<p>“However, it doesn’t change the fact that there is a higher percentage of “less qualified” students at UM and a lower percentage of “smart” people at UM in comparison to Ivy League schools, such as Cornell, using your metric.”</p>
<p>1) Some people use normalization where it isn’t really relevant. For example, do you compete against individuals or against a percentage? If you sat the CPA test, do you care that the pass rate is 50%, or in a room of 2000 people are you competing against the person in the 1000th position? If you mixed the Cornell population into the Michigan population and started pairing off the Cornell population against the Michigan population, the highly skilled Michigan kids and the highly skilled Cornell neither cohort would not be competing against the bottom of the class. The bottom of the class becomes irrelevent. In the person to person competitions, the Cornell kids would be competing against many more qualified Michigan kids. Do you think the Cornell kids will then go home and say "Guess what mom, I bested the bottom third of the Michigan class? No, they will ignore that bottom third and compete against their natural competition. Those bottom quartiles will be irrelevant to their ability to pull good grades, so what does it matter what either the percentage or the headcount is. So in that context, what is the value of your statement.</p>
<p>As to you using percentage and say “…using your metric…” inverts the characterization which I made: I explicitly disagree with the use and importance of percentage and think your point is irrelevant…what counts is the person to person competition which people face off against because they faceoff against headcount, not percentage. </p>