<p>I would rather use actual alums of the two schools. Like Lucy Liu and James Earl Jones for Michigan and Cindy Crawford and Charlton Heston for Northwestern.</p>
<p>
[quote]
TourGuide,
I llike what you are trying to do, but I might suggest a different analogy. For me, it might be between Brian Dennehy (U Michigan) and Denzel Washington (Northwestern).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>haha what the hell</p>
<p>don't forget that northwestern is the alma mater of the greatest human being alive - stephen colbert</p>
<p>jags861,
Re a post you made earlier about relative SAT scores, I agree with you to a point. But for the 340,000 students nationally who will graduate high school this year as Top 10% students, the SAT really can be a defining number for where they end up making application and gaining acceptance. A Top 10% ranking is just not that rare or that exceptional. But a 1500 SAT score (even a 1400 score) can catapult an applicant into a different stratosphere of colleges. The SAT is probably a better guide for a grouping of colleges than is number of Top 10% scorers. </p>
<p>It would be interesting to see how many 1500 scorers there were in the entire state of Michigan how many of the 1645 U Michigan 1500 scorers came from inside the state. I don't have the numbers at hand and perhaps someone officially affiliated with the school like Alexandre can let us know the distribution of 1500 scorers among the 17.5k IS students and the 8k OOS students. It is my guess that the OOS 1500 scorers would have a great breadth of choices at a similar or better even better cost and I wonder how many of them actually chose U Michigan. My hunch is that most of the 1500 scorers were from the state of Michigan.</p>
<p>^^ i agree</p>
<p>alex -
[quote]
Strength of student body: Impossible to measure, probable edge goes to Northwestern.</p>
<p>Graduate school placement: Roughly the same, assuming we are comparing apples to apples.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>"Impossible to measure"? Yeah, SAT and ACT scores mean NOTHING.</p>
<p>hawk -
[quote]
I find it interesting (and humorous) that you call the numbers that I have presented “meaningless” and “manipulated” considering that you frequently use the same numbers (eg, the Wall Street Journal survey) in your posts. I would not even have known that the WSJ survey existed except for the fact that you used it to promote U Michigan in one of our prior disagreements.</p>
<p>As for those WSJ numbers you post above (Northwestern at 3.7% and U Michigan at 2.7%), I think we have exposed the 2.7% number as inflated due to the inclusion of U Michigan Law in the survey. A truer number likely is about 2.0%. In any event, both are well below Northwestern's numbers. A differential of 1.0% is 37% higher for Northwestern; a differential of 1.7% is 63% higher for Northwestern. </p>
<p>As for my comment that you consistently make declarative, unsubstantiated statements that overrate U Michigan and exaggerate its prowess, your latest post is a perfect example.
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</p>
<p>Exactly right. Alex has used the WSJ figures repeatedly to argue that UoM is on par with NU and other privates - but when you actually take a closer look at the nos. - the nos. are not so friendly to UoM.</p>
<p>With more 1320+ SAT scorers than NU (as well as Stanford or Harvard ) - why does UoM do less well as a WSJ feeder school (even w/ the advantage of having the law school as a criteria school)?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Quality of athletics: Michigan
[/quote]
</p>
<p>For the big-2 sports yes (due to NU's restrictions on admissions) - but not necessarily for other sports (7 of 19 varsity NU teams were ranked in the top 10).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Like I demonstrated in a post above, Michigan cares very little about the SAT. It always has. Until 2003, Michigan used an admissions formula. In it, Michigan awarded a possible 80 points for a perfect 4.0 unweighed GPA, 78 points for a 3.9 unweighed GPA, 76 points for a 3.8 unweighed GPA etc...).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>UoM evidently also cares little for an "outstanding essay" - only worth 1 point.</p>
<p>UoM's emphasis on GPA and class ranking, like other state schools, is a method in which to increase diversity w/o running foul of the legal barriers to using race as a factor.</p>
<p>joshua -
[quote]
The whole point here is: SAT is NOT an accurate measure of one's intelligence, IQ, etc. so, basing intelligence PURELY on SATs scores is insane to me.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The point is why do UoM students do signifcantly worse on the ACT - which tests HS subjects?</p>
<p>
[quote]
For Northwestern, here is what I stated was its peer group:
Northwestern: Average SAT of 1410
Dartmouth: 1450
Columbia: 1440
Brown: 1435
U Penn: 1430
Cornell: 1385
U Chicago: 1440
Wash U: 1440
Duke: 1450
Rice: 1435
Vanderbilt: 1370
Notre Dame: 1380
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Interestingly (as a mid-Western school), NU has a higher aggregate ACT score than those schools.</p>
<p>Class size is a tough one to really get a bead on. </p>
<p>Let me give an extreme example to illustrate: School A has 1000 freshmen. Its first-year courses are all huge lecture classes of 500 students. It has two 500-student psych courses, two 500-chemistry courses, two 500-student economics courses, and two 500-student calculus courses, and two 500-student literature courses. That course selection allows every one of those freshmen to take 15 hours (psych, chemistry, econ, calculus, and english). If you counted up freshman classes, you'd show that 100% of the sections have 500 or more students. And that seems accurate because you could pull any freshman's transcript and say that yep, 100% of his courses had 500 students. The "class size" distribution for freshmen courses matches perfectly with student experience, so that seems like a very accurate gauge. </p>
<p>But let's say this school decided to replace the English class with a "freshman seminar" style literature course. Instead of 500 students per section, it wants to limit the enrollment to 20. To accomodate the 1000-person freshman class, the college will have to offer 50 sections of that course. That brings the course total up to 58, with 50 sections of 20-student courses (all English), and 8 sections of of the 500-student courses (psych, chem, econ, calc). Now the college would report--accurately--that 86% of its courses enrolled less than 25 students! 50 is 86% of the 58, the math is completely sound, no shenanigans involved.</p>
<p>You'd read that and might think wow, only 14% of the courses are big courses! This is great! But does that reflect what those freshmen students' experiences? No. Under this new scheme, every freshman would take four classes that hold 500 students, and only one (the "seminar") that has 20. Fully 80% of his classes are big. Now is the distribution of first-year section size a good indicator of student experience? It's not.</p>
<p>Obviously, this is an imperfect (bordering on ridiculous) example because no college offers such a limited curriculum with such extreme course sizes. But I hope it helps illustrate how even accurate numbers can give a misleading impression of what any individual student would experience. It's a flawed measure.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I am not sure how many of the 1500+ scorers (or 1400+ scorers) are from OOS. I was a 1500+ scorer myself, and I obviously was OOS. Most of my friends at Michigan were OOS and many of them scored over 1400 (in my day, 1400 was equivalent to 1500 today). I remember reading somewhere that the majority of students in the Honors college are OOS. One correction though, I am not officially affiliated to the University. I am a volunteer.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But let's say this school decided to replace the English class with a "freshman seminar" style literature course. Instead of 500 students per section, it wants to limit the enrollment to 20. To accomodate the 1000-person freshman class, the college will have to offer 50 sections of that course. That brings the course total up to 58, with 50 sections of 20-student courses (all English), and 8 sections of of the 500-student courses (psych, chem, econ, calc). Now the college would report--accurately--that 86% of its courses enrolled less than 25 students! 50 is 86% of the 58, the math is completely sound, no shenanigans involved.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>are you sure it works this way and not by counting only unique course offerings?</p>
<p>it would actually seem as though you are right, because the "%" of classes i have taken at northwestern with over 50 people is well over "9%"</p>
<p>on a funny side note, this is exactly how uchicago got its US NEWS rank so high this year, by including "freshman writing seminars" as "classes with <20 students"</p>
<p>hoedown,
Interesting post, but the situation could be the same whether you are a school of 25,500 like U Michigan or 8000 like Northwestern. Both schools can create the "freshman English seminars" or some similar class and probably do. But something has got to give when you have a 15/1 student-faculty ratio at U Michigan and 9/1 at Northwestern. Are you suggesting that there is not a difference in class size between these two schools? </p>
<p>Alexandre,
Personal anecdotes are nice, but they're not institutionally legitimizing and, giving the re-centering of scores, makes your anecdotes even less helpful. Does U Michigan publish any OOS/IS stats, eg, SAT scores, Top 10%, etc. </p>
<p>Does anyone know if Collegeboard lists the number of 1500 scorers by state?</p>
<p>Like I said Hawkette, I do not have statistics on IS vs OOS students. As far as I know, the University only releases statistics for the entire class. I wish Michigan arranged admissions statistics according to IS, OOS and even international applicants. Applicants always want to know their "chances"!</p>
<p>I think that dstark was the original source of the 1500 scorers. Maybe he can provide some idea of where to find the base data on 1500 scorers.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Are you suggesting that there is not a difference in class size between these two schools?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, I am making no such claim. I was simply pointing out how difficult it is to use class size distribution as a clear measure. I apologize if that was not clear. </p>
<p>And to also make something clear, I did not mean to imply that creating smaller sections was any kind of gaming of numbers (lest that also be a misreading of my post). Smaller sections are a curricular and pedagogical issue. But my point was that student population can drive how many sections have to be offered. The smaller the class, more sections one needs to open if it's a popular or required class. Also, the bigger the student body, the more sections of that type would have to be offered. The number of small sections can multiply quickly at a large school--in my example they really skewed the distribution even though most students still had huge classes.</p>
<p>hoedown,
Thanks for the clarifications. While I expect that this type of section creation occurs at all schools, I think you are correct that the impact on the reporting of class size numbers could be most dramatic at large schools. In practice, U Michigan may be doing exactly this, but because of their tighter budgets, they create class sizes that are between 20-29 rather than 10-19 that might result at a private like Northwestern. Total speculation on my part, but given that the largest percentages of U Michigan's classes show up in the 20-29 range, this makes sense. </p>
<p>I also did a weighted average of the class sizes for the two schools. I believe that Northwestern averages somewhere around 22 students per class. I estimate that U Michigan averages somewhere around 34. U Michigan thus has an average class size that is 55% bigger than Northwestern's. That sounds about right to me, especially as it relates to the differential in student-faculty ratio of 9/1 for Northwestern and 15/1 for U Michigan.</p>
<p>actually, NU has a student to faculty ratio of 7 to 1, not 9 to 1.</p>
<p>lilybbloom,
You are correct. I was incorrectly reading the USNWR line for Brown which is ranked one space below Northwestern (Northwestern is # 14, Brown is # 15). Northwestern's student-faculty ratio is 7/1, Brown's is 9/1 and U Michigan's is 15/1.</p>