<p>jmanco: Stanford. =) (minus baseball, plus more sports)</p>
<p>Regarding UMichigan's selectivity... If a school of UMich's academic caliber was located in Cali, which is much more heavily populated than Michigan, then UMich's acceptance rate would be hovering around low 20s. It is a irrefutable fact that UMich has many excellent academic programs in wide range of subjects, most of which rank within top 10-15. Further, if a school like UCBerkeley was to become private, then its acceptance rate would be similar to Stanford's. It just happens to be much bigger than the privates and thus its selectivity suffers to certain extent. </p>
<p>Btw, no one seems to mind that UChicago, a private elite school, had an acceptance rate of over 40% just 2 years ago. YET, no one argues that UChicago is a legit top 15-20 university in the U.S., if not in the world. Emory and Vanderbilt both had over 40% acceptance rate just 2-3 yrs ago as well. When the application numbers increased due to higher numbers of hs seniors, these smaller privates were able to bump their stats up significantly. Meanwhile, I suspect that these elite publics weren't as affected because of self-selecting student body. After all, the fact that UMich is a public institution and thus would be terribly expensive for OOS applicants would distract many applicants from applying to UMichigan in the first place. Also, since these publics are already much bigger, unless there is a substantial increment of applicants, their selectivity numbers wouldn't witness much change.</p>
<p>^ I don't think it is all about acceptance rates, but also acceptance rates along with the SAT/GPA/rank averages. Uchicago, I believe, still has a 40% acceptance rate but its SAT/GPA/rank for those students are higher than those from Umich. Whereas say, random tier 3 college with a 40% acceptance rate has SAT ranges in the 500-540s and has an average gpa of 3.2.</p>
<p>u chicago is now ranked top 10 in both thes and sjtu world rankings and also ranked top 10 in uswr 2007 and 2008. it's not just top 15-20, it's top 10 in both us and world rankings. interesting to see how it'll come out this fall in uswr 2009.</p>
<p>Chicago is worthy of such lofty ratings. I am a huge fan of that school.</p>
<p>^I am as well. Based on my recent visit there, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a more intellectual academic environment anywhere else in the country(HYP included). It's definitely not for everyone though since it definitely lags in the social life and athletics department by far in comparison to all other top 20 schools.</p>
<p>
Alexandre, I am curious to know why you you consider the credentials/qualifications of professors to be that important at the undergraduate level. Most students are learning basic, intro-level stuff through their four years of undergrad and the beginning material in any area of study, from anthropology to mathematics, isn't very different. The difference between a "leader in the field" and a regular professor would only become apparent at the graduate level, if it ever becomes noticeable in the teaching of a subject at all.</p>
<p>EAD, my last two years at Michigan, I took many graduate classes. Most students I know too graduate-level courses.</p>
<p>Alex,
You've made this point many times and I'm glad that you had a good experience with taking graduate level classes. What percentage of your 6500 classmates would you guess also took graduate classes? I'm trying to get some sense of how common this is at a college like U Michigan as well as any other colleges that you or anyone else may know.</p>
<p>EAD,</p>
<p>I think you suffer from low academic aspirations. It's just not true that you can't get beyond "basic, intro-level stuff" in four years of undergraduate education. It may vary somewhat by field, but certainly in the humanities and in most social sciences, advanced undergrads who are smart, diligent, and taught by leading people in the field can get pretty deep into current, cutting-edge scholarship and gain a pretty sophisticated understanding of the current intellectual debates in their chosen field of study. </p>
<p>That's not the only model, of course. You can also be highly successful with a more traditional liberal arts education, dabbling in a wide variety of fields and not getting much beyond intermediate-level work in any of them, then make up some ground in grad school, or head off to a professional school where your lack of depth in any particular discipline will not necessarily be a handicap. There's merit to either approach.</p>
<p>hawkette, i can concur with Alexandre on this. I took about 5 graduate level courses, and I think(speculation) most students (85+%) do take graduate level classes at some point in their undergraduate career. In fact, in my freshman year, I took a graduate level history course! </p>
<p>I don't know enough about LSA to comment, but in the engineering school, you have to take graduate level courses to graduate. The required technical electives are mostly 400 and 500 level courses. My senior design team consisted of 6 people, 1 pre-PhD candidate, 3 Master's students. </p>
<p>The advanced fluid class i took was a graduate level course numbered at the 400 level, about 50% undergrad and 50% graduate students. Same with the other classes i took at the graduate level. I don't know if this is only true at Michigan, but there really isn't a lot of difference between Master's students and Bachelor's students, if you are a senior your classes are pretty much Master's curriculum.</p>
<p>Hawkette, there is no percentage on the number of undergrads who take graduate level classes. It is quite common though. Several students I knew at Michigan took several graduate courses, even Engineers. Many of my friends at other universities (Cornell, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford) also took graduate level classes as undergrads. I will look into this further, but I can tell you right off the bat, the reason many students attend schools like Michigan is to take advanced level and graduate level classes with leaders in their chosen field of study.</p>
<p>At Cornell, I would hazard a guess that around 60-70 percent of students graduated having taken at least 1-2 graduate-level courses, whether they be introductory PhD-track courses, or courses in one of the assorted professional schools on campus. It tends to be much higher in the sciences and social sciences than in the humanities.</p>
<p>Personally, it was one of the more important elements in my decision to turn down Notre Dame for Cornell. I was sold on the fact that I would have better exposure to faculty/research at Cornell than I would at Notre Dame. (Coincidentally, I was sold on this by a Cornell professor and Notre Dame alum who was just so happening to give a lecture at Notre Dame the say I visited.) </p>
<p>I certainly don't regret my decision.</p>
<p>From the Rackham website:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>400 level courses are assumed to be primarily for undergraduates. If the course material is described as sufficiently advanced, graduate credit may be granted upon approval of the Graduate School. Requests for graduate credit for 400 level courses must provide information to verify that the course material is at the graduate level for all students, or that graduate students are required to do additional work beyond the level required of undergraduates in the course.</p></li>
<li><p>500 level courses are assumed to be primarily for first-year graduate students; senior majors may also take them or others by special permission.</p></li>
<li><p>600 level courses are assumed to be for masters and doctoral students (or second year students in professional schools), and only rarely for exceptional undergraduates.</p></li>
<li><p>700 level courses are assumed to be for masters and doctoral students (or third-year students in professional schools).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And this is what I've managed to do so far
Sophomore year:
Math 575, 591, 592, 596, 597
Junior year:
Complex Systems 511
Math 565, 593, 594, 637, 669, 675, 775</p>
<p>I almost took a graduate level physics course, but after one lecture decided I couldn't handle the teacher/the way he taught the class, so I picked up a different class.</p>
<p>If the numbers really are this high, eg, 85% or even 50% of the student body that are taking graduate courses, then I would think that the colleges would publicize this more broadly as a differentiating feature of what they can offer, especially vis-a-vis the offering of a LAC. </p>
<p>Does anyone know if colleges track the numbers of undergrad students taking graduate courses and how this might compare across the collegiate spectrum?</p>
<p>Hawkette, it is common knowledge that great research universities offer opportunities that cannot be duplicated at lesser research universities or LACs. Of course, students at those universities must contend with more demanding, and somtimes less caring (because of the demands on their time and responsibility toward their research), professors, but advanced academics come at a price.</p>
<p>Life is all about trade-offs.</p>
<p>Even in my days, many of my ChE classmates at the University of Wisconsin took 1-2 graduate courses, especially those planning to go for PhD. One of my friends took all graduate level ChE courses during his senior year. And we didn't even have AP credits in those days!</p>
<p>I had at least half a dozen undergrad in all of my computer engineering classes at Michigan. And these were the kids who gave me the most competition.</p>
<p>Furthermore, undergrad research is quite common nowadays. The University of Washington states that:</p>
<ul>
<li>100% of Materials Science & Engineering majors are involved in undergraduate research.</li>
<li>More than 160 undergraduates currently participate in research with the Department of Physics. </li>
<li>Every year, 7,000 undergraduates participate in research (that's about 25% of the undergrad student body).</li>
</ul>