College Discussion - View Single Post - How do people view University of Michigan??? against other universities

hawkette · 05-08-2008, 10:01 AM

rjno,
I think you are mistaking a different opinion on U Michigan as a biased opinion.

In looking at any college, I try to use objective data to make judgments rather than relying on subjective assessments or passionate and/or anecdotal posts by current students/alumni of a college. My process for evaluating undergraduate colleges relates to four key factors that I see as determining the nature and quality of the undergraduate academic experience that a student will encounter. Those are:

1. Strength of student body-I prefer stronger students
2. Size and nature of the classroom-I prefer smaller class sizes with classes taught by professors, rather than TAs
3. Faculty-I prefer colleges known for their excellence in classroom instruction and see research reputations as mostly unrelated to the average undergraduate experience
4. Institutional resources and the willingness of the institution to use these resources to assist undergraduate education-I prefer colleges that have a lot of resources that are growing and which are being dedicated to improve the undergraduate experience.

I think that fit issues supersede these factors when the differences are relatively close.

Using this approach, I conclude that U Michigan is an excellent state university that can provide a very good undergraduate academic experience, but I don't believe that it is as strong as the top privates. And in the post-graduate real world, I definitely don't think it is nearly as strong as Michigan partisans regularly posit. I would describe U Michigan graduates as very good (similar on average to BC, Lehigh, NYU). Can some be received in some postgraduate circles at a higher level? Of course (and the same would be true for BC et al and any college), but I am looking at the institution as a whole and not taking the reputation of a subset of students, eg. engineering, business, etc. as automatically representative of the entire university.

If you want to call my approach biased, then I"m sure you will, but this is how I evaluate colleges. This has nothing to do with U Michigan as I apply similar metrics to all colleges. I would be interested to know your methodology in how you evaluate colleges.

05-08-2008, 10:01 AM	#45
hawkette Senior Member Join Date: May 2006 Threads: 137 Posts: 2,858	rjno, I think you are mistaking a different opinion on U Michigan as a biased opinion. In looking at any college, I try to use objective data to make judgments rather than relying on subjective assessments or passionate and/or anecdotal posts by current students/alumni of a college. My process for evaluating undergraduate colleges relates to four key factors that I see as determining the nature and quality of the undergraduate academic experience that a student will encounter. Those are: 1. Strength of student body-I prefer stronger students 2. Size and nature of the classroom-I prefer smaller class sizes with classes taught by professors, rather than TAs 3. Faculty-I prefer colleges known for their excellence in classroom instruction and see research reputations as mostly unrelated to the average undergraduate experience 4. Institutional resources and the willingness of the institution to use these resources to assist undergraduate education-I prefer colleges that have a lot of resources that are growing and which are being dedicated to improve the undergraduate experience. I think that fit issues supersede these factors when the differences are relatively close. Using this approach, I conclude that U Michigan is an excellent state university that can provide a very good undergraduate academic experience, but I don't believe that it is as strong as the top privates. And in the post-graduate real world, I definitely don't think it is nearly as strong as Michigan partisans regularly posit. I would describe U Michigan graduates as very good (similar on average to BC, Lehigh, NYU). Can some be received in some postgraduate circles at a higher level? Of course (and the same would be true for BC et al and any college), but I am looking at the institution as a whole and not taking the reputation of a subset of students, eg. engineering, business, etc. as automatically representative of the entire university. If you want to call my approach biased, then I"m sure you will, but this is how I evaluate colleges. This has nothing to do with U Michigan as I apply similar metrics to all colleges. I would be interested to know your methodology in how you evaluate colleges.