Michigan vs Boston College

Alexandre
Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:20:27 +0000

ckmets, a 0.3 or even 0.4 + or - rating is negligible. It is crazy to assume that anything in this world can be 100% accurate. Cornell isn’t better than Dartmouth simply because its PA score is 0.2 higher. And NYU is not better than BC simply because its PA is 0.2 higher. Those universities are pretty equal and the PA score shows that. And my point about UT-Austin and Georgetown is that if the PA measured research and graduate school quality, the latter’s PA would be significantly lower than the former’s because UT-Austin is better than Georgetown at the graduate level. And yet, they have equal PAs. That tells me that the PA measures undergraduate quality, not graduate school quality. Finally, don’t underestimate Iowa. It is a much better university than you think, and members of academe obviously know that. Iowa isn’t a major research university and has average graduate programs. If its PA is high is because it does a good job at the undergraduate level. And no, it is not better than Lehigh, BC, Wake or UofR. But it is very arrogant and shallow to assume that it is worse just because it is located in Iowa or because it is a state university. Like I said, a peer assessment score difference of 0.3 or even 0.4 doesn’t say much. That can indeed be atrributed to size and research activity.

Now I definitely think that a university with high profile graduate programs, like Cal, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan etc… will stand to benefit a little when it comes to measuring the PAS. And why not? The same faculty teaches graduate students and undergraduate students. In most top research universities, and certainly at Cornell and Michigan, the curriculum for juniors and seniors is very similar to the course load taken by graduate strudents. The main difference is the level of detail graduate students go into. Econ 401, 402, 413 etc… are taught by the same professors as Econ 601, 601, 613 etc… They cover almost the same concepts and principles. The main difference is extent to which math is used. Undergrads also get to do cutting edge research with the same faculty and use the same World class facilities as graduate students.

“So Alexandre I assume you mean also by the previous post that since you only agree with PA, you would take a high quality faculty teaching kids with HS GPAs of 2.5 and SATs of 900 over a pretty good faculty teaching kids ranking right around the top 6 or 7% of their high school classes with over 1300 SATs. Since faculty is all that matters for academic excellence, after all.”

Did I say that faculty is all that matters? I don’t recall ever saying that. I said faculty is the most important aspect of a top university. Resources, facilities and student quality all matter too. It’s not like Michigan suffers in any of those departments. Michigan’s endowment is the 7th largest among US universities. Michigan’s facilties are among the very best to be found anywhere. Student quality is hard to measure because each university evaluates talent differently and reports statisitics differently. Suffice it to say, regardless of how you measure student quality, Michigan’s student body is good enough to provide fellow students with a competitive academic environment and to meet the expectations of a very demanding, world class faculty.

So, to answer your question, between chosing a university with a World class faculty an below average students (can you point such a university out for me, I am having trouble finding a university with a World class faculty that has a student body with average cumulative HS GPAs under 3.3 or mean SAT scores below 1100) or a university with merely a “good” faculty and excellent (average cumulative HS GPA over 3.7 average and mean SAT score over 1300) I would probably pick neither. I would rather pick a university with a World class faculty AND with excellent students.