<p>hawkette,
I don't think USN's PA ranking does reflect what goes on the classroom; it can't, even if it purports to, because the people filling out the survey don't know what goes on in the classroom at other schools. Heck, they don't really know all that much about what goes on in the classroom at their own school. As for your criteria, I think they all have value; but for my money, so does the scholarly excellence of the faculty. I want my D exposed to the best, most advanced thinking in her field, whatever it is.</p>
<p>Let me also say this: my own thinking is heavily colored by my own undergrad experience, which was entering the honors program at Michigan and moving from there into small, advanced classes in a small department (philosophy) that had (and still has) one of the best faculties in the world. I recognize this experience is not typical of most Michigan undergrads. But I think there's a facile assumption that "private is always better" that pervades these boards, and I think it's demonstrably wrong. Let's take your criteria and apply them to what my D would face if she, like I, were to enter Michigan in the honors program and move from there into a small department, classics, which is what she is presently contemplating.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Strength of student body. I don't have 2008 data but Michigan reports that the 25th-75th percentile SAT scores of students entering the honors program in 2007 were 1410-1550. That compares favorably to any elite college or university in the country: Princeton 1370-1590, Stanford 1340-1540, Williams 1320-1520.</p></li>
<li><p>Size and nature of the classroom. All my freshman honors classes were small, 25 people tops, many smaller, except for the required Great Books lecture which had a few more, but was by no means large for a lecture class. All my upper-level classes in my major were small, often 8-10, up to as many as 20. I took maybe 4 or 5 large lecture classes (by "large" I mean maybe 100 or 150, not the mega-lectures you hear about) in my four years there, all electives that I took because I was interested in the subject and the professors had sterling reputations both as scholars and as teachers, all top people in departments that were in the top 3 or 4 in the country. But if I had wanted to avoid big lectures, I could easily have done so, because there's just such a wealth of choices at a place like Michigan. If you want to take only small classes, you can easily do that, at least if you start out in the honors program or in the residential college---depending on your major, of course. As for interacting with strong classmates, well that's a pretty elite group in the honors program, and it was an elite group in advanced courses in philosophy, too, including a lot of grad students from one of the top grad programs in the field in the mix in the upper-level courses I was taking. The point is, there really was no dilution of classroom quality by virtue of the fact that in addition to so many top students, Michigan also accepts others somewhat less well credentialed. They took different classes; I never saw the, The anti-public, pro-private crowd generally fails to recognize that there's just this enormous diversity of experiences at the top publics; they want to lump everyone into false stereotypes about mega-lectures, weaker classmates, bad teaching, etc. Not my experience at all. </p></li>
<li><p>Nature and quality of the faculty. I never took a class from a TA, only from full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty, though the big lecture classes did have TAs leading small weekly discussion sections. But this also goes on at places like Princeton and Harvard. Some of my TAs, by the way, were ABD and went on to full-time faculty appointments at prestigious colleges and universities within a year or two, so they weren't exactly chopped liver. As for the quality of the teaching, frankly it was somewhat mixed overall as I'm sure it is everywhere, but I have to say that on the whole I experienced a positive correlation between teaching and scholarship in the humanities and social science courses that made up the bulk of what I did as an undergrad. Generally the most brilliant scholars where also the most lively and engaging intellects in the classroom, and led the best discussions. But maybe that was just my experience.</p></li>
<li><p>Institutional resources. Sure, other things equal, more money is better. But other things equal, better scholarship is better, too, and as between the two, I'll go for the school with the stronger faculty every time. Though of course, they're not inversely correlated. And anyway, Michigan is one of the stronger institutions in the country financially.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Bottom line, if D gets into the honors program at Michigan and wants to study classics, there are very few colleges or universities in the country that can match what she could get at Michigan. If she doesn't get into the honors program or wants to study a popular major like psych or poli sci where she would end up in a lot of large lecture classes, she might do better elsewhere. But I do get tired of the false and misleading stereotyping of the public school experience that goes on here. The top publics provide a diversity of experiences for a heterogeneous student body. At their best, they're as good as any school in the country. And rhetoric to the contrary that misleads people like evil<em>asian</em>dictator ^ does a real disservice.</p>