Undergrad path for MBA admissions

<p>I don't know Sakky. I really haven't done my research regarding UCLA. I have regarding Michigan and Cal (those were the only two state schools I seriously considered) and I found that those two schools have similar statistics (size of college accounted for) to the Ivies with regards to job opportunities and graduate school placement. I am not sure about UCLA, UVA and Wisconsin, but I cannot imagine they are far below.</p>

<p>Have you done your research well? I can't speak for Michigan, but I know that Cal also doesn't stack up particularly well on a per-capita basis. </p>

<p>The basic problem is simple. While it is clearly true that some UCLA and Cal students go on to do exceptional things, those students are dwarfed by the sheer massive numbers of other UCLA and Cal students who, to be perfectly honest, aren't all that good. All those not-so-good students ruin it for the good students. </p>

<p>Several reasons could be the cause of this. #1, and most importantly, UCLA and Cal aren't as selective as the Ivies, even the lower ones. Let's restrict ourselves purely to the lower Ivies, which I take you to mean all the Ivies except HYP. Fine. According to USNews, Berkeley is the 13th most selective undergrad school as far as "best national universities", UCLA is 18th. Dartmouth and Brown are the 10th most selective, Penn is 7th, Cornell is 16th, and Columbia is 13th. So every one of the Ivies is more selective than UCLA, and all except one (Cornell) is more selective than Cal. Or, in other words, the average lower-Ivy is more selective than either Cal or UCLA. </p>

<p>{And if I may digress, I think that there is a serious serious loophole with the way that USNews calculates its selectivity. I strongly suspect that the selectivity numbers are based on admitted freshman - yet the fact is, a sizable % of the student populations at Cal and UCLA are CC transfer students, and the Ivies have relatively few transfer students. I suspect that if the transfer issue were put into play, Cal and UCLA would turn out to be less selective overall - both freshman and transfer - than USNews calculates them to be now. But in any case, even if we take the USNews numbers as solid, then at the end of the day, the average lower Ivy is more selective than either Cal or UCLA}.</p>

<p>And of course, if we just want to talk about all Ivies, not just lower Ivies, then the difference in selectivity is shown in high relief. We all know that it's far far far more difficult to get into HYP than it is to get into Cal, UCLA, or Michigan. </p>

<p>The other problem is that, apart from certain exceptions, the educational programs and infrastructure per capita really isn't very good at either Cal or UCLA. The fact is, the lower Ivies spend more on their undergraduate program per student than do Cal and UCLA, and the result tends to be a more comprehensive educational experience. Again, important exceptions exist, like the B.S program at Haas, or engineering at Cal, but the fact is, large percentages of undergrads at Cal and UCLA really aren't getting very much in the way of resources per capita. </p>

<p>But again, all you really have to do is look around. Take a look at the SF Bay Area. Despite the fact that the Cal undergraduate program is almost 4 times the size of Stanford, it is widely understood that Stanford undergrad alumni tend to hold the power in the Bay Area. The economic dynamo that is Silicon Valley is far more the making of Stanford than it is of Cal. Quite a few Cal students would have chosen Stanford had they gotten in, but very few Stanford students would rather be at Cal. This is why Cal is the safety school of Stanford, not the other way around. Similarly, you must agree that there are a lot of students at Michigan who would quite honestly rather be at an Ivy, even a lower Ivy, than there are students at the Ivies who would rather be at Michigan. In that sense, Michigan is the safety school of the Ivies, not the other way around. The same sort of analysis could be said about UCLA. Like I said before, take a random student at a lower Ivy, and take a random student at UCLA. The former is less likely to rather be at UCLA than the latter is to rather be at an Ivy.</p>

<p>Sakky, you are way off the mark. First of all, there is virtually no difference between the 10th and 20th most selective university in the country. The difference between the 10th most selective university and the 13th or 18th most selective university is insignificant. The student bodies at Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Michigan and Cal are almost identical. I know, I attended Michigan and Cornell, and I saw no difference in the abilities or capabilities in their undergraduate bodies. In the last 4 years, when interviewing with various employers, my Michigan degree usually caught their eye as much as my Cornell degree...in some cases even more.</p>

<p>Secondly, Michigan is not a backup to the Ivies, neither is Cal. Year-in, year-out, Michigan holds its own in the battle against Penn, Cornell and Brown. By that I mean that about 50% of the students admitted into those schools and Michigan pick Michigan. I picked Michigan over 4 Ivies and the dozens of close friends I made at Michigan (most of which were internationals or out of state) also picked Michigan over schools like Duke, Chicago and other Ivies.</p>

<p>Just so that you understand, and you can do your own research on this subject:</p>

<p>GRADUATES WHO ENROLLED IN TOP 10 LAW SCHOOLS in 2004:
Michigan 150
Columbia 90
Penn 75
Michigan, Columbia and Penn are admittedly at a slight advantage because they have their own top 10 Law schools.
Cornell 70
Brown 50
Dartmouth 45</p>

<p>People often look at Michigan's student body (24,000 undergrads) and think it is 4-6 times bigger than the majority of the Ivies. But one must remember that at Michigan, close to 40% of the students major in Engineering, Nursing, Environment, Music and Kinesiology. Hardly any of them apply to Law School. Only about 1,000 students apply to Law school annually. Just as many students apply to Law School at Cornell and Penn, and almost as many apply to Law school at Columbia and Brown.</p>

<p>It is not as easy to find stats on MBA students. But as you often and correctly point out, an undergraduate institution has its place in the corporate world, and the better its position, the more likely are its undergrtaduates to get jobs in companies that are considered pipelines to MBA programs.</p>

<p>MICHIGAN UNDERGRADS ACCEPTED JOBS FROM THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES in 2004:
Ford Motor Company 74
Daimler Chrysler 42
J.P. Morgan 37
Microsoft 33
Cisco Systems 33
Sun Microsystyems 33
Goldman Sachs 29
Citigroup 28
Morgan Stanley 27
Deloitte Consulting 26
A.T. Kearney 23
CS First Boston 22
Merrill Lynch 22
Bank of America 21
UBS 21
Unilver 20</p>

<p>Other popular destinations (10 or more undergrads hired annually):
Bain
Deloitte & Touche
Eli Lilly
General Electric
Intel
Johnson and Johnson
Lehman Brothers
Medtronic
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Pfizer</p>

<p>Those stats (which includes students from the schools of LSA, Engineering and Business) are not complete since roughly only 70% of the students respond to the survey. But as you can seen, Michigan undergrads get jobs at the best MBA breeding grounds. </p>

<p>For a microcosmic view, here are the stats for the Business school. Only 330 of Michigan's 3,000 undergrads who hit the workforce annually belong to the Business school. As you can, seen the numbers are pretty impressive. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/EmploymentProfile/TopHiringCompanies.htm?StudentType=BBAGrads%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bus.umich.edu/EmploymentProfile/TopHiringCompanies.htm?StudentType=BBAGrads&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Unfortunately, the schools of Engineering and LSA do not publish their numbers. I had to dig it out using other sources such as calling the schools' career development offices and, in some instances, the companies in question. One of the values of being an HR professional! hehe</p>

<p>Starting salaries for Michigan students from all majors hover, for the most part, between $40,000 and $70,000, depending on the major, but the mean is roughly $50,000. That is similar to what Cornell, Brown and Penn undergrads start with. Considering that about 50% of the students work in the Midwest, which is significantly cheaper than the East Coast, Michigan more than holds its own.</p>

<p>I would think that Cal is very similar to Michigan. </p>

<p>In short Sakky, Michigan and Cal are about equal to most top 15 universities, save the big 5, H,P,S,Y and MIT. I am tired of debating this point. It is not really up for discussion. It is a fact that is accepted by every academic and corporate recruiter in the World. It is not wise to belittle them by saying that they are back-up schools or less selective.</p>

<p>Thank thank you Alexandre, because I was looking for precisely those numbers that you posted. You proved my point better than I ever could.</p>

<p>You said it yourself - let's look at the numbers:</p>

<p>Michigan 150
Columbia 90
Penn 75
Cornell 70
Brown 50
Dartmouth 45</p>

<p>Now, let's weight them by the size of the undergrad student bodies. Michigan = 25000 undergrads, Columba = about 7k(include both Columbia College and Barnard), Dartmouth about 5k, Penn about 10k, Cornell about 14k, Brown about 6k.</p>

<p>So let's reweight the scores by alumni at top 10 law schools relative to size of the entire student body.</p>

<p>New ratios:</p>

<p>Michigan - 0.006
Columbia - 0.013
Penn - 0.075
Cornell - 0.005
Brown - 0.083
Dartmouth - 0.009</p>

<p>So Michigan only beats Cornell on a per-capita basis. I also agree with you that Michigan holds an advantage over schools like Brown and Dartmouth because Michigan has a top-10 law school itself, so it holds some homefield advantage. Nevertheless, Brown and Dartmouth beat Michigan on a per-capita basis. Amazing.</p>

<p>You also point out that a lot of Michigan students don't apply to law school in the first place, and I would ask, well, why exactly is that? Don't you think that is a function of the school itself? Why do, say, Princeton engineers seem to apply to law school at a relatively high rate? I think the true interpretation of these numbers is that Michigan is not as strong of a conduit as the lower Ivies to get into the top law schools. </p>

<p>Consider this analogy. Take any regular, no-name, 3rd or 4th tier state school (not Michigan, but some other regular state school). You must agree that on a per-capita basis, very few of its graduates are going to apply to get jobs in investment banking. Consequently very few of its graduates are going to get such jobs. Maybe that's because that school happens to send most of its graduates become, agricultural engineers or something like that, and so that's why so few of its graduates apply to IB (don't explore the analogy too closely, cuz I'm just making this example up). Does the fact that very few of its graduates apply to IB jobs 'excuse' that school for its low profile in the IB world? I don't think so. The way I would interpret that sequence of events is that that state school must not be a very good conduit to getting into IB. If you think you want to work in IB, you may not want to go to that school. After all, if you go to that school, you will suffer from a lack of per-capita institutional resources and, perhaps more importantly, a lack of "academic culture" (an awkward term, but you knokw what I mean) that would help you secure a job in IB. Similarly, Michigan's per-capita numbers indicate that Michigan is not as good in getting its alumni into top10 law schools as are the lower Ivies (except Cornell), and yes, that may well be because lots of Michigan alumni don't even bother to apply. But that, similarly, just tells me that Michigan is not the best conduit to getting into a top-10 law school. </p>

<p>Hence, if a high school senior is thinking of going to Michigan or to, say, Columbia, and that person already knows he wants to get into a top law school, then that student would probably be better served by going to Columbia, which has a stronger track record of getting a high per-capita number into top law schools. Either the culture of Columbia must be one that either encourages more of its students to apply, or there are more "pre-law" resources per capita, or whatever it is, the point is that, all other things being equal, you would prefer the school with the better per-capita track record. </p>

<p>The point is, again and again, that per-capita numbers matter. I could calculate with some of the other numbers you presented, but I think I can rest my case. On a per-capita basis, Michigan has problems competing with the lower Ivies, with the possible exception of Cornell, which doesn't surprise me all that much when you consider the fact that Cornell is in fact the easiest Ivy to get into. Does Michigan get a lot of alumni into the top graduate schools? Yes. Does Michigan get a lot of alumni to the top employers? Again yes. But the real question is, does Michigan get a lot of its alumni into those places on a per-capita basis, relative to the Ivies? The data seems to indicate 'not really'. </p>

<p>Nor are your quotes of starting salaries particularly convincing. I showed in a previous post (which you can search for in the archives in the old website of College confidential) that Georgia Tech graduates, on average, make more of a starting salary than do Princeton graduates, despite the fact that Georgia Tech graduates tend to stay in the South, which is a relatively low-paying part of the country. You can either search for my old post or do the research on the career services at Princeton and Georgia Tech and see for yourself. Does that mean that Georgia Tech is a competitive school with Princeton? Really? No. It proves something else entirely. Georgia Tech graduates are predominantly engineers or hard-science majors, and those majors tend to make more of a higher starting salary than liberal arts majors, which Princeton has a high proportion of. Similarly, Michigan's average starting salary is, I believe, a strong function of Michigan's rather large engineering school. Brown and Dartmouth only have tiny engineering programs. On an apples-to-apples comparison (a Michigan psych graduate vs., say, a Dartmouth psych graduate), I doubt that Michigan would hold much of an advantage, if any. </p>

<p>The same can be said for Michigan's BBA program. Let's face it. Michigan's BBA program is highly competitive - only top Michigan students can get in. You basically have to survive 2 rounds of admissions to get into the BBA program - first you have to get into Michigan itself, and then you have to get into the BBA program in your junior year. The result is a group of students who are far stronger than the average Michigan student. I never disputed that the BBA students are probably fully competitive with the students at the lower Ivies. The dispute is whether the average Michigan student at all of Michigan is competitive You can't just cherry-pick your better students (which the BBA students are) and then say that they are representative of Michigan as a whole. </p>

<p>The point is, if it's a "fact that is accepted" by every academic and corporate recruiter in the world, then why are the per-capita numbers for Michigan conspicously lower than for the lower Ivies? I thought you said it was a fact, so why is Columbia sending more than double the number of students, on a per-capita basis, to a top-10 law school than is Michigan? Why are Brown and Dartmouth also sending more than Michigan on a per-capita basis, despite the fact that they don't even have their own law school? You said it yourself - the facts speak for themselves. Hmmm. </p>

<p>Now don't get me wrong, I never said that Michigan was a bad school. Indeed Michigan is indeed a good school, and some of the programs like engineering and the BBA program are true gems. But as a whole, Michigan has issues in competing on a per-capita basis. </p>

<p>Finally, your notion of 'well I turned down X Ivies for Michigan' is nothing more than an anecdote. I know a guy who turned down Harvard to attend USC Does that mean that USC is better than Harvard? No, it just proves that he had a family to take care of (he was an older student and already had a wife and kids) and didn't want to uproot them to Cambridge, coupled with the fact that USC was giving him a full ride. The real key test is as a whole, whether the aggregate Michigan student body would rather be at a lower Ivy, and whether the aggregate student body at that lower Ivy would rather be at Michigan. That's the key test. I believe if the adcoms at both schools were to release their numbers about who loses what student to what school, the Michigan would reveal that they lose more students to the lower Ivies than vice versa. That's not to say that there aren't going to be some students who prefer Michigan over lower Ivies, but the key is which is more?</p>

<p>Sakky, you are wrong. Sorry to have to say this to you, but you are way off. But you can continue thinking that Michigan is inferior to other good universities. You are certainly entitled to your opinion.</p>

<p>Well, I am afraid to have to tell you that you are the one who is way off. Hey, you can continue to think that the Michigan undergrad program is as good as that of the Ivies, or as good as the lower Ivies - with the possible exception of Cornell - or whatever category you want to use. </p>

<p>Now, I'm certainly willing to agree that the Michigan graduate programs are as good as the lower Ivies, and some of them can even compete with the elite. But we're not talking about the graduate programs. We're only talking about the undergraduate program here. </p>

<p>After all - exactly what criteria are you trying to use as a basis saying that the Michigan undergrad program is as good as the lower Ivies? According to USNews, every one of the lower Ivies is as selective or more selective than Michigan. The lower Ivies spend more per capita and have more faculty resources per capita than does Michigan. The lower Ivies also on average retain and graduate a higher percentage of their students than does Michigan. Prestige? Much of Michigan's vaunted prestige rides off its unquestionably strong graduate programs, whereas the lower Ivies often times have little such benefit (i.e. name a prominent Brown graduate program), yet graduate programs do not have a whole lot to do with its undergraduate program, unless you're one of those people who believes in the utility of bait-and-switch (making the graduate programs good so that the undergrads can trade off their prestige). Put another way - if tomorrow all the lower Ivies were to spin off all their graduate programs into totally different entities, the loss of prestige that their undergraduate programs would suffer would not be as much as the loss of prestige that the Michigan undergrad program if it did the same thing - which shows you how much the Michigan undergrad program is trading on the excellence of the graduate schools. In fact, in many cases, the graduate programs of the lower Ivy's are the ones trading off the excellence of the undergraduate program. I would argue that, on average, it is more difficult to get into the Brown undergraduate program than into many of the Brown graduate programs, but the same is not true of Michigan (Michigan's graduate programs are on average, more difficult to get into than Michigan's undergrad program). </p>

<p>The point is not to say that Michigan is a bad school. I never said that. I said that relative to some tough competition, Michigan is not as good. Michigan is still better than the vast majority of other schools out there. But it is not as good as the lower Ivies. Think of it this way - even in the state of Michigan, how many prominent leaders (political, business, whatever) are graduates of the undergraduate program at Michigan, on a per-capita basis? Not the Michigan graduate schools, but the Michigan undergraduate program. Michigan undergraduate alumni should absolutely absolutely dominate the top ranks if for no other reason than because Michigan is so big, right? So why don't they?</p>

<p>Like I said Sakky, you are entitled to your opinion. We can both make cases to surpport our believes. So it is poinltess to debate. I do not respect your opinion, but I doubt that earning my respect is high on your list. Afterall, what does a dumb Michigan alumn know?</p>

<p>Funny, I actually respected your opinion. Until now. It's one thing to disagree with a person, it's quite another thing to not respect another person's opinions. I disagree with many people here on CC - kryptic, shyboy13, some others - but at least we respect each other. Until now, I thought we also were engaged in a healthy but respectful disagreement. Now I see that there's nothing respectful about it. If you don't have the decency to give respect to me, then I feel no compunction to give it to you.</p>

<p>Sakky, you are the one whose tone is disrespectful. You are belittleling and condescending. You have not shown respect for my opinion in the least. You act as if you know more than I do. Had you been more respectful and even handed, I would have shown you the same courtesy.</p>

<p>Oh? So why not point to a specific quote of mine that you think is belittling and condescending, or that doesn't show courtesy. Please don't tell me that you interpret any disagreement as an insult. As far as I'm concerned, you are the one who fired the first shot by saying that you don't respect my opinion.</p>

<p>Looking back on the posts above, I must admit that we both took aggressive stands. I am not clear on who "fired the first shot". But I apologize if I offended you. At any rate, it is pointless to debate this subject any further. It is clear that you believe Michigan and Cal are not top 15 universities and it is obvious that I believe they are. So let us stop this pointless bickering and let us return to giving the OP valuable advice rather than disagree on this point which we will never agree on.</p>

<p>Anyway, it is 4:45 AM over here. I better go to bed. Good thing Friday's are off in the Middle East!</p>

<p>We have to be clear about what we are talking about. I was talking strictly about the undergraduate programs. I have always said that if you were to look at graduate schools, then Michigan and Cal are clearly top 15 universities, and if we are restricting ourselves to only PhD programs, then Cal is in the top 3. Hence, if you want to insist at looking at universities as a whole, undergrad + grad, I suppose you could make the case that as a whole, Cal and Michigan are top 15 schools.</p>

<p>But that's not what I'm talking about. I was looking only at the undergraduate programs. And on that scale, with a few program exceptions (i.e. engineering, bus-ad, a few others), I would have to say that Cal and Michigan are clearly not top 15 schools. Heck, I don't know if they even truly qualify as top 25 undergraduate programs, if you were to include the liberal arts colleges like Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore in your calculation. However, that's neither here nor there. My point is that on a purely undergraduate level, I don't think Cal or Michigan stack up with any of the Ivies. On a graduate level, they certainly do. But undergraduate? Let's face it. At both Cal and Michigan, the undergraduate program, with the exception of certain programs (again, engineering, bus-ad, a few others) is the weakest program at the whole school. Cal's graduate programs are far far better run, are far more selective, and have superior resources per capita, than its undergraduate program. Same for Michigan. It is the undergraduate program at both schools that is trading off the strength of the graduate programs, not the other way around. </p>

<p>None of this is to say that Cal and Michigan are bad undergraduate programs. Again, they are better than the vast majority of all undergrad programs out there. My point is that they are not as good as the Ivy undergraduate programs.</p>

<p>WOW, you guys have said alot. My personal high school experience tells me this: From my private Chicago HS class of 1999 with 97 people, the HYPS people were 1550 top 5 or had some special status. There were also people in this group who also didn't get into those schools, and ended up at Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, and Columbia. The other kids in this category were 1450+ top 10, sometimes even stronger than the HYP. Our Valedictorian, for example, got rejected from Dartmouth but got into Yale. The michigan students (6) were mostly ranked around 20-30 with SAT scores around 1250-1350, often not having the extracurriculars of the top group. There was a clear difference. </p>

<p>Michigan, UVA, UNC, and Cal are great schools, but they have plenty of in-staters that could not think of applying to the other category. In fact the difference between a Brown and Harvard student was much less than the difference between a Brown and Michigan student. </p>

<p>Alexandre, Michigan is a good school and the BBA program and engineering are excellent, but overall the quality of students is much lower than the lower Ivies. In my circles at a top 5 B-school a Michigan undergrad</p>

<p>Sakky, Michigan has only 5 superiors at the undergraduate level. They are Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. Michigan is anywhere between #6 and #17 at the undergraduate level, and the difference between #6 and #17 is impossible to measure. </p>

<p>According to the Peer Assessment score that is used by the USNWR, Michigan has a score of 4.6/5.0. That's the reputation score based on the quality of undergraduate education. Michigan is tied with Penn, Duke, Cornell and Chicago. It is actually ranked above Brown and Dartmouth. I should think those university administrators and deans of academic studies would know more than us about universities. </p>

<p>I attempted to discuss Michigan's Law school admissions and you seemed adament on including the entire university to come up with per/capita figures. You must be responsible when throwing around such figures. It is not ligical to throw Michigan and Dartmouth in the same bag. Dartmouth has 4,000 undergrads and Michigan has 24,000 undergrads. To you, that means that Michigan is 6 times bigger than Dartmouth...end of story. But it does not work that way. Of Dartmouth's 4,000 undergrads, 3,000 (75%) major in fields that ar econsidered "pre-law". At Michigan, only 8,000 (35%) of the students major in such fields. Michigan has 4,000 Engineers, 4,000 in the 5 schools I meantioned above and 6,000 who major in the sciences and pre-med. In order to accurately measure the effectiveness of either school's success at producing Law school students, one must simply look at the number who apply to Law school and the number who end up enrolling at top 10 and top 25 Law schools. If one looks at those figures, Michigan is pretty much on par with the lower Ivies and other top schools like Chicago, Johns Hopkins etc... If one does not properly fragment the figures, then schools like MIT, Michigan and Cornell will suffer because they have large Engineering colleges and as we both know, Engineers do not usually apply to Law school.</p>

<p>Michigan's selectivity rank, which you brought up the other day, is 18th in the nation. That is not amazing, but it is excellent. If you look at the schools of LSA, Engineering, Business and Pharmacy, Michigan would be closer to #10 in terms of selectivity. But the average SAT score of students in the colleges of Nursing, Kinesiology, Music, Art and Natural Resource Management (those 5 colleges make up 20% of the student body) is barely over 1100. Those colleges do not weaken Michigan mind you. If anything, they strengthen the University. The students enrolled in those colleges do not compete with students in other colleges within the university, so they do not reduce the intensity in colleges such as Engineering and LSA. But their presence on campus adds another dimension to the university. </p>

<p>Like I said, that is pretty much standard belief among intellectuals, academics and corporate recruiters. When I worked at McKinsey a few years ago, I was part of a team of 30 consultants who measured corporate recruiting strategies. This was part of a greater project that we conducted for a group of 40 large multinational companies on the challenges of the "War for Talent". We benchmarked top companies in 17 industries, including Pharmaceuticals, Biotech, IT, Investment Banking, Automotive, Energy, Cosumer Products and Diversified Industrials. They all had core campuses where they recruited their best talent. Michigan and Cal were on all of their short list of 10-15 universities. Each company had other schools that were uniquely used as speciality hunting grounds. Like Purdue and Illinois for Engineering and Indiana and NYU for Business. But the "core campuses" were campuses where those companies would recruit raw talent. English and Engineering majors alike. They would place them in special, fast-track training programs knowing that they would succeed no matter what. It is not surprising that Michigan's alumni body is the 4th best paid/per capita in the US. </p>

<p>At the graduate level, Michigan has no superiors. It is the only university in American that has top 7 or 8 graduate programs in all the professional fields (Business, Dentistry, Education, Engineering, Nursing, Law, Medicine, Pharmacy, Public Health, Public Policy, Social Work). It is also ranked in the top 10 in every discipline (Anthropology, Economics, English, Geology, History, Mathematics, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology) except for Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science and Physics, which are ranked 14, 21, 14, and 13 respectively.</p>

<p>Slipper, your numbers do not add up. The mean SAT score for students at Michigan is in the 1220-1420. At the lower Ivies, it is in the 1300-1500 range. So yes, it is higher, but only by 80 points...and Michigan, like many other schools, deemphasizes SATs. Also, you are comparing apples to oranges. The mid 50% SAT score at the schools of LSA and Engineering is 1240-1480, which is only 40 points below the average SAT score at schools like Columbia and Brown.</p>

<p>Your school may be special. Maybe you have a special deal with Michigan. Maybe you have many URM (Michigan really lowers its standards in those cases). Maybe they apply to colleges like Nursing or Kinesiology. But Asian and White out-of-state students with SATs lower than 1300 AND a GPA lower than 3.7 AND a ranking out of the top 10% have virtually no chance of getting into the colleges of LSA or Engineering. So your school is doing something very fishy.</p>

<p>From my class, 6 of us we to Michigan. We all had SAT scores over 1400. My SAT score was 1540. And that was in 1991, before they re-centered the test.</p>

<p>Michigan is the 18th most selective university in the country. The lower Ivies hover in the 7-16 range. So they cannot be much more selective. And unlike Michigan, the Ivies do not have Division I sports. They do not have a college of Kinesiology or Nursing or Natural Resource Management that lower the overall average numbers by 50 SAT points.</p>

<p>Michigan is easier to get into in terms of chances, but not in terms of quality. If you aren't a good student, you cannot get in. And unless you are an exceptional student, chances aren't that good. 60% of Michigan's students are Ivy League material, and half od those who aren't do not major in academic fields, nor do they compete with students who do.</p>

<p>First off, the biggest flaw in my book about how the USNews does its undergraduate survey is that is splits off so-called "national universities" and "national liberal arts colleges". Why does it do this and why is this split important? I have never heard of a coherent reason as to why. The way that USNews defines a national university is one that offers lots of graduate programs, particularly PhD programs. Yet, for the purposes of undergraduate education, what does that have to do with anything? If you are talking about undergraduate education, and that is what I am talking about, then honestly, who cares whether your school offers all these graduate programs? As far as undergraduate education is concerned, you're either #1, or you're not. All colleges should be judged using the same criteria to determine who really is #1 according to undergraduate education. Why should Harvard or Michigan be judged using different criteria than Williams or Amherst? All of them offer an undergraduate education - so why shouldn't they be compared against each other to determine who really does offer the best such education? This BS about how one school is #1 according to such-and-such category, and some other school is #1 according to some other category really needs to stop. All undergrad programs should be judged against each other. Either you are offering the best undergraduate education, or you're not. Period. </p>

<p>Hence, is Michigan really better than Williams, Amherst, or Swarthmore in terms of undergraduate education? Again, with the obvious exception of certain fields, notably engineering and bus-ad, I think most people who know higher education would concede that AWS is probably better than Michigan at the undergraduate level. I would further that notion by saying that not just AWS, but quite a few of the other liberal arts colleges are also better than Michigan at the undergraduate level. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. The point is that AWS is generally conceded to be better than Michigan. What obscures this fact is the 'split' of the USNews ranking into 2 categories. If USNews were to merge those 2 categories, then I think the fact that AWS are better than Michigan undergrad would be plain to see. </p>

<p>Secondly, do you honestly believe that peer assessment is the end-all, be-all? Are you honestly saying that things like selectivity, resources, and all the rest have nothing to do with anything when it comes to determining quality? If so, then you are implicitly saying that USNews is wrong, because USNews uses precisely those things to come up with a compositive value for the strength of your undergraduate program. But then if it is your position that USNews is wrong, then you shouldn't be using USNews to back up any of your statements. According to USNews, Michigan is tied for #22 in the national universities category, without getting into the whole liberal-arts colleges brouhaha (and like I said, if you really want to get into it, I think that among the liberal arts colleges, at the very least, Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore are better than the Michigan undergraduate program). The point is that you can't just pick and choose one particular category that USNews measures and take that as the basis for what you are saying. You either accept all of USNews, or you accept none of it. You can't just take those particular things that you like out of USNews, but then dismiss the rest. It's an all or nothing affair. You either accept all of USNews, or you accept none of it. </p>

<p>Furthermore, the fact that Michigan has so few pre-laws only gets to something I've been saying before - if you really want to do pre-law, then you may be better served by attending an Ivy than attending Michigan. Look at it from the perspective of an incoming student. Which one is better for that person who is interested in pre-law. I completely agree with you that somebody who wants to study engineering is clearly better served at Michigan than at, say, Brown. Conversely, you must agree with me that somebody who wants to go pre-law ought to be considering Brown over Michigan. </p>

<p>Also, do you honestly think that having all of these students at lesser Michigan schools does not weaken the school? Really? At the very least, they are consuming academic resources (library books, study space, classrooms, computers, etc. etc.) that could be used by the engineering students and the bus-ad students. Furthermore, I think you also massively discount the 'social'-aspect of education, something that all parents, including yours and mine understand intuitively. Every parent understands that it is better to raise their kids in an environment away from the 'bad element'. And let's face it - those students at those less-selective Michigan schools tend to be, well, lazier, less prepared and downright not as strong of students, on average, than the other Michigan students. Don't get me wrong - not all of them are like that. But on average, this is the unfortunate truth. The problem with such students hanging around the campus is that it tends to demotivate the good students. When you see everybody around you working hard and achieving amazing things, you are motivated to do the same. But when you see students that aren't working very hard, who aren't really studying, who are partying and drinking a lot, then you tend to want to do that too. Hence the very presence of such students tends to hurt the others. I know that's a very blunt statement, but you must concede that people are social creatures and they tend to copy what they see around them. That's why most parents want to raise their kids in a 'good neighborhood' - which translates to meaning away from the bad element. </p>

<p>Finally, you also discount the importance of brand-image. Ultimately, the image of a school is determined by its alums. When lots of alums are high achievers, then the image of the school is raised. But if the alums include lots of people who, again aren't particularly impressive, then that lowers the image of the school. When an employer hires some Michigan alumni, only to find that they happen to be lazy and not particularly bright, is that employer going to think "Oh, that's OK, those guys are kinesiology grads, so I would expect them to be not as qualified as the average Michigan graduate". No, of course not. That employer is going to think "Wow, I guess Michigan really isn't that good of a school". That's the reality of how employment works - the lesser students ruin it for everybody else. The brand-image of Michigan is hurt when it grants degrees to students who really aren't very good. </p>

<p>And again, Michigan = 18th in the nation? Again, that's 18th according to the national universities ranking. But does that really mean 18th overall? Of course not. Again, AWS, at the very least, are more selective than Michigan, along with, I'm sure, many other liberal arts colleges. So really, I think when you look at it, the selectivity of Michigan among all undergraduate programs is somewhere in the low 20's. </p>

<p>And again, the whole idea of "core campuses" is a questionable one at best because, again, such a concept is strongly influenced by size. Michigan is a big school. It is easy and convenient for a recruiter to stop by Michigan knowing that the school has lots and lots of available candidates, which means they will be able to scan lots of resumes and run lots of interviews. The simple laws of probability dictate that you increase your chances of finding your ideal employee if you just have lots and lots of candidates to choose from. But that's a far cry from making a big school "good" for the individual student. The individual student at a big school has to fight with all the other students at that school in order to get that good job. </p>

<p>Hence, once again, the per-capita play comes to mind. I am not surprised in the least that lots of employers would go to Michigan. Why not - I agree that Michigan undergrad is a good school (I have never disputed this), and Michigan is also big, so employers know they are casting their fishing line in a very big pond. But from the perspective of the individual Michigan student, things look less good. On a per-capita basis, Michigan undergrads are not doing particularly well.</p>

<p>Finally, again, I have never disputed that Michigan graduate school is very good. In fact, I have said this many times. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the undergraduate program here.</p>

<p>WOW! This thread has some really strong personas. </p>

<p>Anyways the difference between Michigan and the top schools are minimal. I must agree with Alexandre that Michigan is only topped by HYPSMC(altech). The rest of it is debatable. Hell I probably could come up with a formula that will tell me that Michigan is top 3. After HYPMSC there is little difference between the school overall. What is different is that each appeals and is effective on certain people. For example Dartmouth may be very good for people who need hand holding while Mich and Cal appeals to the people who are independent. </p>

<p>BTW as a fact, Michigan attracts some business employers who even the Ivies cannot. Few examples:</p>

<p>Lazard- ridiculously pretigious investment bank. One of the tops. <a href="http://www.lazard.com/career_opportunities/campus_recruitment/investment_banking/na_undergraduate.html#campus%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.lazard.com/career_opportunities/campus_recruitment/investment_banking/na_undergraduate.html#campus&lt;/a>.
click on campus events. </p>

<p>You will notice that Dartmouth, Brown, Emory, Washington U etc are not there. Guess why, Michigan is a breeding ground for biz. And this is not due to numbers. I I am not mistakes the Mich BBA class usually is around the 400 mark. </p>

<p>Citadel Investment Group- One of the world's top hedge funds. Hedge funds and PE shops are the most sought after jobs in finance. <a href="https://www.citadelgroup.com/careers/recruiting_campus_events_schools.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;https://www.citadelgroup.com/careers/recruiting_campus_events_schools.html&lt;/a>. Again Emory, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell etc are not represented. </p>

<p>So as these two examples show Michigan is a top choice for employers. This is only in business. The engineering ones I believe would be ridiculously skewed towards Michigan as they have one of the best engineering department in the world. </p>

<p>Michigan can be compared to the colleges outside of HYMPCS. So in essense all this yapping is pure nonsense. Just my .02 cents.</p>

<p>Again, don't you think that the sheer size of Michigan has something to do with why those companies are coming? I said it before, I'll say it again, by the sheer laws of probability, a company increases its chances of finding the right employee by just going to a place that has lots and lots of candidates, and Michigan has lots of available candidates. But that's a very different thing from saying that Michigan is good for an individual student there. Again, that individual student will have to compete against all the other students at Michigan to get such jobs. Maybe there are fewer employers coming to Dartmouth, but then again, there are fewer students you are competing against.</p>

<p>As I have said in the post. LOL. Michigan is divided into smaller subsections who work entirely with the student. The graduating class of the business school (for which the employers I listed comes for) is around 400 students. So your hypothesis that employers are coming because of size is plain wrong. </p>

<p>Another thing is that if by your argument Michigan attracts a weaker pool of applicants (which is false) then it should be EASIER to compete for jobs not harder as you say it. Michigan has a reputation for creating top notch students especially in areas of biz and engineering (which I am most knowledgeable about and thus unable to give insights into other areas) that employers come to recruit more students. Michigan biz is debatably better than almost all biz programs other than the big W itself. The engineering school at Mich is one of the best in the entire nation. The Ivies other than Cornell cannot compare to it. The engineering school is also substantially smaller.</p>

<p>Oh come now. Do you think that firms like Lazard and Citagdel are only hiring BBA students? Come on. They are hiring from the entire gamut of Michigan students. Case in point - Citadel is a rather prominent employer at MIT. Only the MIT Sloan School? Hardly. Citadel recruits from the entire MIT student body. Lots of MIT engineering students are interviewing with Citadel. Similarly, when companies come to Michigan, they are able to access (and do access) the entire student body. Financial (and consulting) firms are rather infamous for hiring lots of engineers, for the simple fact that engineering students are known to be hard-working.</p>

<p>Now I would agree with you that when it comes to engineering jobs, it is no contest - Michigan wins. But surely you must agree that the gamut of good jobs does not include engineering jobs only. </p>

<p>And yes, it is precisely my argument that Michigan attracts a weaker pool of applicants. But no, it does not follow that it is easier to compete for such jobs as a Michigan candidate. The fact is, employers know that Michigan students are, on average, not as good as students at other places, so employers simply don't offer as many jobs, relative to the number of graduating students, as they would at other schools. Hence, it is not easier to get such a job. Sure, the competition is easier, but on the other hand, there are fewer available spots available. The company likes it because the company gets to see lots and lots of candidates to fill the limited number of spots it makes available. On the other hand, it does not follow that it is easier for an individual Michigan student to get such a job.</p>

<p>I would also dispute your notion of Michigan biz. I don't dispute that the Michigan BBA bus-ad program is a very strong program, and may well be 2nd only to Wharton (well, maybe Sloan and Haas are better, but that's splitting hairs). But I would be careful not to stretch this analogy too far. To say that Michigan biz is one of the best undergraduate business administration programs in the country is one thing. To then say that Michigan is one of the best places to go for undergrad to get a high-profile business job is quite another. Let's face it. I think you'd agree that going to Harvard is probably better than going to Michigan for bus-ad if you want to get a job in, say, consulting or banking, despite the fact that Harvard does not offer an undergrad bus-ad major. That's why you see so many bankers and consultants with bachelor's degrees from Harvard. The same thing can be said for Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. None of these schools offer an undergrad bus-ad degree, but surely you must agree that that does not mean that they are bad places to go to get a business job. On the contrary, these are some of the best places to go to get that kind of job. After all, take a random BBA student at Michigan and ask him whether he'd rather be at HYPS if given the chance, unless cost was a problem. I think we'd agree that he'd probably say yes. Yet very few HYPS undergraduates would rather be in the Michigan BBA program. That goes to show you that if you really look at the situation, you must agree that the Michigan BBA program is probably not as good as HYPS when it comes to getting business jobs, therefore it does not really follow that the Michigan BBA program is really #2 in terms of getting good business jobs. QED.</p>

<p>Finally, I just thought of an analogy that might explain what I expect to be Alexandre's upcoming post. Alexandre has contended that lots of Michigan students do not study "pre-law" subjects. Here I agree. For example, lots of them study engineering or music or the like. No dispute here. And many of them don't even bother applying to law school. Again, no dispute.</p>

<p>But I would vigorously dispute whether that means that those students aren't interested in attending an elite law school. Consider this situation. What if I were to go up to every graduating Michigan engineering student and (magically) give them guaranteed admission to an elite law school. How many of them would turn it down? Be honest. Some would turn it down, but I would argue that many would take it. Hence, that goes to show you that many Michigan engineering students are in fact interested in attending a top law school. They just don't apply either because they don't think they will get in, or some other reason. But that doesn't mean that they aren't interested. If they really weren't interested, then all of them would turn down my (magical) offer of guaranteed admission. But I think we would all agree that many of them would in fact take the offer. That goes to show you that these students actually are interested in attending a top law school. </p>

<p>Hence, deleting such students from the "pre-law" pool is therefore wrong. You should not delete these students. You should include these students, because they actually are interested in attending an elite law school.</p>

<p>To end, I would reiterate once again that I never said that I thought the Michigan undergrad program was bad. In fact, I consider it to be quite good - far better than the vast majority of undergrad programs out there. The dispute is whether the Michigan undergrad program is better than that of the lower Ivies. All of these programs are strong, but I contend that the lower Ivies are stronger.</p>