Is UMich - Ann Arbor at par with the Ivy?

<p>If you will, which years were you an undergrad and which years were you a grad student?</p>

<p>“But if you shrink Michigan’s undergraduate class to say its top 5000 students, the size of a school like Princeton - now the caliber of students is comparable.”</p>

<p>Excellent point elixirs, if you take the top 5,000 Michigan undergrads (top 20%), you would probably have a student body equal to Princeton’s. That would be a class entirely populated of students who graduated in the top 1% of their class with 4.0 unweighed GPAs and scored over 1450 on the SAT and/or over 32 on the ACT. In fact, those students on average would be a little stronger than Princeton students.</p>

<p>I was an undergrad at Michigan from 1992-1996 and a graduate student at Cornell from 1999-2001. I worked for three years between undergrad and grad.</p>

<p>Well I suppose we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. Hard to refute one’s personal experience with another’s.</p>

<p>Off topic: You mentioned you were in consulting, in what field was your graduate study? What type of consulting do you do? (I am interested in possibly exploring consulting.)</p>

<p>“But if you shrink Michigan’s undergraduate class to say its top 5000 students, the size of a school like Princeton - now the caliber of students is comparable.”
“Excellent point elixirs, if you take the top 5,000 Michigan undergrads (top 20%), you would probably have a student body equal to Princeton’s. That would be a class entirely populated of students who graduated in the top 1% of their class with 4.0 unweighed GPAs and scored over 1450 on the SAT and/or over 32 on the ACT. In fact, those students on average would be a little stronger than Princeton students.”</p>

<p>Hahaha, wow, can we ever get more selective. Quite frankly choosing the top 20% obviously would throw off the balance of what UM as a whole is like. I highly doubt when you do comparison, you compare a part of something to a whole of another. I mean think about it, we took the top 20% to compare it, wouldn’t that seem ridiculous? You are taking the top 5000 UM students who probably learn and are extremely academically smart and comparing them to a body which include athletes and recruited people. That would totally toss off the so called “middle fifty” that colleges report, colleges do that so they can throw out the extremes. Its just like saying lets select the top players on the Orlando Magics and compare them to the average Laker’s players, that would seem unreasonable wouldn’t it? (sorry I was still thinking about basketball, go Lakers!) Especially because you are selecting the top students against the entire group of Princeton (that’s including the bottom 25%). </p>

<p>I think we need to do a better job of comparing the school as a whole.
If you want to be a reasonable comparison, take 1/2 of the 5000 from the middle 50%, then 1/4 of the 5000 you will compare from the top 25% and then take 1/4 of the 5000 from the bottom 25%. There you will have a relatively fair comparison. If you took only the top students, yes it would be but that’s like saying lets take the top 25% of Princeton and compare it to the middle 50% of Harvard, obviously Princeton is going to have some students that are stronger than the middle 50% of Harvard. And of course you are going to out smart some of them. But If we took 5000 and representing the entire Michigan body, then no you will not be stronger.</p>

<p>Also going back to the salary, if UM has students that are capable at Ivy level, then why don’t UM students go find jobs there? I don’t think job searches are restricted to the region that the school is in. If they are strong as Ivies (not saying all of them aren’t), a lot of them would have found a ton of jobs at the coast and northeast and their living would be higher. Would that be something to think about?</p>

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<p>This doesn’t make any sense. U-M has alumni all over the country. The cost of living in the Midwest is less than on the coasts (duh). U-M graduates can find jobs anywhere, but a large percentage choose to remain in the Midwest. Lower cost of living = salaries don’t have to be as high</p>

<p>But wouldn’t it seem to be a stereotype that the northeast has a higher cost of living? Yes agree that there are places in the Northeast that have high cost of living (NYC, Boston) but just because NY and Boston and those other big city has a high cost of living doesn’t mean the the Northeast as a whole does. Also lower cost of living doesn’t always mean salaries doesn’t have to be high (there are places where the salaries are lower than Michigan). There are people who live in cheap places even though they have high salaries. The same goes the other way, there are people who try to live as “wealthy” as they can even though they don’t make as much (and sadly this is what causes our economy to go down). Given it was the people’s choice to live in the Midwest, yes I can say that it probably does play a big factor. I don’t now for sure (I rarely consider studying the factors that play into affect the salaries).</p>

<p>However the original debate (I was arguing about, it became another one) was about:
rjkofnovi: “Schools like Duke, where a very significant number of students are from the northeast, also skews the data to higher salaries”
In this case I don’t really think that where the students are from makes a big difference on how much money they will make once they graduate. Especially when he said that “where the students are from” compared to the fact that the salary was based on the income of the “graduates”, not the income of student’s family when they enter. And I still disagree that Duke has a “significant” amount of students from Northeast.</p>

<p>“Also I highly doubt that living in a expensive place means that you are going to get a better salary.” </p>

<p>The above remark was the crux of this debate cdz512. To continue discussions with you are futile. You clearly just don’t get it.</p>

<p>Where did I say that in post 87?
And also I said I was wrong on that comment didn’t I?</p>

<p>Giants, my graduate field was Human Resource Management (in the school if Industrial and Labor Relations). I work for Mercer Consulting. We do primarily HR consulting.</p>

<p>I think you misread my post cdz512. I am not trying to compare Michigan’s top 20% to all of Princeton; rather, I’m saying that Michigan’s average student body is weaker than Princeton’s because of the larger number of students that UM admits, not because UM lacks talented students. There are just as many Ivy-level students at Michigan as Princeton itself, but they’re diluted among the less competitive kids.</p>

<p>Regarding the salary argument, of course the average Michigan graduate will make less than the average Ivy graduate by the same logic - the Ivy level kids (top 20%) get Ivy level jobs in NYC banking or BB consulting, such as top Ross students. Top engineering graduates can also get these jobs or work for famous engineering firms like Apple, Microsoft, Lockheed, etc. The rest of the top 20% (many from LSA) get their professional (MD, JD, etc) degrees or go for a PhD. This is weighted against the remaining 80% that get less prestigious/lower-paying jobs. In other words, if you’re an Ivy-level kid you’ll have the same opportunities at UM as Princeton. And just going to an Ivy doesn’t mean you’re on easy street; I know Harvard and Yale grads who have the same position at Sears as my friend from MSU! In the end all it comes down to is your own ability.</p>

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For engineering students who want to be engineers… no, Michigan is not on par with the ivies… Michigan is better than most Ivies… in terms of faculties, facilities, curriculum, research, prestige, industrial connections, careers, etc.</p>

<p>^ Ditto.</p>

<p>Michigan is also equal and better than the Ivies in the social sciences. Michigan also has a better social work program.</p>

<p>“For engineering students who want to be engineers… no, Michigan is not on par with the ivies… Michigan is better than most Ivies… in terms of faculties, facilities, curriculum, research, prestige, industrial connections, careers, etc.”</p>

<p>If you are trying to counter with this, the argument has not been about the engineering college. Of course the engineering program is tops, no one doubts that.</p>

<p>I’m glad we agree on that. Engineering and related sciences account for about 20% of the student body.</p>

<p>And you can say the same about most of the other schools like Architecture, Business, Education, Kinesiology, Music, Nursing, Pharmacy and Public Policy, etc. </p>

<p>Are you comparing ONLY LSA with the Ivies? LSA only accounts for a little over a half of Michigan’s undergraduate student body.</p>

<p>How much do you value breadth and depth? For example, what if you come in as a pre-med and find your true calling in business or engineering?</p>

<p>No, I’m talking about the entire student body. Average intelligence level. Not quality of teaching, careers, facilities, etc.</p>

<p>Giants, how do you measure intelligence? Why do Michigan students place into top graduate programs and top companies and get promoted and paid in terms similar to their Ivy League counterparts? Why do academics around the nation assign equal weight to Michigan as they do to the majority of their Ivy League peers in the peer assessment score of undergraduate education? Why does a leading scholar such as Gerhard Casper use Cal and Michigan as “prima facie evidence” to explain why the USNWR rankings of undergraduate universities is not respected in academe? He goes as far as saying that Cal and Michigan are two of the nation’s top “half-dozen universities”. In terms of overall academics (both undergraduate and graduate), faculty, facilities, resources and graduate school and professional placement opportunities, Michigan matches up with the majority of the vy League very nicely. </p>

<p>And you seriously underestimate Michigan students and seriously overestimate Ivy League students. Yes, on average, Ivy League students are a little more academically proven. But your claim that only 15% of Michigan students are of Ivy :eague caliber is way off. 50%, maybe. I personally would say it is closeer to 65%. But for the sake of what can be proven statistically (since I cannpt prove the advantages of superscoring), I will stick to the 50% mark. Even at Ivy League schools, not 100% of students are of Ivy League caliber. At mostIvies, I would say that 80%-90% of students qualify, but the remaining students are very average.</p>

<p>Anyway, I like the fact that you are critical of your own school. That is what separates Michigan from the Ivies. Michigan students are generally more well grounded and humble. Ivy League students aren’t as much.</p>

<p>When I interact (academically and socially) with someone, I can tell how smart he is. I.e. when I interact with someone with say, an average GPA, I can judge how intelligent he is. This could be through observed ability to think quickly, creatively, ability to understand certain question or concepts, etc. These are abstract measures of intelligence, not concrete like IQ or SAT score, but I find perceived intelligence through sufficient interaction fairly accurate. (Do you know what I’m trying to say here? Can’t you tell how smart someone is once you interact with them enough?) I then assign this level of intelligence to a certain GPA. The average undergraduate, GPA-wise, does not come off as intelligent as the average Ivy League students I have interacted with.</p>

<p>15 percent may be a bit too harsh, but I really don’t think it exceeds 25.</p>

<p>I don’t want to appear to think the mean Michigan student is unintelligent or incompetent. The mean UM student is quite intelligent when comparing students across all universities. But, we are talking about differentiating top university students from EACH OTHER, not the general population of universities. We are not talking about removing Michigan intelligence from the top, but, when attempting to rank the top, UM mean intelligence is not at the same level as Ivy mean intelligence (from my personal perceptions, interactions, and experiences). I am proud of my university, but I dislike it when pride goes too far.</p>

<p>As someone who visited, was accepted to, and chose between HYPS, Ivy-ish schools like Wash U, and Michigan, I’ve also interacted with the respective peer groups and got a feel for how “smart” they were. From what I’ve experienced, if you took the top 40% or so of the Michigan student body (which is, what, 12000 kids?) and randomly split them into Ivy sized schools, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish their respective student bodies from the ivies. Actually, I would say that that top 40% would be much more engaged and active then that general Ivy body due to the effect being in the bottom half or quarter at any school, including ivy league, has on a person. </p>

<p>In comparison to HYPS, I would then say yeah probably a class of the top 15% of students at Michigan could form a class of that caliber. Yeah there are a good amount, by volume, of fairly average students at Michigan. But I found HYPS to be filled with a good amount of “standard-strong” kids, who probably sell themselves well. Additionally, it seemed like HYPS and the ivy-ilk more reward people who found themselves in high school than anything. I found upperclassmen at Michigan, as far as what they were achieving and what they were involved in, to be just as outstanding and in many cases more so than those at Stanford or Yale. For upperclassmen, you could probably form a student body from the top 50% of Michigan students and have it be indistinguishable from HYPS schools. </p>

<p>The only difference is Michigan has that bottom 25% that isn’t anywhere near ivy-quality. But I don’t perceive that as a weakness at a school with, by volume, more ivy-caliber people then you could ever meet. I think it contributes to the diversity of the school; it’s an experience you can’t get at HYPS.</p>