<p>As someone who has experienced classes both with and without TAs, I have to say that there are times where TAs are a better experience. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, I will say this: Not everyone belongs at a big university. Not everyone has the gumption to survive at a large school. I would have gone back to UCLA in a heartbeat, because I believe that my ability to succeed anywhere else is now guaranteed. However, would I recommend it to everyone? No.</p>
<p>Still, to discount Michigan is to discount easily one of the top 10 schools in America, if you get past all the USNWR BS. People often forget that it was once a top 15 ranked school in the days of yore, but dropped as the methodology was tweaked.</p>
<p>DMC, what are you talking about? That may be the case for Dartmouth, but there are certainly tons of TAs at Cornell, and Penn and Columbia probably have their fair share as well.</p>
<p>Wait, I guess for Cornell you are probably right. When a friend went, he didnt see any though. However, a school so big is bound to have a few. Let me revise my list of non TA places: Dartmouth, Williams, Stanford (non that I have heard of), Columbia (non that I’ve heard of), Penn (non that I’v heard of)</p>
<p>Devil May Cry, who told you those nightmare stories about Michigan? You really have your facts mixed up. Let me give you a few facts about Michigan:</p>
<p>1) Only 3% of classes at Michigan are taught by TAs. I know for a fact that Cornell, Columbia, Penn, Stanford and Harvard all have a few such classes too). </p>
<p>2) On average, classes Michigan smaller than those at Cornell, about the same size as those at Johns Hopkins and only slightly smaller than classes at Brown, Chicago, Dartmouth, MIT and Stanford. </p>
<p>In terms of “overall quality”, Michigan is defnitely one of the top 15 or so universities…and makes as strong a case for top 10 as any university save H, M, P, S, and Y. I really do not know how you can actually say with such assuredness that one school is ranked #6 and another #9 and another #13 etc… It is impossible to differentiate between #6 and #17.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, I guess I am listening to the Cornell board too much, but I was led to believe that it was better. Alexandre, to finish this debate, what do u think are the top 20 universities in the country? What order?</p>
<p>thanks.</p>
<p>PS: Dartmouth has much smaller classes than Umich on avg. and absolutely no TAs. It is a liberal arts school, not a sprawling research university like Umich</p>
<p>Because the “Top Ten” is so fluid, I don’t really bother with putting ten schools in those gilded ranks. But for overall quality as an undergrad and graduate institution (and I see them as linked), I would say that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Berkeley, and Michigan are the only certain winners for spots. Then you maybe have 5 or 6 schools that could conceivably take the last two spots, such as Columbia, Duke, UCLA, UChicago, and a couple more. Again, this is based on my belief that an excellent education at a research university (not a LAC) should also include excellent graduate departments.</p>
<p>“Still, to discount Michigan is to discount easily one of the top 10 schools in America, if you get past all the USNWR BS. People often forget that it was once a top 15 ranked school in the days of yore, but dropped as the methodology was tweaked.”</p>
<p>True. It seems to me that a lot of people on CC use USNWR as the sole reason to say one school is better than another. It’s good to use USNWR. However, it’s not the only ranking/rating guide out there. Whenever I see rankings on top research universities, Michigan appears to always perform highly on them, higher than some of the institutions ranked in the top 10 on US NEWS.</p>
<p>“In terms of ‘overall quality’, Michigan is defnitely one of the top 15 or so universities…and makes as strong a case for top 10 as any university save H, M, P, S, and Y.”</p>
<p>Underrated: Harvey Mudd, Caltech, Olin, Cornell engineering.
No one has heard of HMC, but its an awesome school.
Caltech seems like the best college in the country to me, based on everything I’ve read. One book (I forgot what its called, but it has a picture of fall and multicolored leaves on the ground, and is conservative, and focuses on the strength of the liberal arts education at each school) went so far as to say the caltech gave a better liberal arts education than harvard.</p>
<p>Sdma, it would be better to look at research dollars in terms of the number of students.</p>
<p>And yet, Devil May Cry, only 55% of Dartmouth classes have fewer than 20 students, compared to 50% at Michigan.</p>
<p>I do not rank universities, but my groupings are quite simple (by the way, when I say Michigan is a top 10 or top 15 university, I am only speaking of research universities):</p>
<p>Group I:
Harvard
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Yale</p>
<p>Group II:
Brown
Cal
CalTech
Chicago
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth (Dartmouth is tricky because as you say, it is practically a LAC)
Duke
Johns Hopkins
Michigan
Northwestern
Penn</p>
<p>Group III:
Carnegie Mellon
Emory
Georgetown
Illinois-Urbana Champaign
North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Notre Dame
Rice
Texas-Austin
UCLA
Vanderbilt
Virginia
Washington U.
Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>Group IV:
Boston College
Brandeis
Case Western
Georgia Tech
NYU
Rochester
Tufts
UCSD
USC
Wake Forest
William and Mary</p>
<p>I am sure I missed a couple here and there, and those groups are not clearly exclusive. Schools can easily be good enough to belong in the group above or weak enough to belong to the group below. It really depends on what one values.</p>
<p>“Barrons Guide to the most competitive colleges” is a rather large book that serves as an overview to over 60 of US’s most prestigious colleges. The publics listed in the guide are:</p>
<p>Thank you, Alexandre. Your list looks quite accurate. Now I know that Umich is not my backup for law school! LOL I better get my head in a book right now.</p>
<p>Just for the record, how old are you? Maybe I’m just old enough to be partying with lawyers, but UMich is hardly a “backup” for law school. It’s a top 10 by any stretch of the imagination.</p>
<p>Other than what USNews tells us to believe, for what reason should I consider Vanderbilt or Notre Dame better than UMich? I mean, a whole Ivy league school was built on UMich’s achievements.</p>
<p>Hmm…no. Georgetown simply doesn’t produce the quality of research that UCLA does, and its strengths are too focused in my opinion. I’d go there in a heartbeat, but in my opinion, it doesn’t offer the breadth programs that UCLA does.</p>