<p>Fair enough. But I just think even the argument “xyz” schools are trying to be something they aren’t is also stupid. Who has the authority on that? Answer, no one. Statements like that don’t even deserve a response. For a person that goes to school in Cali, they sure are on the other side of the country to be critiquing schools like Cornell, Duke, and Tufts, which, by the way, are all excellent schools. FYI, Berkeley and UCLA are both excellent schools. U of Michigan, BC, UNC, Wake Forest, Emory, Northwestern, and whatever are all excellent schools. No one on CC has the authority to say otherwise. Are the cultures different? Yes, but that’s where fit comes into play and it isn’t a reason a school is bad. That’s like saying because Notre Dame is Catholic, Brandeis is heavily Jewish, or U of Michigan is public that these are bad schools. That’s absurd. Just because a school has a different vibe or culture or fit than yours doesn’t mean it’s better or worse, it’s just preferences.</p>
<p>Seriously, what does that mean that a school tries to be something they aren’t? I am pretty sure ALL schools try to be a place to educate people. The crowd they attract is based on their culture, or whatever. If a school has improved, is striving to be a better academic center, that’s okay because ALL schools are supposed to do that. And these top 30, 50, whatever number of schools for whatever ranking you use are all places where you can get a great education. If these schools aren’t trying to educate or improve upon education then they probably shouldn’t be a school. Just a thought.</p>
<p>I’m new here, but I’ve certainly noticed the hordes of folks who live to defend Berkeley and Michigan against any slight, real or imagined. These are truly wonderful schools, folks, no defense needed! And so are all the other schools mentioned in this thread!</p>
<p>No, PVP, wouldn’t be the place to stock up on underrepresented minorities. It’s in a wealthy area with smaller amounts of urm’s and has an API ranking of 10. I think a more legitimate reason is the students there are wealthy and represent good candidates to be able to pay full tuition.</p>
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<p>There isn’t a school in the country that has 90%+ top-10%, except for maybe Cal Tech. This isn’t a viable, nowhere close to a verifiable statistic. But I would say taht UCLA’s is probably closer to 80-85% t-10%. I don’t know what this would make Michigan’s because it couldn’t be near 92%. I believe USC reports ~ 85% and I believe theirs is probably closer to 50%. So the amount of exaggeration is dependent on the school.</p>
<p>SAT… UCLA de-emphasizes test scores, emphasizes grades, class rank; whereas I’m sure UM emphasizes scores more or at least = grades/class-standing. SAT has more meaning to a school like UM, which I’m sure would admit a student on the balance of the two, grades and scores.</p>
<p>Again, one can’t be dependent on a school reporting a CDS to invoke honesty. And quite frankly a lot of the reporting is so contradictory within a college’s CDS, I’d throw a lot of them out.</p>
<p>UCLA reports a 3.81 uw gpa, and well over 4 point ~ 4.24 weighted, which might be “capped UC gpa.” What would you guess Michigan’s to be? 3.6 uw?</p>
<p>If it is ~ 3.6 uw, that would contradict a 92% t-10, and a lot the 92% would certainly be dependent on quality of hss from which UM admits.</p>
<p>So your reporting of stats doesn’t really mean much. Under USN guidelines, though, it would probably show UM as being more selective in admissions because of high SAT emphasis in that publication, along with de-emphasis of acceptance rate. I agree to the latter if the quality of admits is high, especially if there is a floor to which a university admits, or something to, say, counselor interaction to prevent some of the chaff from applying, to cut down applications, thereby raising acceptance rates.</p>
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<p>The students UCLA accepts from cc and other colleges is very strong. Average gpa from xfer school, ~ 3.65. And they’re very ripe-off-the=tree students who step into their majors, whether biochem, engineering, or history.</p>
<p>Do they keep their 3.65 gpas at UCLA? No, they don’t. They perform at a level lower than the rest of the student body, but not much. I believe the average gpa at graduation at UCLA is around 3.25 (grades rising from frosh to jr status, dipping in their senior year - college senioritis?). Xfer students might be ~ 3.20. That would be a diminution of .45 gpa points, which seems legitimate.</p>
<p>But what’s strange is the xfer students to UCSD, a very rigorous school, is ~ 3.3, but they perform at a level higher than the rest of the student body, with the average student there graduating with around a 3.15 gpa. </p>
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<p>Except for the endowment part, very selective reasons on your part. I really can’t rebut some of your statements because I don’t know much about UM grads, but they are undoubtedly very successful. And I would never quote USN becuase I think it’s a bogus publication. But thanks for responding nonetheless.</p>
<p>MisterK, I think you missed the two main issues on this thread:</p>
<p>1) That UCLA is hated. It is pretty evident that it is not. I have never noticed significant hate directed at UCLA. Schools like Cal, Cornell, Duke and WUSTL get a lot more hate than UCLA on CC.</p>
<p>2) That UCLA is more selective than Cal. It is not. Both have nearly identical admissions statistics.</p>
<p>Michigan was brought into the discussion by a California resident asking why so many students from a particular high school in California were admitted into Michigan. Otherwise, it has not been an item of discussion on this thread.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t be bimodal. The only reason for bimodal is if they came into the unviersity with two distinct disparate qualifications. Other than those urms who’ve gotten in under transfer agreements with lower gpas, I don’t see, say, two distinct subsets, wrt grades, haves and have-nots. It’s in statfinder if you want to see.</p>
<p>Actually Drax, I will not start a discussion on Michigan vs UCLA on this thread, but most of post #84 makes very inccorect assumptions about Michigan (and other universities). But all the information, including GPA details of students enrolling into Michigan, is listed in the common data set. Keep in mind that Michigan only lists unweighed GPA.</p>
<p>I think you made point 2 yourself. I don’t remember what preceded your initial point, if there was someone who said UCLA was more selective, or just saying UCLA was, say, more popular.</p>
<p>Sorry I wasn’t clear - he was referring to how they do after arriving at UCLA. </p>
<p>It’s clear that you need a good CC GPA to transfer in, but I think some would question how much of a qualification that is. I think how well they do after arriving at UCLA would be a reasonable indicator of that.</p>
<p>Michigan’s CDS reports 92% top 10%, with the average unwieghed GPA of 3.75. UCLA’s CDS reports 97% top 10% with average unweighed GPA of 3.81. Like UCLA, Michigan also deemphasizes standardized testing. In other words, both universities have identical student bodies.</p>
<p>xiggi, I still think your post was over the top (and malicious). You can review all my 3k++ posts and there’s not a single hint of it that I envy the Ivies, nor do I adore all of its member schools. My fav schools were and still are: MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Penn, NU, JHU, CMU – probably in that order. Their strong emphasis in CS and business was the driving force behind my admiration for these schools. I may have argued for and against these schools, but that is what this message board (cc) is for, don’t you think? There’s no need to be personal with me. lol</p>
How did you get the 84%? It’s certainly not reported on Michigan’s CDS.</p>
<p>Following is directly excerpted from Michigan’s 2009-10 CDS:</p>
<p>"C10 Percent of degree-seeking, first-time, first-year (freshman) students who had high school class rank within each of the following ranges (report information for those students from whom you collected high school rank information</p>
<p>Percent in top tenth of high school graduating class: 92.2%
Percent in top quarter of high school graduating class: 99.0%
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Percent of first-time, first-year (freshmen) students who submitted high school class rank: 96.4%"</p>
<p>I forgot to add Georgetown to the list of colleges trying to be something they’re not. And, yeah, enough with the they-copied-our-song whining. I’m not even a UCLA fan, but I have to admit it’s one of the few “what’s not to like?” schools.</p>
<p>What are the chances of a, say, a 3.45, from the first interval being t-10%? Probably none, even at an under-performing hs. So we know that 10% < t-10% at UM.</p>
<p>Second Interval, same question. Certainly not all, but I would state that the majority -corrected from my prior post stating ‘vast majority’- would not be t-10%. 60%? 60% of 27% is 16% towards the total 100%.</p>
<p>So the total of < t-10% = 26%, which would if flipped around = 74% t-10% at UM. This is without figuring the < t-10% for the third interval. And I doubt that this interval would have 100% t-10%, depending on the quality of the school. The > the quality of the high school, the > uw grades given, a lot like the Ivies justifying higher grades they give their students.</p>
<p>Let’s do a gpa check:</p>
<p>Figuring means for 3rd interval, say, 3.90, benefit of the doubt. 2nd, 3.62, split the difference of high and low. 1st, 3.45, botd. -> mean gpa overall of 3.78. That’s pretty close to what UM reports.</p>
<p>Let’s check UCLA’s 92% =/> 3.75 based on 3.81 mean gpa:</p>
<p>I come up with 3.845 gpa, which is a little high. </p>
<p>This tells me that the 92% UCLA reports of =/> 3.75 is probably w gpa. But since 3.85 is not that far from 3.81 (it is wrt computation of the numbers and replacing them withe estimates), that for both uw and w gpa a good 90% 3.75 or >.</p>
<p>And in fact, a good .10 difference in gpa point is a lot related to school means. Because the distribution of gpas for hs grads is pretty tight and plentiful within intervals of that width, say, the 3.7-3.79999 and the 3.8-3.89999 uw gpa range.</p>
<p>This is why just a few .01-.10’s of points can probably get one rejected. Especially the 3.7+ range and the 3.8 range at UCLA. If I were an admissions reader, I would give a large benefit of the doubt to someone who had a 3.82 v 3.72 uw gpa. To me 3.82 looks outstanding, 3.72 looks fairly pedestrian.</p>
<p>Drax, I am not sure what you are getting at. Michigan and UCLA report exact figures in their CDSs. All universities do. A CDS cannot be fabricated. For the year 2009-2010 (UCLA has not published the 2010-2011 CDS yet), the average unweighed GPA of Michigan’s freshman class was 3.75, compared to 3.81 at UCLA. Both figures are impressive, and neither proves anything on its own. For example, Johns Hopkins’ average GPA is 3.68. Do you think Johns Hopkins has less talented students than Michigan or UCLA? I have said it before and I will say it again, measuring the quality of a student body is impossible. It is obvious that UCLA is more selective than Michigan. I would never deny that. UCLA will reject more qualified students than Michigan. But if we are to compare the quality of the students enrolled at both schools, I would say they are similar. Class rank, GPA, SAT/ACT (neither superscores and both deemphasize) and yield rates all suggest that the two schools have similar student bodies.</p>
<p>You better know lots about the grading and toughness of every high school to make that big an assumption. I’d be willing to say that overall grading is easier in CA high schools than Michigan HSs and that on average Michigan HS students are better than CA.
Overall this is the dumbest time waster debate seen here in months. Both schools have large numbers of good students. End of story.</p>