UNDERGRADUATE ranking based on the student’s environment

<p>kb,
It may seem that I’m stuck on standardized test scores, but I’m not. It’s just that I happen to consider them a more informative data point for trying to divine the relative strengths of student bodies. </p>

<p>For example, look at this (data rounded and college names eliminated to minimize the grumbling). </p>

<p>GPA
3.9 Student A
3.9 Student B
3.9 Student C
3.9 Student D</p>

<p>Class rank
Top 10% Student A
Top 10% Student B
Top 10% Student C
Top 10% Student D</p>

<p>ACT Score
27, Student A
29, Student B
31, Student C
33, Student D</p>

<p>Which data point gives you the most insight into which student is the strongest? </p>

<p>Now, look at the depth for percentage scoring 30+:</p>

<p>28%, Student A’s school
44%, Student B’s school
75%, Student C’s school
85%, Student D’s school</p>

<p>Can you make some judgment about the relative strengths of these student bodies? IMO, yes. Easily. It’s not 100% conclusive, but it’s not far from it either. Of course, not all high test scorers will automatically have strong transcripts as well, but for the most selective schools, barring some major hook, it’s hardly news that there is a large correlation. </p>

<p>BTW, I don’t doubt that you (or Alex, although he was in college back in the Stone Ages of the mid-1990s) were challenged as a student at your college or that you were an Ivy-caliber applicant. Nor do I doubt that there were many like you at U Michigan. I’m sure that there are many fine students there, just like there are at many colleges all across the USA, including places like BYU or Texas A&M or U Georgia or U Washington. There are a lot of good students at those places, too. </p>

<p>Look, I’m happy for you and Alex that you enjoyed your time in college and like to think that you were the Big Cheese by virtue of going there, but it never fails to astound me how out of touch you guys are with other places.</p>

<p>again, you are talking about SAT/ACT scores, and I’m talking about the strength of the student body and how good the school is at educating these students and making them successful. And this is measured by the success of the alumni, the generation of intellectual capital. </p>

<p>Let’s take your favorite school, Vanderbilt, the best school is the peabody school of education and it turns out more teachers as a percentage than any school in the top 50. Teaching is a great profession, but not prestigious.</p>

<p>Hawkette, you are the one who is out of touch, not I. I am at the top of my game. I have kept up with colleges. Im am up to date with the most recent information. The gap between the top universities and the second tied is not narrowing… it is in fact widening. The traditional elites (including Michigan) have seen an larger increase in endowment, facilities development and key-faculty hirings than non-traditional academic powerhouses. You are clueless. You claimed that only 25% of students at Michigan are of non-HYPM elite private universities calibre. That claim downright ignorant…or, worse yet, intentionally deceptive. The top 25% of Michigan students graduated with a straight 4.0 high school GPA taking primarily AP classes throughout Junior and Senior year, graduated in the top 1% of their high school class, scored between in the 1430-1600 (1490 average) on the SAT and between 32-36 (34 on average) on the ACT. That’s significantly higher than the average student at schools like Brown or Cornell. Hell, that’s higher than the average at Stanford. The top 25% of students at Michigan is equal to the top 50% of non-HYPM private elites. Over 50% of Michigan students are of non-HYPM private elite calibre, and let us keep in mind that even at those private elites, 10%-20% of students aren’t up to scratch. Statistically speaking, the top 25% of the students at Michigan are equal the top top 50% of the students at schools like Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern and Penn and the top 50% of the students at Michigan are equal to the top 75% of the students at the private universities listed above. The statistics are clear…you listed them several times above:</p>

<p>The top 25% of students at Michigan score over 1430 on the SAT and/or over a 31 on the ACT. That’s at least as good as the top 50% of students at all of the private universities I listed above. </p>

<p>The top 50% of students at Michigan score over a 1330 on the SAT and/or over a 29 on the ACT. That’s at least as good as the top 50% of students at all of the private universities I listed above. </p>

<p>In short, you were way off when you stated that only 25% of Michigan students are of the calibre of the students at those private elites. What you meant to say is that 50% of students at Michigan are equal to the top 75% of the students at those private elites. Not bad for a school that is at least twice as large.</p>

<p>But that incredibly talented student body isn’t what makes Michigan an elite university. Elite universities are elite because of the size of their endowments, the quality of their faculty and facilities, the influence of their alumni, on-campus corporate recruitment etc… Those are the factors that make schools like the Ivies and Michigan elite.</p>

<p>hey harvardgator:</p>

<p>I hope you noticed in post #45 that one of the UC “also-rans” is ahead of Michigan, Penn, Northwestern & Johns Hopkins and two of 'em are ahead of Duke, Wash U… :D</p>

<p>^ Harvardgator doesn’t care about faculty achievements…he/she is more likely to agree with the ranking in Post #98.</p>

<p>The ranking uses 2 (objective!) data points…average SAT score and undergrad enrollment, so no complaining.</p>

<p>LOL. You U Michigan guys are hopeless. </p>

<p>My point has never been that there aren’t some fine students at schools like U Michigan. Of course there are. And as I’ve noted in several prior posts, this is also the case for many, many schools all around the country. I mean, it’s not like your school is the only place that can make claims to enrolling some fine students. </p>

<p>As for the claims about the “averages” of U Michigan’s top 25%…uh…pretty amateurish stuff,</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Do you think that people on CC are so stupid as not to see this as a duplicitous presentation? Come on, Alex, I expected more from you than this ridiculous attempt. Heck, there are dozens of schools (including many of U Michigan’s true private and public peers, including BC, Lehigh, Case Western, Rensselaer, Tulane and U Illinois and U Wisconsin) where if you averaged their 75th percentile with the top score, they’d look Princetonesque too. </p>

<p>Well, I guess whatever you need to boost that self esteem…keep repeating it to yourself and maybe it will come true…”u Michigan is elite”…”u Michigan is elite”….”u Michigan is elite”……Sleep tight, sugarplums.</p>

<p>Can we get back to the original purpose of the thread, which was to talk about the undergraduate environment from the student’s perspective? Selectivity is but one aspect of that and I think we’ve pretty well beat that issue to death. </p>

<p>Shall we move on to other things that will impact the average undergraduate student’s college environment, ie, things like class size, faculty teaching commitment, institutional support to undergrads, etc….and whatever else you think would be appropriate to discuss and compare?</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>How about?</p>

<h1>NAS & Nobel faculty</h1>

<p>% attendance at football games, (bonus points for having a really big house, but demerits for consistently losing to THE…)
Number of elements named after you on the Periodic Table
% of Pell Grantees (giving lotsa money to already rich kids is not big deal)
Big Six BCS conference
Has a respectable mascot (tree - huh?)</p>

<p>

For all practical purposes, yes. Of course, the student body is not the only component one must consider.</p>

<p>

Ah, yes…what % weighting do you think would be fair for this data point? 50? 99.7? ;)</p>

<p>Hawkette, in no way would I classify Tulane, Lehigh, Boston College and Case Western as “true peers” to Michigan. </p>

<p>Look at my ranking in Post #98…using only two objective data points (which you happen to be very fond of - SAT scores and undergrad pop.), we find that Michigan is peers with the following: Cornell, Duke, Penn and Berkeley.</p>

<p>Ironically, over 2,000 academics seem to agree:</p>

<p>Cornell 4.5
Penn 4.5
Michigan 4.4
Duke 4.4
Berkeley 4.7 (stretch)…:)</p>

<p>I was referring mainly to the strength of the students that attend when lumping those schools together (Boston College, NYU, Georgia Tech, U Michigan, Lehigh, Tulane, U Illinois, U Wisconsin, Case Western, etc.). All are pretty similar in their student body characteristics and strength, including a subset that would be legitimate applicants to non-HYP Ivies. </p>

<p>As for the academics, you know, there are other sources that feel differently. There are some pretty informative student and impartial observer sites that compare colleges on a variety of metrics, including academics. People in academia often judge schools on things that students aren’t affected by. Students, however, have to live the experience of being on the campus, taking the classes and seeing first-hand if the hype meets the reality. I know you love to tout the PA scores, but I care a lot more about what the student experiences and thinks.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Honestly, I can’t imagine what will happen to the reputation of these schools if they would have 25k undergrad students. Most likely will drop significantly.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>hawkette, </p>

<p>the thing is, the top 50% of Michigan undergrad is already about the size of three or four top-class private schools. It’s huge. It’s like Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Boston College and San Clara put together. For a school to be able to attract a large number of top-class, high achieving students must take a surmountable amount of prestige and resources to win and keep them. Neither school in your list can do it, to be honest. Look at Cornell - it’s reputation as a selective school is dwindling because it’s the largest of all the ivies and Cornell isn’t even half the size of Michigan yet. </p>

<p>Another point is, you focus too much on those “added” students who’s stats aren’t that impressive, but are still good. But you have to realize that they’re accepted to for fill in the slots of those unpopular courses as Michigan offer them and most privates don’t. But in reality, there are plenty of oversubscribed undergrad programs at Michiagn so when you’re majoring on programs such as business or engineering or economics or english or computer science or politics or mathematics at Michigan, for example, the general student body on those programs is on par with the student bodies of the top privates. That’s why I have been saying that it’s incorrect and misleading to compare small private schools to a large school like Michigan or Berkeley. You cannot capture what you really want to appear on your capture, and therefore, would only give us a misleading interpretation.</p>

<p>

I brought up the PA score to reinforce a point.</p>

<p>How do you explain that a ranking that only uses two of your favorite data points, average SAT score and undergrad population puts the following schools next to each other: Duke and Michigan…in fact they are tied! (just like in the PA survey) </p>

<p>Since you want this thread to be about what the undergraduate student truly experiences, do you honestly think the UG experience at Michigan is closer to Case Western and/or Lehigh or is it closer to Duke?</p>

<p>

Great. I’d love to hear your comparison of all the colleges you personally attended.</p>

<p>“Do you think that people on CC are so stupid as not to see this as a duplicitous presentation? Come on, Alex, I expected more from you than this ridiculous attempt. Heck, there are dozens of schools (including many of U Michigan’s true private and public peers, including BC, Lehigh, Case Western, Rensselaer, Tulane and U Illinois and U Wisconsin) where if you averaged their 75th percentile with the top score, they’d look Princetonesque too.”</p>

<p>Hawkette, those schools you list also have strong student bodies. I never claimed otherwise. Your point was that Michigan’s student body was too inferior to those at private elites to compete with them as an academic institution. In fact, that arguement has ben the cornerstone of your entire case for why Michigan and other public elites are merely “fine”. The fact is, and the statistics bear this out, there is virtually no difference between the top 50% of the students at Michigan (or Cal, UVa and other public elites) and the top 75% of the students at those private elites. And yes, students at schools like BC, NYU, UIUC and Wisconsin are also excellent and not far behind the private elites. Of course, the quality of a student body cannot be measured statistically because different schools publish statistics differently. Even if all schools adhered to one basic system, comparing students through statistics would be inconclusive as there are varrying opinions on the matter of quantifying intellectual ability through testing. </p>

<p>Now you stated that only 25% of Michigan students are of nnon-HYPM elite quality. That means that only 25% of Michigan students are of Brown, Columbia, Cornell or Penn quality. For that claim to be true, that would mean that 100% of students at those private schools graduated in the top 1% of their high school class with straight 4.0 unweighed GPAs and 1440+ SAT scores or 32+ ACT scores. Even Harvard doesn’t come close to that. Those figures are like the top 40% at Brown and Cornell, the top 50% at Columbia and Penn and the top 65% at Harvard. You should be careful when you make a sweeping statement like that. Had you said that 50% of Michigan students are of such calibre, compared to 75% at private elites, I probably would not have had an issue, although that would obviously not have the same impact on your argument.</p>

<p>Like I said many times in the past, student quality does not determine the quality or reputation of a university. Quality of faculty, contributions to the advancement of humanity through path-breaking research, size of endowment, contribution of funds from the state to the universities, overall reputation of the school, school spirit, availlability of on-campus artistics, social, political and athletic activities, alumni size, affluence and influence etc… play a much larger role. But none of those criteria can be measured effectively.</p>

<p>“Well, I guess whatever you need to boost that self esteem…keep repeating it to yourself and maybe it will come true…”u Michigan is elite”…”u Michigan is elite”….”u Michigan is elite”……Sleep tight, sugarplums.”</p>

<p>I sleep well regardless Hawkette. Insomnia has never been a problem. In the last 5 years, I have helped dozens of students chose Michigan over other elite universities such as Cal, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Penn. So far, many of those students have graduated and communicate with me until this day, thanking me for the great advice I gave them. </p>

<p>“Can we get back to the original purpose of the thread, which was to talk about the undergraduate environment from the student’s perspective? Selectivity is but one aspect of that and I think we’ve pretty well beat that issue to death.”</p>

<p>And yet you continuously bring it up when in truth, as I have proven numerous times, it is hardly a differentiating factor. Perhaps you should walk away from this point since it is truly a non-issue.</p>

<p>“Shall we move on to other things that will impact the average undergraduate student’s college environment, ie, things like class size, faculty teaching commitment, institutional support to undergrads, etc….and whatever else you think would be appropriate to discuss and compare?”</p>

<p>Gladly, schools like Cal, Michigan, UVa and other top publics all ranked among the top 15 for teaching in the latest USNWR. Admitedly, such a ranking is meaningless since commitment to instruction and quality of in-class teaching cannot be measured. </p>

<p>Class sizes vary very little from one research school to another. Typically, intro-level classes will be large (over 150 students at smaller private elites, over 200 at larger private elites and over 250 at larger public elites), intermediate level classes will generally be manageable (40-60 students) and advanced classes will be small (fewer than 30 students). </p>

<p>Some universities will offer more “special” seminars than others, thereby raising their over number of “small” classes to the 60% or 70% mark whereas others will not, thereby keeping their number of “small” classes at the 40%-50% range. </p>

<p>As for “institutional support”, elite publics cost less than $15,000 in tuition to over 70% of their students. Schools like Michigan, UIUC and Wisconsin now virtually guarantee high profile research opportunities for nearly 100% of freshmen who seek them. Libraries and computer labs can now service 100% of students at virtually any public flagship university. </p>

<p>All of this beckons the question, why aren’t any of those schools in your top 20 list of undergraduate institutions? They have the endowment, they have the talented student bodies, they have research activity that is open to undergraduate participation, they have the facilities, they have the reputation, they have the alunmni networks, they have corporate America recruiting madly on their campuses and, most of all, they have some of the best faculities in the country.</p>

<p>

OK, here’s my question.</p>

<p>The hawkette criteria for undergraduate academic environment are apparently (1) selectivity, (2) class size, (3) faculty teaching commitment, and (4) institutional support to undergraduates. Those actually strike me as reasonable criteria.</p>

<p>But by those criteria, we shouldn’t bother ranking universities at all – because the top undergraduate schools in the country would be the more selective LACs. The top LACs are comparable to the top universities in terms of (1) and (4), and they clearly surpass the universities in terms of (2) and (3). For example, what university would compete with Williams – where every tutorial is taught by faculty, and where tutorial enrollments capped at two – in these regards?</p>

<p>You could almost say that hawkette is ranking universities by how closely they resemble small, selective LACs – hence the high rankings of schools like Princeton and Dartmouth. No one doubts that a selective LAC is one reasonable model for excellence in undergraduate education. But there are other models – there have to be, or else no one would be applying to universities at all.</p>

<p>

Don’t forget elements named after faculty members.</p>

<p>Re #133: " Look at Cornell - it’s reputation as a selective school is dwindling because it’s the largest of all the ivies and Cornell isn’t even half the size of Michigan yet." </p>

<p>Between when I started looking at colleges for myself, many years ago, to now, so far as I know the relative size of Cornell’s aggregate undergraduate population compared to other Ivies has not changed, therefore this factor could not possibly motivate any alleged dwindling reputation as you claim. </p>

<p>Actually, near as I can tell, over that period the reputation of its seven undergraduate colleges are each either within the same general range, or in some cases relatively better, now vs. previously. </p>

<p>What has changed over this period, specifically within the Ivy League, is that Penn and Columbia have made amazing strides in reputation, moreso than all but a handful of schools over this period. Some schools have risen somewhat, other have fallen, but the net is that Cornell’s individual colleges are, individually, in more or less the same place reputation-wise now as they were back then. I think. Their individual reputations have not dwindled. Not materially, anyway. And all these seven colleges are not all the same, in this or any other regard.</p>

<p>

This is the most false statement I have read on this site. Stanford and Duke are far and away the best universities all around. Try this on for size…</p>

<p>Stanford
Top 5 pure academics, top 5 student body, THE top athletic tradition, top 5 alumni base, top 5 campus beauty, strong campus spirit/environment and top 5 reputation among employers/grad schools</p>

<p>Duke
Top 10-15 pure academics, top 10 student body, strong athletic tradition, top basketball program in modern era, top 5-10 alumni base, top 5 campus beauty, top 5 campus spirit/environment and top 5-10 reputation among employers/grad schools</p>

<p>You seem to value living in a “college town” while there are many college students who prefer the aesthetic beauty and grandeur of the Duke and Stanford campuses that seem to fervently bond the student bodies together and bolster school spirit.</p>

<p>Regardless, Michigan doesn’t really match up to Stanford or Duke with regards to caliber of the student body, athletic achievement, alumni influence/support or reputation among employers/grad schools.</p>