<p>Is the University of Minnesota the most under-rated school in the country? </p>
<p>It has top programs in Chemical Engineering, BME, Business, Accounting, Math, Physics, Chemistry, as well as others. The Medical and Dental Schools are also top tier. I mean, I know it isn't at Berkeley or Michigan's level, but it is certainly on par with UW Madison, Florida, UC San Diego, Texas, UIUC and other similar schools. Except it is rated about 20-30 spots lower than these. It's acceptance rate has went from 75% to 40% since 2000. There is a new football stadium being built on campus opening this fall. It has possibly the lowest OOS tuition among all state flagships (about 14K). What gives?</p>
<p>I visited the campus and liked the school much better than Madison and UIUC. These schools seemed almost exactly the same academically, but I don't get why the U of M is rated so much lower. Why is it's percepetion not as good on here and around the country? Do you think it will jump a lot when the new USNWR ranking come out like it did last year?</p>
<p>I expect UMN’s ranking will increase as it’s been making major strides in selectivity, graduation rate, and other measures which have held it back in US News rankings. How much it will jump is anyone’s guess. But bottom lime, it’s a great bargain in public higher education both for in-state and OOS students. This is a school to watch.</p>
<p>Yes, I think it is very underrated. The SAT scores are really quite high now (75% Math is up to 710) and there are lots of top programs. The strategy of offering low OOS tuition appears to be paying dividends :)</p>
<p>The SAT scores are rather useless to consider for Minnesota, as more than 75% or so of admitted students have only taken the ACT. The only people who have taken the SAT are those from the coasts (tougher OOS admission standards) and people from instate who performed poorly on the ACT.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that it’s the most under-rated school in the country; I would give that title to one of the Military Academies. However, it is definitely under-rated. Here are some of the stats/rankings:</p>
<p>Incoming stats for fall 2009 admitted class by college (ACT/SAT):
Biological Sciences: 30/1335
College of Design: 27/1247
Education and Human Development: 24/1162
Food/Agriculture/Natural Science: 25/1205
Liberal Arts: 26/1245
Carlson (Business): 29/1303
Institute of Technology: 30/1325
Acceptance Rate: 40%-45%</p>
<p>I do not have access to the undergrad rankings in most programs, but there are a number of other top programs for undergrads as well (for instance, ChemE is number 4). In addition to that, many of the above grad rankings are not ranked on the undergrad level (like polisci). </p>
<p>Personally, I think UMN is under-rated significantly, but I think that it is changing at a significant rate too. The reason I used grad school rankings is that I am speaking of the University as a whole, not just the undergraduate departments. It had a record number of applicants this year (33K), its acceptance rate is falling, test scores are up, etc. You can’t talk about the country’s top public universities without including UMN.</p>
<p>It must be cause I have lived in Minnesota all my life and never heard of Minnesota-Morris nor knew we had a public LAC…</p>
<p>But yea, I’d say UMN is probably 4th in the Big Ten in terms of quality education, although I’d say it is generally percieed as 7th, 8th or 9th. Definitely underrated.</p>