University of Michigan vs. University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

College Search & Selection
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<p>"I’m disappointed in you Alexandre. I would expect nothing less from rjkofnovi but I am surprised to see a knowledgeable and mature individual such as yourself go out of your way to fabricate rankings, obfuscate my intended point, and take a cheap shot at another good school (which happens to be my alma mater). I clearly mentioned that I was referring to Duke programs that were ranked out of the top 20 by both USNWR and NRC which only Chemistry and Earth Sciences fall under. </p>

<p>ennisthemenace, your worthy opinion means so much to me that your disappointment is more than I can bear. But I am knowledgeable, so at least that much you got right. That is why I am a moderator on CC. I am an expert on universities. Trust me, it is not my charming personality or parental instincts that define me as moderator. </p>

<p>“By the way USNWR has Duke’s Chemistry at #42 (not #45), Earth Sciences at #45 (not unranked), Physics at #29 (not #30), and Computer Science at #25 (not #20).”</p>

<p>I used the 2014 rankings, not the 2015 rankings. Duke was ranked out of the top 20 either way, but I apologize for the confusion. </p>

<p>“The NRC has these disciplines all in the top 20.”</p>

<p>No it does not. And I did not take a cheap shot at a university. I never do. I was merely addressing your inaccuracies. As moderator, my only priority is to make sure that the truth is not compromised. I was listing departments at Duke that were ranked out of the top 20 according to both the UNSNWR and the NRC. Even the NRC rates more than 20 universities ahead of Duke in Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Physics and Psychology.</p>

<p>According to the NRC, the following universities were rated higher than Duke in Physics (in order of excellence):</p>

<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>UIUC</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>UCSB</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>UT-Austin</li>
<li>Maryland-College Park</li>
<li>Oklahoma (where is Stanford?)</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Stanford (oooh, there it is, my bad)</li>
<li>CU-Boulder</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Rochester</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>BU</li>
<li>SUNY-Stony Brook</li>
</ol>

<p>…still no Duke</p>

<p>NRC Psychology ratings:

  1. Harvard
  2. Princeton
  3. Stanford
  4. Wisconsin-Madison
  5. Brown
  6. Columbia
  7. Michigan-Ann Arbor
  8. Rochester
  9. Yale
  10. UCLA
  11. UCSD
  12. Chicago
  13. CU-Boulder
  14. Penn
  15. CMU
  16. OSU
  17. Pitt
  18. Minnesota-Twin Cities
  19. Penn State
  20. Syracuse</p>

<p>…still no Duke</p>

<p>NRC Chemistry ratings:

  1. Cal
  2. Caltech
  3. Harvard
  4. Northwestern
  5. UIUC
  6. MIT
  7. Penn State
  8. Stanford
  9. UNC
  10. Yale
  11. Columbia
  12. Wisconsin-Madison
  13. Texas-Austin
  14. Purdue-West Lafayette
  15. UCSD
  16. Georgia Tech
    17 UCLA
  17. Michigan-Ann Arbor
  18. UDub
  19. Cornell</p>

<p>…still no Duke</p>

<p>NRC Computer Science ratings:

  1. Stanford
  2. MIT
  3. Princeton
  4. CMU
  5. Cal
  6. UIUC
  7. Cornell
  8. UNC-Chapel Hill
  9. Harvard
  10. UCLA
  11. UCSB
  12. Georgia Tech
  13. Penn
  14. UT-Austin
  15. Maryland-College Park
  16. UCSD
  17. Michigan-Ann Arbor
  18. Wisconsin-Madison
  19. Michigan State
  20. Columbia</p>

<p>…still no Duke</p>

<p>Like I said, I was not taking a cheap shot at any university. I have always praised Duke. It is one of the best universities in the US, full stop! Not many universities are ranked in the top 20 in every single field. HYPS, Cal, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan and a couple others are the only ones. </p>

<p>Also, BU’s CS department is not that bad according to your much beloved NRC. Heck, it is ranked higher than Caltech. Yes, I can see now why you are so quick to praise the NRC. Oklahoma > Stanford in Physics and BU > Caltech in CS. That’ll be the day! Like I said, the NRC is not reliable. </p>

<p>And according to more reliable USNWR Peer Assessment score of top CS departments, UNC may be ranked higher, but at #27, it is no world beater and at #48, BU is not chopped liver. I prefer UNC to BU, but if money is a concern, BU isn’t a bad alternative.</p>

<p>adidas8, what did you choose? BU or UNC?</p>

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<p>

… in MOST engineering areas besides biomedical …
That is, if we want to be exact.</p>

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<p>“I’m disappointed in you Alexandre. I would expect nothing less from rjkofnovi …” …even though, unlike myself, he has always used just one screen name. </p>

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<p>Alexandre, you are completely misinterpreting the NRC rankings. The whole reason they come in ranges is because you can’t rank graduate program in strict sequential order and rather they belong in tiers. Besides Physics, the low end of all the graduate programs you mentioned has Duke in the top 20. Psychology is “16-51” in the R-Rank, Physics is “14-67” in the S-Rank, Computer Science is “9-36” in the S-Rank and “14-27” in the R-Rank, etc.</p>

<p>

Who cares? People who pursue a graduate degree in a discipline need not be concerned with the rankings of other graduate programs of that university. Someone who get a PhD in Computer Science at CMU is not sweating over the fact that the school doesn’t have a highly rated English program.</p>

<p>The best Duke/Penn/Columbia grads will get PhDs in Political Science from Michigan, Computer Science from Stanford, Philosophy from NYU, Math from Princeton, Electrical Engineering from MIT etc etc. They graduated from a top 10 undergraduate program after all.</p>

<p>

.
UNC has much stronger students than BU overall and thus more recruiters will focus on Chapel Hill grads. It’s as simple as that- why would a Boston area Computer Science recruiter flock to BU when he/she can go to Harvard or MIT instead? The Research Triangle has plenty of job opportunities and Duke and UNC reign supreme there. $30K is not enough to justify choosing BU over UNC,</p>

45

<p>“Who cares? People who pursue a graduate degree in a discipline need not be concerned with the rankings of other graduate programs of that university. Someone who get a PhD in Computer Science at CMU is not sweating over the fact that the school doesn’t have a highly rated English program.”</p>

<p>Apparently, you care. I personally agree that it matters not. A university does not have to be strong across all disciplines to be a top university overall. </p>

<p>“The best Duke/Penn/Columbia grads will get PhDs in Political Science from Michigan, Computer Science from Stanford, Philosophy from NYU, Math from Princeton, Electrical Engineering from MIT etc etc. They graduated from a top 10 undergraduate program after all.”</p>

<p>Again agreed. But there are literally 30 colleges and universities that can make a legitimate claim of being top 10 undergraduate institutions (including major LACs like Amherst, Harvey Mudd, Williams etc… and public elites (such as Cal and UNC), and those that have top programs in their chosen fields of study, particularly in technical fields such as CS and Engineering, will be at an advantage when it comes to professional placement. </p>

<p>“UNC has much stronger students than BU overall and thus more recruiters will focus on Chapel Hill grads. It’s as simple as that- why would a Boston area Computer Science recruiter flock to BU when he/she can go to Harvard or MIT instead? The Research Triangle has plenty of job opportunities and Duke and UNC reign supreme there. $30K is not enough to justify choosing BU over UNC”</p>

<p>Recruiters do not only flock a campus because of the students but also because of the strength of its programs. Purdue is probably more heavily recruited by Engineering firms than Dartmouth, even if Dartmouth has stronger students. Not that this is a major issue in the case of BU vs UNC. The students at UNC are not “much stronger” than the average students at BU. The difference is not that pronounced. They have similar freshmen profiles. I would personally prefer UNC over BU, but finances are a part of the OP’s equation. I am not sure it is worth graduating with $30k more debt from UNC. Only the OP can decide.</p>

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<p>

No, I was merely defending my alma mater when rjkofnovi chose to attack it unprompted by stating that there are many programs where Duke wasn’t ranked in the top 20 without any justification. I would assume you would have done the same if another poster criticized Michigan for having a high acceptance rate, low selectivity, or meager financial resources unprovoked. I agree that a university doesn’t have to be excellent in every area to be considered elite but I would argue that being ranked in the top 25, top 30, or even top 50 in a particular field does constitute being “top” in that area considering how many universities there are in the country.</p>

<p>

I don’t see how 30 schools can be considered to be top 10 undergraduate institutions among research universities. I would say that the 8 Ivies, Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Duke, Northwestern, and JHU are the clear contenders here with the other universities ranked past them lacking in one or more areas of selectivity, financial resources, class sizes, academic reputation, etc. Cal and UNC are not selective enough nor do they have the wealth to compete to be “top 10 undergraduate schools”.</p>

<p>LACs belong in their own category so they are too difficult to compare. Some schools have top graduate programs but they are too large to provide their undergrads with a lot of individual attention, research opportunities, large classes, strong recommendation letters, etc so their research prowess is negated since the material covered in undergrad is so basic anyway. This has been the classic debate on College Confidential since Day 1.</p>

<p>

If Dartmouth had a much larger engineering program, it would get a lot more recruiters on campus too just like Purdue. The ROI isn’t there for companies to spend large sums of money to have an active on-campus recruiting presence at Dartmouth when they only graduate maybe 100 engineers and a majority of them are interested in going to Wall Street or Management Consulting.</p>

<p>OP, what did you decide?</p>

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<p>Please don’t quote me goldenboy.</p>

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<p>“I don’t see how 30 schools can be considered to be top 10 undergraduate institutions among research universities. I would say that the 8 Ivies, Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Duke, Northwestern, and JHU are the clear contenders here with the other universities ranked past them lacking in one or more areas of selectivity, financial resources, class sizes, academic reputation, etc.”</p>

<p>This thread is not about university rankings (there are plenty of those as it is), so I am not going to go into a discussion on that subject. Suffice it to say, I agree that all the universities you listed are elite.</p>

<p>More importantly, I too am curious to know which university the OP has chosen. </p>

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<p>@rjkofnovi‌ </p>

<p>Who is goldenboy? You seem to have some sort of pathological obsession with that person. I’m assuming that he/she was banned and you think that I am him under a different screenname? It is a violation for an individual to create multiple screennames; I would have been removed from the forums. Please stop jumping to conclusions.</p>

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<p>BU and this from a person who has his graduate degree from Carolina and met his wife there.</p>