<p>in the us news college rankings, princeton is tied for first with harvard. but when you look in individual disciplines in both undergrad and grad, princeton is nowhere to be found. so i guess my question is this: what makes princeton such a good school as to be tied for the best college in the US?</p>
<p>and also, the university of michigan is ranked 25, but it's indicvidual programs are usually all top 3. does anyone know why its overall ranking is so low(relatively)?</p>
<p>thanks :)</p>
<p>Peer assessment (25%)</p>
<p>Retention (20% in national universities and liberal arts colleges and 25% in master's and comprehensive colleges)
---six-year graduation rate (16%)
--- freshman retention rate (4%)</p>
<p>Faculty resources (20%)
---proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15%)
---student-faculty ratio (5%)
---proportion of faculty who are full time (5%).</p>
<p>Student selectivity (15%)
---SAT or ACT tests (7.5%)
---proportion who graduated in the top 10% for national universities and liberal arts colleges and the top 25% for master's and comprehensive colleges categories (6%)
---acceptance rate (1.5%)</p>
<p>Financial resources (10%)</p>
<p>Graduation rate performance (5%; only in national universities and liberal arts colleges)</p>
<p>Alumni giving rate (5%)</p>
<p>so princeton really has no outstanding programs?</p>
<p>Did you totally not understand the above post? Look at Princeton's selectivity, undergraduate focus, endowment, peer assessment, etc.</p>
<p>Michigan's individual programs (business especially) are good but its a pretty unselective school 60+% admit and it is a state school with a relatively low peer assessment. It's basically like a public NYU where Stern/Ross are good but the rest of the school is... eh.....</p>
<p>Of course Princeton has great programs!!!! Woody Woo is arguably the best IR program in the US. In addition, check out the NRC rankings. </p>
<p>Art History: 6
Classics: 4
English: 13
French: 2
German: 2
Music (theory): 6
Philosophy: 1
Religion: 3
Spanish: 4
Molecular/cell biology: 11
Ecology/evolution: 6
Aerospace engineering: 4
Chemical engineering: 9
Civil engineering: 8
Electrical engineering: 9
Mechanical engineering: 6
Astronomy: 2
Computer science: 6
Geology: 13
Math: 1
Physics: 2
Economics: 5
History: 3
Political science: 7
Psychology: 13</p>
<p>To answer your question more fully, Michigan has outstanding programs in virtually every field and ranks right up there with Berkeley- on the graduate school level. For an undergraduate college, don't worry so much about the rankings for specific departments. Any top school will have decent programs in almost everything.</p>
<p>"Did you totally not understand the above post? Look at Princeton's selectivity, undergraduate focus, endowment, peer assessment, etc.</p>
<p>Michigan's individual programs (business especially) are good but its a pretty unselective school 60+% admit and it is a state school with a relatively low peer assessment. It's basically like a public NYU where Stern/Ross are good but the rest of the school is... eh....."</p>
<p>no i understood what he said, i just had another question about princeton's programs. his answer dealt with how the colleges are ranked</p>
<p>but thanks to all of you anyway!</p>
<p>Actually, Michigan's peer assessment score is pretty high (between #8 and #12, depending on the year). And I do not see how selectivity is a measure of quality.</p>
<p>Chickenandwaffle, I would like to make a couple of points:</p>
<p>1) Princeton has no professional programs other than Engineering, and even then, it does not invest too much in Engineering. That explains why Princeton is "nowhere to be seen". But nobody majors in Law or Medicine at the undergraduate level and most top universities do not offer Business to their undergrads. So those professional rankings do not greatly impact undergraduate education. However, in the fields it does decide to invest in, Princeton is amazing...ranked among the top 5 in most disciplines, including Economics, English, History, Math, Physics and Political Science. In short, Princeton is a worthy #1 undergraduate university.</p>
<p>2) The USNWR overall ranking is a joke. Although Michigan isn't a top 4 or 5 undergraduate university as its rankings in the individual departments would suggest, nobody in-the-know would rank Michigan out of the top 15, let alone as low as #25. In the eyes of academe, Michigan is one of the top 10 universities in the nation. Exclusive recruiters flock to the Michigan campus and hire hundreds of undergrads annually. In fact, Michigan is one of just 5 or 6 campuses that is visited by every major employer you can think of. It is generally considered one of the 10 or so "strategic" campuses. In other words, when a company hits a rough patch, they cut down in campus visits and college recruiter with the exception of a select few campuses. Michigan is one of those campuses.</p>
<p>In short, Princeton is an amazing university, most worthy of a #1 ranking and Michigan is also a very good university, unfairly ranked by the USNWR.</p>
<p>Alexandre I would disagree with your undergrad summary of Umich.</p>
<p>First off, "exclusive" recruiters aren't looking too good as Umich's engineering and business post-graduate surveys show avg starting salaries below other top 5 undergraduate engineering and business schools. Ross for example, shows an avg starting salary of 50k with a max of 60k while the other top 5's show in the 53-55ks with maxes of 80k and 95k. </p>
<p>Selectivity DOES measure quality as only the MOST qualified students can attend. Let's say you fill a school with a bunch of 3.3 students and fill another school with 3.9 students. You cannot tell me that the latter school has less quality in terms of students. </p>
<p>Selectivy also measures quality because there is shows DEMAND. The consumer is not stupid and demand shows a lot about a college. People DEMAND Harvard and therefore it can take ONLY 4.0's and still fill its classes. </p>
<p>If Umich tried to only take top 4.0 students like Harvard, what would happen? It's incoming freshman class would be about 200 people and it would CRASH and BURN. Why? Only a few of Umich's applicants are such students and even less would matriculate to the college if accepted. Thus you would lose perhaps 90-95% of your applicants to more DEMANDED colleges like Harvard,Yale,Princeton,Stanford,MIT,ETC.</p>
<p>Selectivity means a lot both directly and indirectly and sadly Umich does not have this with its 60+% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>NOTE: I am not dissing Umich at all but it is definitely not top 20 as an undergraduate school. If anything, Umich for u-grad should definitely be below UVA which is A LOT more selective and actually has applicants Out of State who turn down Ivies for it. </p>
<p>Graduate school-wise, yes Umich is amazing.</p>
<p>PS: Berkeley is the highest ranked public school and there is a reason. It can still fill its class even with top 5%'s and its quality of programs show through its POST-graduate surveys and high salaries and jobs.</p>
<p>whats the website for the NRC rankings for the majors?</p>
<p>The NRC rankings are hopelessly out-of-date ... nearly 15 years old in some cases. There is an effort underway to update them, but it has gotten bogged down and is now 5 years after the traget for release.</p>
<p>In the meantime, it is unwise to either cite or rely on them any longer. Many of the faculty whose standing was evaluated therein have died or retired.</p>
<p>well then what can be used to check rankings in terms of specific majors?</p>
<p>AcceptedtoCollegeAlready, first of all, the mean unweighed GPA (3.75), SAT (1330) and class ranking (90% in the top 10% of graduating class and 70% in the top 5% of graduating class) of Michigan students are identical to those of Cal and UVA students. You really need to check your facts before writing down inaccuracies. And unlike their private school counterparts, those three schools adhere to strict rules when it comes to reporting mean SAT scores. Just as an aside, I turned down 4 Ivy league schools to attend Michigan, and I was not unique at Michigan. Most people I knew at Michigan turned down Ivy League schools to attend Michigan.</p>
<p>Secondly, the mean starting salaries for BBAs at top 5 programs are al in the $50,000-$53,000. Michigan is on the lower end because it is the only top 5 BBA program that isn't in the East or West coast, which as we both know, have a higher cost of living index than the Midwest. But if you look at the top hiring firms at Ross, you will see that all the major companies recruit at Ross...and not only to they recruit, they also hire. Ross' 300 or soo graduating BBA students are among the most highly recruited undergraduate students in the country.</p>
<p>But like I said, geographic location of job offers (and COI) determines pay, which is why Michigan is slightly lower than some fellow top 5 BBA programs, but only by 5% or so, which is easily explained by the fact that a chunk of Ross students chose to stay and work in the Midwest. Furthermore, the max pay for Ross students is not $60K, it is closer to $80K, not including signing bonuses or year-end bonuses. But base salalries over $60,000 are rare for BBAs...most start in the $45,000-$60,000 range. Here's another case where you wrote something down without even checking the facts. </p>
<p>At any rate, you may not feel that Michigan is a top 20 university, but like I said, people that can actually influence the life of a student (graduate school adcoms and recruiters at exclusive companies) certainly think Michigan is one of the top 20 university.</p>
<p>These rankings are so biased...there is no way Northwestern is better than UChicago.</p>
<p>sous: just because northwestern doesnt display the attitude that chicago does doesnt mean that its any less prestigious academically.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I do not agree with your stats because I think everyone here knows people who get into Umich undergrad with 3.5's and the like while the avg gpa for UVA is 3.9 UW and even harder stats for Berkeley. The avg SAT for UVA last time I checked is 1380 and that is INSTATE only (from Oakton High school in Fairfax County which is instate). </p></li>
<li><p>Tepper at CMU is not on the East coast either yet it sports a 53k avg and 55k median salary.
<a href="http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/employ/salary/ba.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/employ/salary/ba.pdf</a>
<a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/EmploymentProfile/EmploymentOverview.htm?%5B/url%5D">http://www.bus.umich.edu/EmploymentProfile/EmploymentOverview.htm?</a></p></li>
<li><p>I do not know grad school information but why other top 5 schools choose NY (wall street) while Umich students tend to spread out is another concern to me about its apparent "recruiter" prestige.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Again, instead of realying on the students that "we all know" who got into Michigan, I think it would be best to focus on the 24,000 or so students we do not know at the university of Michigan. The average SAT listed by UVA according to their own website are:</p>
<p>Mid 50% SAT Verbal range: 600-710
Mid 50% SAT Math range: 620-720
Mid 50% ACT range: 25-30
Graduated at the top 10% of their class: 87%</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virginia.edu/stats&facts/%5B/url%5D">http://www.virginia.edu/stats&facts/</a></p>
<p>Michigan is pretty identical. According to the Michigan website:</p>
<p>Mid 50% range SAT Verbal: 590-690
Mid 50% range SAT Math: 630-730
Mid 50% ACT range: 26-31
Graduated at the top 10% of their class: 90%</p>
<p>Cal is harder to gauge because roughly 30% of Cal students are transfers from the California CC system and because the California high school system is one of the weaknest in the US, whereas Michigan and Virginia have top rated high school systems. But even then, their stats aren't better than Michigan and UVA students, so I'd say Cal, Michigan and UVA have roughly equal student bodies. Again, I suggest you get the facts before writing down your opinion based on what we "all know" on this forum!</p>
<p>At any rate, I don't even know why we are debating this point. UVA and Cal, like Michigan, all get shafted by the USNWR. The point is, the USNWR is not reliable.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the reason why such a huge portion of students from other top 5 BBA programs end up working in the East coast is because they are all located in the east coast save Cal. And whether you like it or not, CMU is in PA and PA is East coast. But when you consider that close to 100 out of 300 Ross students end up accepting full time jobs with leading Wall Street companies like Goldman Sachs, UBS, CS, JP Morgan, Lazard, Lehman, Merrill, Deutschebank, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, it pretty much tells me that Michigan is doing just fine with the elite East coast firms. Only Wharton beats those numbers.</p>
<p>bobbobbob- <a href="http://www.stat.tamu.edu/%7Ejnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html</a></p>
<p>I disagree, Byerly. True, the rankings are old (released in 1995), but they are still accurate for many fields. I agree that they are somewhat outdated, especially in the sciences, but they're in the process of being updated, as you mentioned. Many of the faculty members have retired, but many departments have since expanded to bring in new faculty or hire new professors trained by the retired faculty. In any case, the new NRC rankings are slated to come out in 2008, so it's not too long a wait. :D</p>
<p>ATCA, you are making the common error of confusing quality with selectivity. The more selective universities are usually of high quality, but many high quality universities are not extremely selective. It's the resources and faculty that give a university quality, not the students. UNC Chapel Hill is extremely difficult to get into for OOS students (admit rate of 18%), but I don't think many people will say it provides a better education than Michigan. For that matter, it's doubtful Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, etc. give a better education. </p>
<p>Furthermore, one is delusional if one thinks there's a significant amount of difference between Michigan students and Ivy students. Tulane students not only survived but thrived at Harvard, Brown, Duke, etc. Clearly, the perceived difference in student quality is not nearly as great as numbers make it out to be.</p>
<p>I agree with much of your post except I don't think Umich is as selective as Berkeley nor UVA. This is shown by acceptance rates and avg SAT's (since GPA is hard to measure as California usually has a different gpa system and so does different schools in Mich/VA. </p>
<p>Warbler: I agree but for a top 25 school, I do not think a school with a 60+% acceptance rate that accepts 1330s and 3.5s (from my school) should be top 15 nationally and ranked above places like Rice U or Georgetown U. Compare Georgetown and Umich and you'll see the point of "quality" that I'm making. </p>
<p>We can also look at yield and see how many applicants Umich loses to its peers or even the enrolled SAT avg instead of accepted SAT avg.</p>
<p>I know ann arbor is not east coast but neither really is Pittsburgh (way western PA. If CMU was in Philadelphia or so I would agree). Though this point doesn't really matter, I agree that Ross is prestigious but that is its BEST program much like Stern is NYU's best program. Even so, we can also see that Tepper sends more than 1/3 students to places like IBM, Merill, Goldman, Capital One, JPMorgan, Citigroup, American Express, etc and about half its class going NYC. </p>
<p>The point is, Umich's selectivity and quality of students is more comparable to UNC-chapel hill than to Berkeley (and maybe to UVA).</p>
<p>could it be possible that because umich is public and accepts so many people, it's quality of education goes down? my sister goes to umich and says that there are a lot of graduate students teaching. that would be a factor, right? </p>
<p>increased undergrad student size = higher acceptance rate = lower average</p>
<p>and it probably has to accept more because it's a state/public school</p>
<p>right? haha, like i said, i really don't know.</p>
<p>ACA, you make the classic mistake of confusing selectivity with quality of student body. Yes, Michigan accepts 50%-60% of its applicants. But the quality of the students it accepts is similar to the quality of students admitted into Cal and UVA. The stats I provided above prove that. And all three of those flagship state schools have deceptively law SAT averages because they only report the highest score in one sitting and since most students at those three universities are in-staters, they tend to take the SAT just once. </p>
<p>As for Tepper, it is not quite as good as Ross. You say that one third of Tepper students get jobs with the elite companies like IBM, American Express and Capital One etc... That's impressive, but it does not come close to Ross numbers. You are again ignoring the facts and stating opinion. </p>
<p>Out of 300 Ross BBA graduates lass year, the following number joined the following companies:</p>
<p>INVESTMENT BANKS:
JP Morgan: 12
UBS: 11
Goldman Sachs: 10
Credit Suisse: 10
Deutsche Bank: 6
CIBC World Markets: 4
Merrill Lynch: 4
Lehman Brothers: 3
Morgan Stanley: 3
Blackstone Group: 2</p>
<p>MANAGEMENT CONSULTING:
Boston Consulting Group: 4
Booz Allen: 2
Carlyle Group: 2
McKinsey: 2
Bain: 1</p>
<p>GENERAL CONSULTING/AUDITING:
PricewaterhouseCoopers: 8
Ernst & Young: 7
Accenture: 6
AT Kearney: 5
Deloitte Consulting: 4
Deloitte & Touche: 3</p>
<p>GENERAL FINANCE:
Bear Sterns 5
Citigroup: 4
American Express: 3
Bank One: 3</p>
<p>TECH AND MANUFACTURING FIRMS:
Ford Motor Company: 6
General Electric 5
Microsoft 5
General Motors: 3
Intel: 3</p>
<p>Another 50 or so students joined major companies like IBM, Dell, Google, Cisco, Procter and Gamble, Medtronic, Amgen, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, Wells Fargo, Toyota, Honda, etc... </p>
<p>So, if you include companies like IBM, GE, Ford, Microsoft etc... to the list of exclusive companies, over 60% of Ross students get jobs with those companies. When I said that one third of Ross students got jobs with exclusive companies, I was referring to top 10 IBs and top 5 MCs. That's huge. Only Wharton and maybe Sloan and Stern do as well. You really underestimate Michigan's connections in industry. Michigan has a network that is practically unbeatable.</p>
<p>You also state that Ross is Michigan's best department. That is also wrong. Engineering, Economics, Math, History, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Languages, Music, Nursing, International Studies are all ranked among the top 10 nationally and considered very strong. Recruitment from those programs is very impressive indeed.</p>
<p>And what's wrong with Michigan's yield rate? 45% of accepted students pick Michigan. Schools like Caltech, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Rice all have significantly lower yield rates. I guess Michigan is better than those schools eh?! </p>
<p>At any rate, this debate is pointless. You are stating opinion when you say that Michigan should not be ranked among the top 20. Fact is, exclusive companies and the respected academic world all rank Michigan among the top 15 at the worst, top 10 in most cases.</p>