<p>Too many UVA haters on this board. It has a better reputation than William and Mary and Washington and Lee. Also, I cannot believe people consider Michigan a presitious school but not Virginia. Getting into Michigan is so easy a caveman can do it.</p>
<p>That might be true Wahoorich. I guess it just goes to prove which school is superior academically.</p>
<p>But I will never agree that Michigan is superior academically. Usually when I see these lists, Cal and UVA are the top two publics and many times Michigan is lumped in as well. However, it is rare to see a list that has Cal and Michigan but not UVA.</p>
<p>Purdue and CMU have great engineering programs but if we’re talking about graduate schools, it’s hard not to include stanford and berkeley, although i’m only aware of Berkeley’s CS/EE program and not too familiar with the strength of their other departments, though i’m sure they can’t be bad.</p>
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<p>The FSP Index, “a quantitative method for ranking doctoral programs at Research Universities, based on a set of statistical algorithms developed by Dr. Lawrence Martin, Ph.D., and Dr. Anthony Olejniczak, Ph.D. The FSP Index measures the scholarly productivity of faculty using their book and journal publications, journal article citations, federally-funded research grants, and honorific awards.” ([FSP</a> Index Top Performing Individual Programs](<a href=“http://www.academicanalytics.com/TopSchools/TopPrograms.aspx]FSP”>http://www.academicanalytics.com/TopSchools/TopPrograms.aspx))</p>
<p>The rankings of colleges at stateuniversity.com purport to be based on “objective factors” alone (not peer assessments). The developers claim it is “completely statistical and based on government sources… the most important factors are a school’s ACT/SAT scores, its student retention, faculty salary, and student / faculty ratio.” This methodology may indeed be objective. However, the data as presented on the site seem to contain significant errors; some specific results seem a little wacky to me (e.g. Harvard at #24, UPenn at #66).</p>
<p>Wahoo-</p>
<p>I love the school spirit, and I agree with you re grad programs, UVirginia is tops. I also prefer it to any other large research schools. To say it has a better rep than W&M or W&L is stretching it though.</p>
<p>It is not a stretch, it is an absolute truth. UVA does in fact have a better reputation than W&M and W&L.</p>
<p>Well the schools I considered prestigious before I became aware of academic rankings and such are: Yale (Yay :)), Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Brown, MIT, Stanford (to a lesser extent IMO, bc Cali Sucks :P), and Georgetown. That was pretty much it.</p>
<p>Oh, from a non-eastern perspective UVA is not all that prestigious.</p>
<p>college of charleston is seen as a little better than most ivys</p>
<p>WAHOORICH</p>
<p>Michigan is strong across the board in virtually every discipline that it offers. UVA is not nearly as strong in the sciences and engineering. The ONLY reason that UVA is rated slightly higher at USNWR is because of it’s relatively small size as a public school and consequently it’s more selective school body. Academically the two top public schools in this country are Berkeley followed by Michigan. While I don’t expect you to agree with my assessment, Michigan certainly takes no back seat to UVA when it comes to academic strength. I suggest you not to be so offended by a school that lets just about “any caveman” in it.</p>
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<p>Right. That’s the whole point. Who cares about prestige among the general public?
Anyway, prestige, beyond HYP, is <em>incredibly</em> regionally driven. So the question is meaningless at a national level and only meaningful within either a) a given industry / field or b) a given region of the country.</p>
<p>Michigan has a better national reputation than UVA.</p>
<p>Again - depends on what part of the country you’re in. As someone who grew up on the East Coast, UVA was the superior public school. Now that I’m in the midwest, U Michigan is typically seen that way. One more time – it’s all regional.</p>
<p>I think Stanford, MIT, and Duke are more prestigious than most ivy schools</p>
<p>Stanford/Duke/MIT are probably the ones that get bundled with the Ivies the most often (not necessarily in academic circles, where a lot more schools would be included. E.g.; UChicago)</p>
<p>Berkeley------</p>
<p>UC Berkeley, Chicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Michigan, Rice and WashingtonU</p>
<p>Have to agree with Swish/Pizza et al. Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, California, UCLA are all regional mirrors of each. My favorite is Uvriginia b/c of history, architecture, smaller size (relatively). Since this is about prestige, it really depends on which part of the country you want to live. DC=UVA, Chicago= MIchigan, West Coast= UCB/UCLA. Great alumni networks there. The downside is b/c of size, alums in this area are a dime a dozen so it would be difficult to standout. </p>
<p>Of course for undergrads, William & Mary is in a class by itself.</p>
<p>Pizza/doctor, I think you’re underestimating Michigan. The university has over 400,000 living alumni. Most do not live in Michigan. Choosing UVA/UNC for undergrad makes sense in the East, but will you seriously choose UVA/UNC over Michigan for graduate/professional study?? Michigan has top-10 programs in almost every single field. </p>
<p>I’m attending graduate school at Michigan this fall, and my incoming class is almost 50% out-of-state students and some are coming as far as New York, California, and China. These students don’t see their degree as “regional.”</p>