<p>Hawkette, you are feisty, I will give you that! </p>
<p>“On the link you provided for Collegejournal, I want to congratulate you on your ability to unearth a really obscure bit of information.”</p>
<p>Obscure? The information on that link was published by the Wall Street Journal. There is nothing obscure about the WSJ.</p>
<p>“Before I get to my response, congrats to Michigan for almost beating out Morehouse and Bryn Mawr College! And mega congrats for narrowly beating out the New College of Florida and Vassar College (and killed BC!!).”</p>
<p>What’s wrong with Bryn Mawr and Vassar? They are top LACs. Bryn Mawr is Penn’s sister school and is comparable to Wellesley and Smith. Vassar is one of the top 10 or 15 LACs. Besides, LACs are so small that a very small fluctuation in those numbers can send them soaring or tumbling. I mean just look at the New College of South Florida (which is a highly regarded LAC). Placing just 3 (THREE) students into top 5 graduate programs was enough to send them soaring. Had they managed to place anouther 5 of their students into top 5 programs, they would have made the top 10 list. Small LACs with fewer than 500 students per class are hard to analyze. As for Morehouse, it is one of the few outliers, primarily because 100% of its students are URMs. I don’t think I need to explain further why it has such a successful placement ratio. </p>
<p>“Alexandre, this chart actually reinforces my frequently stated point about Michigan’s strength of student body. The school has some excellent students and this chart reflects that 156 of them got into some high prestige grad programs. But 156 Michigan students does not an entire graduating class make. Doesn’t Michigan have 26,000 undergrads or 6500 graduates every year? What about everybody else? Don’t they count?”</p>
<p>First of all, Michigan graduates roughly 5,300-5,800 undergrads annually, not 6,500. Anyway, by that reckoning Northwestern places just 73 of its students into “high prestige” programs out of a class of 2,000 and Cornell 115 out of a class of 3,600. What about everybody else? Don’t they count? Remember Hawkette, this is a ranking according to placement rates, not sheer numbers. According to raw numbers, Michigan is #5. As a ratio of its student body, Michigan places as high a percentage of its students into those top 5 graduate programs as Cornell and Northwestern. </p>
<p>But let me take this a step further, you always say the same thing. Only 150 out of 5,500 get into top 5 graduate professional programs, what about the remaining students? Only 150 students get into top Investment Banks and Management Consulting firms, ehat about the remaining students. Well Hawkette, those numbers keep adding on. Do you really want to do some serious math? Let’s go:</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal study was actually very accurate and quite telling, but it was very narrow. It only looked at matriculations intop 5 top Medical schools, 5 top MBA programs and 5 top Law schools. For medicine, they selected Columbia Medical School, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins Medical School, the University of California-San Francisco Medical School and and Yale Medical School. For the 5 MBA programs, they selected the University of Chicago Business school, Dartmouth’s Tuck School, Harvard Business School, MIT’s Sloan School and Penn’s Wharton School. In law, they looked at the University of Chicago Law School, Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School and Yale Law School.</p>
<p>So, 156 Michigan graduates enrolled into those 15 mega-elite programs. But I think we can agree that for each of those professional fields, there are a handful or so other excellent programs. </p>
<p>Among Medical schools, the survey left out some definite top 10 Medical schools like Duke Medical School, Stanford Medical School, the University of Michigan Medical School, Washington University Medical School and Cornell Medical School. 50 or so Michigan graduates enroll into the University of Michigan medical school each year. I am not sure how many enroll into Stanford, Duke, Cornell and WUSTL, but let us assume, for argument’s sake that Michigan manages to enroll 10 of its students into those 4 top medical schools. 156 + 50 + 10 = 216. </p>
<p>Among MBA programs, the survey left out a few top 10 MBA programs like Northwestern’s Kellogg, Stanford Business School, Columbia Business School and Michigan’s Ross. I have no actual numbers, but I do know that Michigan places an average of 15 of its students into Wharton and another 10 or so into Harvard BS annually and I also know that Michigan places more of its students into Kellogg and Ross. So let us be very conservative and say that Michigan places 50 additional students into Ross, Kellogg, Stanford BS and Columbia BS. 216+50 = 266. 50 is more like the number of Michigan grads who get into Ross alone, but like I said, I am being very conservative because I really don’t have the exact figures.</p>
<p>Among Law schools, the survey left out some major players, like NYU, Stanford, UVa, Cal, Penn, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell and Duke. I don’t have the exact matriculation information into those 9 top LAW schools for the year this survey was made (2004 I believe), but I do have the exact figures for last year. Last year, Michigan placed 41 students into those 9 Law schools. So, 266 + 41 = 307. </p>
<p>Alrighty then, 300+ Michigan graduates make it into the very top Law Schools, Medical, Law and MBA programs annually. Keep in mind we are only looking into the very best and most prestigious, most exclusive graduate professional programs. I left out decent MBA programs like Duke (Fuqua), UVa (Darden), NYU (Stern), Cal (Haas), UCLA (Anderson), Yale SOM, Cornell (Johnson), Carnegie Mellon (Tepper), Indiana University (Kelley), UNC-Chapel Hill (Kenan Flagler) etc… I left out some very decent Medical schools like UCLA, UDub, Baylor, Chicago, NYU, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Pitt, Emory and UCSD. I also left out some decent Law schools, like George Washington, Notre Dame, USC, UCLA, UT-Austin, Vanderbilt, Minnesota, Iowa, Boston University, Boston College, Notre Dame and WUSTL. Do you know how many 100s of Michigan students enroll into those “decent” graduate programs? Last year, 75 Michigan students enrolled into those “decent” law schools listed above. That’s just the law schools. Michigan does not publish numbers on Medical and MBA matriculations, but I can tell you that those numbers would be pretty high. </p>
<p>Of course, we aren’t even looking into matriculations into top 10 graduate Engineering programs or into top PhD programs. I won’t assign any numbers because I have none to go by, but I can imagine that number is high. </p>
<p>Overall, I would be very surprised if fewer than 500 Michigan students matriculated into top 10 graduate programs annually and another 500 into “decent” (you know, like Vanderbilt Law School or UCLA Medical school or Yale SOM) graduate programs annually. That’s a total of 1,000 students getting into good-amazing graduate programs. </p>
<p>I also recall your commenting that Ross placing 150 undergraduate students into Wall street was good, but insignificant when considering out of 5,700. Well Hawkette, as you and I both agreed, most people don’t care to work in IBanking or live in NYC. Ross places another 50 or so undergrads into companies like Intel, Microsoft and Cisco in the West Coast, IBM, Kraft and GE in the East Coast and Bank of America in the Southeast. And that’s just Ross. I also recall sharing the college of Engineering’s placement into major companies. You saw the long range of companies (100s of major companies from all over the World, including PB, Schlumberger, McKinsey, Bain, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, NASA, Lockheed Martin, GE etc…) that recruit at the College of Engineering. Lockheed Martin and Intel hired 16 Engineers each last year. GE, Raytheon and Microsoft hired 10+ Engineers each as well. And unlike Ross, the College of Engineering only has access to limited information. Far more students get jobs with major companies but the college has no way of knowing about it. And the college of LSA also manages to place a lot of its students into major companies. LSA is as highy regarded as the College of Engineering and has similar college fairs and recruitment activity. Unfortunately, LSA’s career office has almost no way of keep record of placement statistics.</p>
<p>So Hawkette, as you can plainly see, it’s not just 156 Michigan undergraduate students who get into good graduate programs or just 150 undergraduate students who land jobs with top IBanks and top Management Consulting firms on Wall Street annually. We are talking about well over 1,500 students annually getting into top graduate programs and into top companies around the country and globe. Sure, that’s not a 100% ratio, but even Harvard doesn’t have a 100% success rate. As a ratio of successful students to the total student population, Michigan is definitely among the top 20 in the nation among national universities. I have said it before and I will say it again, Michigan opens all sorts of doors and provides students with every opportunity imaginable for a solid education and a good future. </p>
<p>So, I repeat, this sort of success means one of two things. Either Michigan does in fact have a relatively weak student body as you claim, but somehow, manages to do as much with its students as schools with superior students do. If that’s the case, then we must conclude that Michigan somehow takes a sub-standard product and does more with it than its peers, thus making it a better university. Or, more likely, Michigan’s student body is more gifted than you think. Pick your poison, but something’s got to give.</p>