| Penn, as I said, can be comparable to Michigan on a level. But Columbia and Harvard? -- I don't see the comparison. Their small colligate sizes -- Columbia College is little bigger than an LAC -- affords undergrads more attention PhD faculty. And Harvard, for all the potshots it takes re its undergrad program, affords the residential “House” program with scores of tutorial opportunities undergraduates with top faculty. Each dorm/house is like a free standing LAC within the larger university -- with live in faculty, extensive libraries, seminar rooms, etc -- like Yale's, it's very similar to the Oxford/Cambridge programs they mimic. There's simply no way Michigan, or any other large state university, can match that in its overall undergraduate program. Also, quality, driven students by nature are going to be 'go getters', it's just that some schools force them to be so more than others. |