<p>Michigan barely retains its T25 spot tied with UCLA for #25 on the list.</p>
<p>What caused the drop?</p>
<p>High acceptance rates compared to the other 25?</p>
<p>Here's the link:</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that Michigan barely kept its #25 position. Its rank has been about the same since I've been a student here. freshman year: 25, sophomore year: 24, junior year: 25 again. Michigan is fairly stable in its rankings.</p>
<p>Michigan will never move up in the rankings unless it drastically lowers its acceptance rate. </p>
<p>I'm not sure the university really cares to though. The acceptance rate has stayed high even though Michigan is getting record numbers of applications and yields are better.</p>
<p>Michigan doesn't really have a choice in terms of acceptance rates though. It's a large public school meaning lots of people need to attend each year.</p>
<p>However, the acceptance rates have been decreasing over the past few years.</p>
<p>I think the rates going down are more an issue of a larger body of students applying, rather than them admitting a drasitically smaller class. I could be wrong though...</p>
<p>-GF</p>
<p>We went up in most of the categories and stayed the same in a few and went down in only 2 (and one of these was the degree of overperformance on expected graduation rates, but overall we actually gained because our predicted graduation rate went from 77% to 83% and we overshot by only 4 instead of 9). So, really, the only slight down category was that classes over 50 increased from 16% to 17%.</p>
<p>However, all the other top schools also experienced significant improvements, since our raw score (relative based) went down from 75 to 73. Our rank killer stats continue to be our faculty resources at #69 and our classes under 20 students at 45%. This is where we are the most out of whack. We need to hire more real professors to teach smaller classes. We have the endowment and the highest public school tuition (or very close)... so why not step up to the plate in these areas where we are behind our peers.</p>
<p>What was Michigan's acceptance rate this year? I know it was wild because of the affirmative action fiasco, but they kept telling us that c/o '11 was the most competetive class in the history of the university, so I assumed the admissions rate was lower than last year.</p>
<p>I heard there was also an unexpected positive yield rate.</p>
<p>boy i'm glad i'm outta here in two years :/</p>
<p>"classes over 50 increased from 16% to 17%"</p>
<p>"classes under 20 students at 45%"</p>
<p>not enough faculty per student</p>
<p>All these factors that are hurting Michigan go back to the ACCEPTANCE RATE. The acceptance rate this past cycle was over 50%. That's way too high for Michigan.</p>
<p>High acceptance rate >>>> Bigger incoming classes >>>> watered down SATs and ACTs >>>> More classes over 20 and 50 >>>> higher student to faculty ratio</p>
<p>Michigan is always ranked between #21 and #25 in the USNWR. Well, for the last 15 years or so anyway.</p>
<p>Acceptance rate is not really a factor in the USNWR ranking anymore. The University of Chicago has an acceptance rate of 40% and still manages to be ranked in the top 10. </p>
<p>What really hurts Michigan are Faculty and Financial resources, both of which aren't bad but blown out of proportion by the USNWR. If Michigan reported faculty:student ratios as private universities do, and if it managed to improve class sizes cosmetically, it would jump quite a few spots in the rankings. And if Financial Resources took into account state vs private funding means and tuition structures, again, Michigan would jump a few more spots. Finally, if the USNWR dropped the alumni donation rate, Michigan would also improve in the rankings. Those are the three criteria that really hurt Michigan. </p>
<p>Peer Assessment score and student selectivity are fine.</p>
<p>Michigan's Peer Assessment score (4.5) is in the same ball park as Brown (4.4), Chicago (4.6), Columbia (4.6), Cornell (4.6), Dartmouth (4.3), Duke (4.4), Johns Hopkins (4.6), Northwestern (4.3) and Penn (4.5).</p>
<p>In terms of selectivity, Michigan managed to be ranked in the same range as Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt. Not bad for a university with 25,000 undergrads!</p>
<p>I definitely agree with tranandy. Michigan's classes are TOO large. Michigan should reduce its class size from 6,000 to 4,000. The reduction should come entirely from the in-state segment. Michigan's undergraduate student body should be 65% out of state and 35% in-state, not the other way around. If Michigan does that, it would improve significantly, both in real terms, and aesthetically (in the USNWR rankings). But it is not going to happen because Michigan's administration only cares more about pleasing the state government than it does about the wellbeing of its students or the lofty expectations of its demanding alums.</p>
<p>tranandy, actually our acceptance rate went down quite a bit... from 57% to 47%... and the ACT scores went up. I think you really mean to focus on overally incoming freshmen. However, if we had more faculty resources, this would make up for having a larger class. For example, UCLA is a large school but has better faculty resources.</p>
<p>At a 29 financial resources, we are not that far out of line with our ranking. It's the glaring faculty resources at 69 and the large class sizes.</p>
<p>Waleed, the USNews data is always a year behind... so they are looking at 2006 incoming class. Still, the acceptance rate dropped from 57% to 47%.</p>
<p>Here's how they calculate the rankings:</p>
<p>Peer assessment (weighting: 25 percent). The U.S. News ranking formula gives greatest weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school's undergraduate academic excellence. The peer assessment survey allows the top academics we consult—presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions—to account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching. Each individual is asked to rate peer schools' academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who don't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly are asked to mark "don't know." Synovate, an opinion-research firm based near Chicago, collected the data; of the 4,089 people who were sent questionnaires, 58 percent responded.</p>
<p>Retention (20 percent in national universities and liberal arts colleges and 25 percent in master's and comprehensive colleges). The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus the following year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services students need to succeed. This measure has two components: six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the retention score) and freshman retention rate (20 percent). The graduation rate indicates the average proportion of a graduating class who earn a degree in six years or less; we consider freshman classes that started from 1996 through 1999. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen entering from 2001 through 2004 who returned the following fall.</p>
<p>Faculty resources (20 percent). Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate. We use six factors from the 2005-06 academic year to assess a school's commitment to instruction. Class size has two components: the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the score). </p>
<p>In our model, a school benefits more for having a large proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students and a small proportion of large classes. Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent).</p>
<p>Student selectivity (15 percent). A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We therefore factor in test scores of enrollees on the SAT or ACT tests (50 percent of the selectivity score); the proportion of enrolled freshmen (for all national universities and liberal arts colleges) who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes and (for institutions in the universities-master's and comprehensive colleges-bachelor's categories) the top 25 percent (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). The data are for the fall 2005 entering class.</p>
<p>Financial resources (10 percent). Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures in the 2004 and 2005 fiscal years. </p>
<p>Graduation rate performance (5 percent; only in national universities and liberal arts colleges). This indicator of "added value" shows the effect of the college's programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student aptitude. We measure the difference between a school's six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 1999 and the rate we predicted for the class. If the actual graduation rate is higher than the predicted rate, the college is enhancing achievement.</p>
<p>Alumni giving rate (5 percent). The average percentage of alumni who gave to their school during 2003-04 and 2004-05 is an indirect measure of student satisfaction. To arrive at a school's rank, we first calculated the weighted sum of its scores. The final scores were rescaled: The top school in each category was assigned a value of 100, and the other schools' weighted scores were calculated as a proportion of that top score. Final scores for each ranked school were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that receive the same rank are listed in alphabetical order. Our rankings of accredited undergraduate business programs and engineering programs are based exclusively on peer assessment data gathered from the programs' deans and senior faculty members.</p>
<p>We're also hurt because we are the only top 25 school that uses ACT rankings... and the concordance tables don't take into account that you can use multiple SAT tests for a "super score" and that's not permitted for the ACT. Not to start an ACT vs. SAT debate, but a top 1% ACT of 32 is only equal to a 1420 SAT... which is only top 3%. Without launching into how the concordance is done, I'll stick with the comment that we're hurt by being the only top 25 to use ACTs. Our SATs are actually higher if you look at UM student profile under Fast Facts on the Admissions page.</p>
<p>Michigan's ACT mean is only one point lower than Brown's or Cornell's and two points lower than most other elite universities like Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke etc...Each point on the ACT is equal to roughly 30-40 points on the SAT.</p>
<p>Yes, but they are primarily SAT schools. This makes a difference.</p>
<p>Also, a couple of ACT points make a fairly significant difference when converted to SAT scores under the concordance.</p>
<p>Anhydrosis, Michigan is an SAT school too. Roughly 60% of Michigan students take the SAT and 70% take the ACT. </p>
<p>Also, 2 points on the ACT is roughly 70 points on the SAT. And yet, most schools with mean ACT scores two points higher than Michigan's have SAT scores 100-130 points higher than Michigan's. </p>
<p>I think the reason for the discrepancy between the mean ACT and SAT scores at Michigan (and other publics) vs the ACT and SAT scores at private elites is that the ACT meansures actual knowledge whereas the SAT measures familiarity with the test. The average improvement in ACTs as a result of preparation and repetition is not quite as high as the average improvement on the SAT as a result of preparation and repetition.</p>
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<p>i haven't seen the full rankings yet, but i find this both unbelievable and misleading. u of m has an acceptance rate more than double that of hopkins, and i know of quite a few applicants that were admitted to michigan but not to hopkins. maybe i'm just a little defensive because i chose hopkins over u of m and i'm now paying out of state tuition, but either way i wouldn't place u of m at the same level of selectivity.</p>