<p>nevermind – I found the scroll bar.</p>
<p>I take back defending you Sam! ;-)</p>
<p>well who said that US News and Forbes rankings directly correlate with the quality of one’s undergraduate program? In fact, the quality of undergraduate studies can mean lots of different things to different people…</p>
<p>rjkofnovi, I have nothing against Michigan, all I’m trying to say that it’s difficult to say clearly that Michigan or Virginia is better than the other.</p>
<p>
U.S. News & World Report<br>
America's Best Colleges<br>
Best National Universities </p>
<p>Institution 1987 1990 1991 1992 1993 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008</p>
<p>Harvard 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 1
Princeton 4 4 4 2 2 2 2 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2
Yale 3 3 2 3 3 2 1 3 1 4 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3
Stanford 1 2 3 4 6 4 6 5 4 6 6 5 4 5 5 5 4 4 4
MIT 11 6 6 5 4 5 5 6 4 3 5 5 4 4 5 7 4 7 4
Caltech 21 5 5 5 5 7 9 9 9 1 4 4 4 5 8 7 4 5 6
Pennsylvania 19 13 13 14 16 11 13 7 6 7 6 5 4 5 4 4 7 5 6
Duke 7 7 7 7 7 6 4 3 6 7 8 8 4 5 5 5 8 8 8
Columbia 18 10 9 10 11 15 11 9 10 10 10 9 10 11 9 9 9 9 8
Chicago 8 11 10 9 9 11 12 14 14 13 10 9 12 13 14 15 9 9 8
Dartmouth 6 8 8 7 8 7 7 7 10 11 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 11 11
Washington (STL) 23 24 18 20 18 20 17 17 16 17 15 14 12 9 11 11 12 12 12
Northwestern 17 23 14 13 13 13 9 9 10 14 13 12 10 11 11 12 14 14 12
Cornell 11 9 12 11 10 13 14 14 6 11 10 14 14 14 14 13 12 12 14
Johns Hopkins 16 15 11 15 15 10 15 14 14 7 15 16 15 14 14 13 16 14 15
Brown 10 12 17 18 12 9 8 9 10 14 15 16 17 17 14 15 15 14 16
Rice 14 16 15 12 14 16 16 17 18 14 13 12 15 16 17 17 17 17 17
Emory 25 26-51 26-51 21 25 17 19 9 16 18 18 18 18 18 20 20 18 17 18
Vanderbilt 26-51 26-51 19 25 20 22 20 19 20 20 22 21 21 19 18 18 18 19 18
Notre Dame 26-51 26-51 26-51 >26 25 18 17 19 18 19 19 19 18 19 18 18 20 19 18
California- Berkeley 5 13 16 16 19 26 27 23 22 20 20 20 20 21 21 20 21 21 21
Carnegie Mellon 26-51 22 24 19 24 23 28 23 25 23 23 23 21 23 22 22 21 22 22
Georgetown 26-51 19 19 17 17 21 23 21 20 23 23 23 24 23 25 23 23 23 23
Virginia 15 18 21 22 21 19 21 21 22 22 20 21 23 21 22 23 24 23 23
California- Los Angeles NR 17 23 23 22 28 31 28 25 25 25 26 25 26 25 25 26 25 25
Michigan-Ann Arbor 8 21 22 24 23 24 24 23 25 25 25 25 25 25 22 25 24 25 26</p>
<p>"NOTE: The year refers to the publication date, not the edition."<br>
SOURCE: U.S. News<br>
</p>
<p>Well I can. Academically, meaning the rankings of individual undergraduate departments, Michigan is clearly a bit better Virginia. It is also clearly a bit better overall than some schools ranked about UVA as well.</p>
<p>^d&mn. i give up trying to make them all aligned right.</p>
<p>The 1987 rankings were based entirely on Peer Assessment. In 1987, Berkeley rated #5. Looking at PA scores today, Berkeley ranks #6. Not much changes.</p>
<p>^^^I believe Michigan is still around the top 10-15 in that assessment as well UCB.</p>
<p>^i thought you are younger. ucb :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
I presume you are talking about Wake Forest? Why did you say that it doesn’t offer many graduate programs?</p>
<p>“The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers 27 nationally and internationally recognized masters and doctoral programs on the Reynolda and Bowman Gray campuses.”</p>
<p>That is in addition to the School of Divinity, School of Law, Graduate School of Management and School of Medicine.</p>
<p>
So are UCLA and UNC, yet both get stuck behind UVA. </p>
<p>I can only imagine that UVA gets a boost from its relatively small size and selectivity.</p>
<p>GoBlue- According to Wake’s website, it only offers 13 PhD programs, ALL of which are in the sciences and draw on the medical school resources. It’s no less undergraduate-focused than Dartmouth, which similarly has professional schools.</p>
<p>That must be it IB.</p>
<p>I speculated two years ago that UVa was headed for a rankings drop. (And I’m a huge fan of the school.) Of all the major publics, UVa had the smallest, by far, number of low income kids. For example, it was only a 3-4 years ago when UVA had only ~7% Pell Grantees; in contrast, Cal has 30% – or four times that number – and Michigan is ~16%. As UVa increases its economic diversity, it’s test scores will decline, relative to the other publics. (Economic diversity is great public policy, but tough on rankings.)</p>
<p>i posted it partly because it may surprise some people.</p>
<p>i bet many don’t know:</p>
<ol>
<li>penn was outside the top-10 between 1987 and 1996</li>
<li>berkeley was #5 and michigan was #8 in 1987</li>
<li>caltech was #21 in 87. caltech’s leap from #9 to #1 in 99 is probably the biggest surprise ever coming out of USN rankings.</li>
</ol>
<p>Sam can you pm me a link so I can print this or post a link so we can print if we want to. Thanks alot.</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years: Liberal Arts Colleges](<a href=“http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:T34B921Dm9AJ:chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php%3Fcategory%3DLiberal%2BArts%2BColleges+us+news+rankings+through+the+years+universitie&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]U.S”>http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:T34B921Dm9AJ:chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php%3Fcategory%3DLiberal%2BArts%2BColleges+us+news+rankings+through+the+years+universitie&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years: Universities](<a href=“http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:DjJZAS7ZGZcJ:chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php%3Fcategory%3DUniversities+chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php%3Fcategory%3DUniversities&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]U.S”>http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:DjJZAS7ZGZcJ:chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php%3Fcategory%3DUniversities+chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php%3Fcategory%3DUniversities&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</p>
<p>Suddenly, a segue!</p>
<p>Someone be kind enough to explain to me why Michigan undergrad is a good choice, what are its strong undergraduate programs</p>
<p>im sure you’ll find plenty of Michigan affiliates ready to explain to you :)</p>
<p>^ross business school.
engineering. i can’t prove the correlation between undergrad and grad but the undergrad team has done well in annual college solar car competition.</p>
<p>
I think a better question would ask what Michigan’s <em>weak</em> programs are.</p>
<p>Speaking only for my field (Classics) at Michigan – the courses are taught by the same professors who teach graduate students, upper-level courses can be quite small, and undergrads have access to Michigan’s tremendous resources in that area (papyrology collection, Kelsey Museum, etc.). Smaller universities usually (though not always!) offer more attention to undergraduates, but that doesn’t mean the academics are stronger.</p>
<p>(I say this as someone who attended a smaller private university, by the way. No bias here. ;))</p>