</p>
<p>sweetlax, </p>
<p>HYP all have 4.9s. I've already explained to you, in depth, why Notre Dame has a 3.9. You're going to have to accept the fact that Notre Dame, while providing an excellent, excellent education, isn't an academic powerhouse on the lines of the schools which have significantly higher PA scores--which is why it has "only" a 3.9.</p>
<p>Why dont you just get the hell over it? Im asking about other schools you know. Hence the Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown. Can you not read?</p>
<p>Because Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown all have 4.0 or over PA scores. You specifically mentioned 3.9 PA--which of the schools you listed,</p>
<p>"rice, emory, vanderbilt, gtown, or nd's"</p>
<p>(and by nd, I assumed you meant Notre Dame)--which is the only school in the schools you listed with a 3.9 PA, I felt the need to answer you to that specific school. Maybe you are the one who cannot read...your own posts. None of those schools, Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, or Notre Dame have "crap peer assessments."</p>
<p>I only mentioned 3.9 because U.S. News forces us to buy their rankings and I don't happen to have a copy. ND is the only peer assessemnt rating I really know, besides the ones mentioned in my thread. </p>
<p>Back to my point, you said they were around 4. I assume thats 3.9 (low end) to 4.2 - 4.3 mid range. Which would give Michigan (4.5) a big advantage because of thier score. You said standout departments help, well Georgetown and Rice have standout departments, yet thier score is closer to 4.0 than 5.0.</p>
<p>because nearly all of michigan's programs (and northwestern in a slightly different way) are stand out programs...as opposed to rice and georgetown.</p>
<p>jags, I think you vastly underrate Georgetown and Rice (particularly Rice) and all of the state universities (with the exception of U Virginia) are greatly helped in their ranking by the PA, but this is all off the topic. </p>
<p>Among academics, Northwestern and U Michigan are considered at very similar levels. However, an objective analysis indicates that Northwestern would be superior in nearly every measurement and often by a large margin. Further evidence of how voters (students) feel is the Revealed Preference Study linked below. Page 29 reveals that for all schools (including National Unis and LACs), Northwestern is the 23rd most desirable school in the US. The same study ranks U Michigan 46th. This sounds about right to me in terms of the national prestige that these two schools have. </p>
<p>Hawkette,</p>
<p>I don't underrate GTown or Rice (or emory, or vanderbilt, or notre dame, or any other great school) AT ALL. I have great respect for those schools. But like I've said countless times before, there arn't 30 schools which can be ranked top 10 with 4.9 PAs. Something has to give. Not every school is Harvard or Yale. Since when was getting a 4 bad? A 4.0+ puts you around the top 30 schools if you go simply by PA--whats wrong with that? Isn't that like...top .5% of Uni's in the country? </p>
<p>Also, hawkette, by "what" objective measurements? the ones presented in USNews? Please spare me--I don't want to go into how freshmen retention and 4 year graduation rate don't mean anything to me (or most people) in how good a school is. While I won't go analyzing NRC department rankings right now, I'd bet that Michigan outranks NW in practically every field. Thats something objective to me. And the Revealed Preference Survery is a survery of a bunch of 17 year olds who want to impress their friends with their college bumper stickers. That has NOTHING to do with how good a school is.</p>
<p>That facts are, the top students at Michigan are just as good as the top students at NW. Michigan, by its very nature of being a public school, has to be less selective in order to fulfill its mission to the state. That doesn't make it inferior.</p>
<p>So let me ask you, Hawkette, who's opinion matters more? Scholars in their respective field, or a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds clutching their latest USNews rankings issue? This isn't to say Michigan is better than NW--they indeed are academic equals. Its just to show you that, depending on what you judge as meaningful measurements of a school, you can arrive at a very differently result of whats "good."</p>
<p>jags861,
Interesting post. Re your comment about objective measures, you and I have discussed this before and I think you continue to misunderstand my position. In these posts, which include most of the objective data used in the USNWR survey, I am not telling you or anyone else how to interpret the objective data. Some people might find Graduation and Retention ranks vitally important. See the attached link for views on this (including my own which is the same as yours)</p>
<p>Others may find the SAT information of vital use in measuring student strength. Some may look at Faculty Resources or Financial Resources to get a sense of how actively a school spends its money to support faculty and/or students. And on and on. None of these alone is conclusive enough to declare one school superior to another, but a series of data points can build a pretty powerful argument about the quality of a student body and/or the efforts of the school to support its faculty and/or students or how effectively a school graduates its students, etc. It is the body of evidence that must be considered as part of the college search & evaluation. I strongly ask that if you think that there are other data points that you would like to include in comparisons, then suggest them. </p>
<p>My objective is to provide more information, not less, and give the high school student the information that he/she can use in forming an opinion. In reviewing the other objective data presented comparing Northwestern to U Michigan, is there any comparison that you object to and which you feel unfairly presents one school or the other? </p>
<p>Re the quality of Northwestern students vs those at U Michigan, I appreciate your comment that there are many top students at U Michigan. This is true, (just as there are many top students at all of the top public schools). One measurement, SAT scorers above 1500, shows the very impressive strength of the top students at U Michigan as there are over 1600 scorers at this terrific level. You might also notice that Northwestern has nearly 2000 scorers at this level and with a student body less than one-third the size. Feel free to introduce or comment on other measures that would compare the quality of the respective student bodies at Northwestern and U Michigan. Perhaps I am missing something and underrating U Michigan in this comparison. </p>
<p>Re your comments about the Revealed Preference Study, you can dismiss if you like. Others may find it revealing. The RP study is but one more data point. From reviewing it, I would conclude that, and especially for a non-Michigan resident, Northwestern would win the cross admit battle at a very high rate.</p>
<p>joshua,
You make a logical comment and I agree that it is laudable that U Michigan has such a high percentage of Top 10% scorers. However, I think most observers would agree that such numbers can be deceiving, particularly as they apply to state universities. For example, UC San Diego has 99%, UC Irvine has 98%, UC Davis has 95%, UC Santa Barbara has 96%. By comparison, Stanford has but 89%. I don't believe that anyone would consider the students at UC SD, Irvine, Davis or SB as strong as those at Stanford. While there is a subset of very strong students at U Michigan, I think that most non-Michigan observers would conclude that the student body of Northwestern is stronger than that of U Michigan.</p>
<p>Also, I see that you are an international student. Please be aware that the USNWR rankings combine the state public universities and the private schools together and separate out the Liberal Arts Colleges (LACs). Northwestern and U Michigan are ranked together by USNWR. I concur that having separate rankings for public schools might result in clearer delineations among schools.</p>
<p>UMich football. Enough said.
Both schools are great academically, Mich is less stressfull and more fun.</p>
<p>joshua,
Yes, I am referring to the entire student body. Many, many schools have a subset of superior students that would be comparable to the lower Ivies and other top privates, including other state universities like U Florida, U Washington, UCSD, U Georgia, Penn State, etc. I also believe that U Michigan along with U Virginia, UC Berkeley, UCLA, U North Carolina and U Wisconsin would be the most highly regarded state universities. I agree that the state universities are more appropriate peer schools for U Michigan than U Chicago, Rice, JHU, Emory, Notre Dame, Dartmouth, Brown, etc. </p>
<p>As for your comment about student populations, I agree that this puts U Michigan at a disadvantage in student body comparisons with the top private universities like Northwestern. In fact, the only other school in the USNWR Top 40 that is larger is U Wisconsin. </p>
<p>For your question about Top 10%, consider the following. In 2007, there are 3.4 million students graduating from high school in the United States. Thus, there are 340,000 Top 10% students in America. Just to give you an idea of the scale that the system is trying to absorb, there are only 32,000 entering spots at the USNWR Top 20 schools. Half of the USNWR Top 20 (Stanford, Duke, U Chicago, Dartmouth, Cornell, Northwestern, JHU, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame) have Top 10% numbers below 90%. Obviously, they are looking at more than high school rank as they could have filled their classes many times over with Top 10% scorers. </p>
<p>ferrisbueller,
If football is an important criteria for the OP, then I agree that this is a useful data point. U Michigan football has a clearly superior record over Northwestern.</p>
<p>Hawkette, comparing SAT ranges between state universities and private universities is like comparing salaries without taking purchasing parity and income tax levels into account. </p>
<p>1) What percentage of Northwestern's student body takes SAT prep classes vs the percentage of students at Michigan who take SAT prep classes.</p>
<p>2) How hard does the average Northwestern student prepare for the SAT vs how long does the average Michigan student prepare for the SAT.</p>
<p>3) What percentage of SAT-taking students at Northwestern sit for the SAT twice or three times vs the percentage of SAT-taking students at Michigan who sit for the SAT twice or three times.</p>
<p>4) How does Northwestern report SAT scores vs how does Michigan report SAT scores. Do both universities report the highest score in one sitting or the combined score of the highest individual sections.</p>