<p>Which school would you pick? Which is harder to get into?</p>
<p>Michigan is more prestigous, BC is more selective. Both schools have D-1 sports and lots of school spirit. Personally, I tend to like private schools better (small classroom sizes, etc.) and would chose BC.</p>
<p>Michigan probably has the better football team, but they lose to Ohio State every year, so it is what it is. In ice hockey the teams are probably equivalent.</p>
<p>I’d go with U. Mich</p>
<p>isnt BC known as a really conservative catholic college?</p>
<p>Boston College vs Michigan</p>
<p>The following numbers are drawn directly from the latest (2007 version) of USNWR. </p>
<p>Graduation & Retention Rank
Boston College: 20th Michigan: 28th
-% of Students expected to graduate in 6 years:
Boston College: 83% Michigan: 77%
-% of students who do graduate in 6 years:
Boston College: 91% Michigan: 86%</p>
<p>Faculty Resources Rank:
Boston College: 72nd Michigan: 69th
-% of classes with 50+ students
Boston College: 8% Michigan: 16%
-% of classes with <20 students
Boston College: 38% Michigan: 43%
-Faculty/student ratio
Boston College: 13/1 Michigan: 15/1</p>
<p>Student Selectivity Rank:
Boston College: 29th Michigan: 22nd
-Average SAT/ACT:
Boston College: 1250-1420 Michigan: 1220-1420
-% of students ranking in top 10% of high school class
: 75% Michigan: 89%
-% acceptance rate: Boston College 31% Michigan: 57%</p>
<p>Financial Resources Rank:
Boston College: 70th Michigan: 31st</p>
<p>Alumni Giving % and Rank:
Boston College: 25% (37th) Michigan: 15% (105th)</p>
<p>Peer Assessment:
Boston College: 3.6 Michigan: 4.5</p>
<p>While Michigan clearly has a higher profile on CC and Michigan supporters regularly present the school as a near-Ivy, in most respects, it is much more a near-BC. The numbers above indicate that Boston College and Michigan are highly similar in many important areas (Graduation/Retention rank, Selectivity and equally weak Faculty Resources). However, to Michigan’s credit, Michigan boasts a strong Peer Assessment ranking (although some would contend that this reputation is mostly owed to Michigan’s graduate faculty). This Peer Assessment (which contributes 25% of the USNWR score) advantage powers most of the numerical edge to give it the higher USNWR rank (Boston College: 34 Michigan: 24). Furthermore, BC’s weak showing in Financial Resources, perhaps reflecting its Catholic nature, puts the school at a statistical disadvantage to Michigan. Both schools offer a solid undergraduate experience and have good reputations for providing a good social atmosphere but, on the academic numbers, slight edge to Michigan.</p>
<p>go to Michigan because i think BC is wicked over rated. It has only become selective since Flutie (because of the publicity) and before that there is really no history and it was a cake walk to get in. All BC has going for it is that it is smaller. Michigan better social scene and better academics.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that USNWR states that Peer Assessment is for the undergraduate program, meaning a grad program wouldn’t be included.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’d clearly pick UMich over BC.</p>
<p>adidasjed do you know anything about BC or have any information that would back up your claim that BC is “wicked” over rated? I’m pretty sure that 99% of students don’t apply to BC because of Doug Flutie, he hasnt gone there for over 25 years (or sometime around then). Better social scene, better academics? where are the facts to back that up</p>
<p>Coming from Massachussetts i can tell you that BC has an extremely good reputation in New England, and though im not going there when i visited i thought it had some of the most modern up to date buildings, while still having the nice campus feel, and its right outside of boston.</p>
<p>I think he may have deducted that UMich has better academics due to peer assessment scores:</p>
<p>4.5 UM
3.6 BC</p>
<p>USNWR states that the peer assessment is for strength of the ugrad program. Just saying that because people often claim that publics like UMich and Berkeley recieve high PA scores due to grad programs.</p>
<p>Michigan has a much larger population than BC, so I guess that could mean for more diversity and types of people to encounter. It probably won’t be as hard finding a fit at Michigan as it would be at a smaller school like BC.</p>
<p>I applied to both, I would choose Michigan over BC anyday.</p>
<p>It really depends on what you are interested in too. There are tons of top ten programs at michigan, but I doubt there are many at BC.</p>
<p>I would chose BC over Michigan, because the student population is so large.</p>
<p>FYI Hawkette, once and for all the same faculty at UM provides grad and UG teaching. There is no such thing as grad faculty except in areas like law and med school with no undergrad component. The fact that the grad programs are highly ranked just affirms the fact that the faculty at UM is one of the best. That is also reflected by the large number of NAS members and major annual awards (Guggenheims etc.) earned.</p>
<p>I’m very familiar with both schools. They offer very very different college experiences, and attract very different types of students–though the actual academic qualifications of the student bodies are fairly similar.</p>
<p>Michigan clearly has the higher national and international reputation for having academic heavyweights in its faculty, and the high Peer Assessment score confirms this. BC’s faculty is pretty damn good though, and its proximity to Boston makes it a place at which lots of people (many of whom are non-Catholic and even non-Christian) want to spend their time teaching and researching.</p>
<p>And about academic heavyweights…some of them DO only teach grad courses, and even if they do teach undergrads, it would seem open to debate how getting taught intro physics or English 101 by the #20 scholar in his field is any better than being taught by the #200 scholar in his field. In other words, the undergrads aren’t exactly going to be in a position to take advantage of whatever margin the heavyweight is going to have over a light heavyweight.</p>
<p>There is no shortage of anti-Catholic sentiment among the intelligensia in this country, and I always wondered if that had any impact on BC’s PA rating. Also, being in the shadow of places like Harvard and MIT probably doesn’t help much.</p>
<p>I have a very close relative that spent a decade doing research at Michigan, and he said that the faculty seemed to have surprisingly little devotion to the university–he said too many professors there seemed to be “punching their ticket” before trying to move on to more glamorous schools.</p>
<p>Regardless, they are both among the top few colleges in the country at combining high-quality academics and first-rate sports programs (if you consider basketball, football, and hockey–pretty much the only sports that are popular enough to generate much cash–perhaps only Wisconsin is on par with them in this regard).</p>
<p>B U-M p. Bc UMP.</p>
<p>collegeboard.com says:
Michigan SAT 1210-1420
BC SAT 1250-1420</p>
<p>BC is a better school. QED</p>
<p>nefer,
There is a lot more that goes into evaluating a school than average SAT scores. While these can be an indication of the academic quality of the student body, there is a lot more to consider including the size of the classes, the quality of the teaching, the ability and willingness of a school to support its students and faculty, not to mention a number of intangibles that are commonly ignored in the USNWR and other rankings. I encourage you to consider more than SAT scores when evaluating which is a better college. BC may be a better school (and definitely is for some students), but it is not supportable to claim that one college is better than another simply based on standardized test scores. </p>
<p>BC is certainly a strong school and, as TourGuide’s post points out, BC and Michigan both do an excellent job of combining academics with national quality athletic programs. The biggest problem for BC appears to be its faculty reputation (as measured by Peer Assessment ranking) which lags well behind Michigan’s reputation. I am not well enough informed about the faculties of BC and Michigan to comment on that large difference (4.5 for Michigan vs 3.6 for BC) and whether it is justified , but clearly in the minds of academics, there is room for improvement in Chestnut Hill.</p>
<ol>
<li>BC is catholic</li>
<li>BC is not a research institution (especially when compared with schools like Michigan, research powerhouses) and it is still being ranked in the research schools category. Similar schools like Wake, Lehigh, URochester, and even Notre Dame suffer lower PAs than their peer public schools because of this research factor. This is why PA is BS when it comes to evaluating undergraduate institutions.</li>
</ol>
<p>of course michigan is a good school, but it is not 20% better than BC as the PA would like you to think</p>
<p>Michigan wins academically hands down.</p>
<p>4.5 vs. 3.6? Come on, guys. You can give all the excuses in the world, but it doesn’t change the fact that int he minds of academics all over the country, Michigan ranks much higher academically.</p>