<p>LDB, Michigan’s endowment, when normilized to a private university system, is $13 billion. Fair is fair since Michigan receives $320 million is state appropriations annually. A private university would require roughly $6.4 billion in endowment to generate this sort of annual income. That’s equal to $320,000/student. Northwestern’s endowment stands at $6 billion, which works out to $365,000 per student. When you factor in economies of scale, I would say Michigan and Northwestern are equally wealthy. </p>
<p>And I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that Northwestern is wealthier on a per capita basis…or why it should devote more of its resources to undergrads. Last time I checked, Northwestern was just as devoted to research and its graduate programs as Michigan.</p>
<p>^Which is exactly why I refuse to acknowledge his arguments. Also, let me expand.</p>
<p>While I believe UPenn is better than MIT, MIT’s perceived prestige (Counselor ranking of 4.9) is higher than UPenn’s 4.6. MIT’s academic prestige (PA score of 4.9) is higher than UPenn’s.</p>
<p>To it varies on what context you consider. This is why some people think Brown is better than WUSTL. Or Caltech is better than Columbia. </p>
<p>The problem with Berkeley is that its overall rank and perceived prestige aren’t too high. But its PA is unbelievably high. </p>
<p>You can’t say these numbers are insignificant. In the academic world, they are! It doesn’t matter actually if there are 2000 universities. I just realized. Employers will only focus on the top 100 or so. So better to make the best impression.</p>
<p>“You can’t say these numbers are insignificant. In the academic world, they are!”</p>
<p>I agree that they are significant, but they should be properly sanitized (which they aren’t) and even then, taken with a grain of salt. Universities are not football teams, they are very complex, multi-faceted entities with thousands of faculty, tens of thousands of students and an impossible matrix of human relationships taking place at any point in time. As I often stress, universities present their numbers in different ways. For example, some universities measure their student to faculty ratio including graduate students, others only include undergraduate students. Some even include faculty who do not instruct undergrads, such as MBA (in schools that do not have undergraduate business programs), Law school and Medical school faculty. Some universities have the same professor teach 4 sections of the same class in the same term, instead of combining all four sections into one large section. The time allocated to each undergraduate student is the same, but instead of having one class with 60 students, you have four classes with 15 students. </p>
<p>Most private universities report superscored ranges, which tends to add 20-30 points per section. Most public universities do not superscore. </p>
<p>Alumni donations are handled differently from school to school. Some private universities really put pressure on their alums while others do not. Some schools also entice alums by telling them that their donation will be evenly split for a period of time (5-10 years) and report that single donation annually for the duration of the period.</p>
<p>The list of ways in which universities manipulate data goes on and on. </p>
<p>I think if the data were properly sanitized and then fairly audited, you would have a more accurate outcome to data. But even then, data should not be used as an absolute to rate universities. </p>
<p>“It doesn’t matter actually if there are 2000 universities. I just realized. Employers will only focus on the top 100 or so. So better to make the best impression.”</p>
<p>I don’t think employers look at rankings. Each industry, region, company and function has its own set of rankings.</p>