<p>Alexandre,</p>
<p>Your post #115 was brilliant! and should I think be the last word on Michigan as an educational institution: Well reasoned, well said and accurate. You’ld have to be extremely dogmatic to object (unfortunately, that would be a majority on cc).</p>
<p>Alexandre~</p>
<p>Like Woodwork, I thought you had great insights in Post #115. So much of current students’ problems with assessing their college options comes down to the near universal attempts to rank, label, discuss as overrated and underrated, and generally treat these schools as if a host of largely subjective factors are entirely objective as able to be reduced to a numerically ranked set of factors, added up … and voila … a bullet-proof rank. Only it’s not. The USNWR ranking is one effort to numerically rank schools. Many consider it a seriously flawed effort, with its popularity relating a lot more to the perpetuation of its magazine selling monopoly over its legitimacy as a ranking tool. One poster on CC recently said something like the problem with saying which school is better is like saying which person is better. People and schools are a little more complicated than that.</p>
<p>For me, the USNWR is a tool to identify schools which might be the object of future due diligence. You can’t quantifiedly say which school is better. Take Harvard (please). Obviously, one of the giants of education in the WORLD. TheDad has often posted about his semi-sarcastic rankings. In his rankings Harvard has to be first, because a ranking simply cannot be valid unless Harvard is first. The truth is, to many top applicants and their family, Harvard is nowhere near the BEST (whatever that means) places to obtain an undergraduate education. Stay with me – not that it wouldn’t be BEST for many people, but it’s certainly NOT BEST for any given ultra-qualified applicant.</p>
<p>Where YOU personally lose me is where you go on to say in a later post (in comparison to Michigan), “Georgetown, Wash U. and Rice are not quite as good.” Ahem. According to who? You? I don’t truly understand the fascination of counting how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Why the need to micro-analyze and rank, as if something so subjective could possibly be an objective reality (and an objective reality which applies to ALL). I LOVE the University of Michigan. I was accepted there in 1976, a month away from going, but a family financial situation dictated that I go to my own state school – Illinois at Champaign/Urbana – instead. If I personally were looking for a school for myself – today – Michigan would be extremely high on my list. I love the size, the energy, the breadth and depth, the campus, Ann Arbor as a campus town – pretty much everything. Having said that, my son recently chose Wash-U (with significant merit money) over Northwestern and Michigan. Don’t tell Wash-U, but he would have made the same choice without the money. He had others in his school make this exact same choice; he also has other friends make the opposite choice – accepted to all three, and choosing NU, or Michigan. The fact is that no one of these schools is objectively BETTER … it depends on who you are, who you think you’ll be, and what you want.</p>
<p>Sorry to be up on a soapbox. I think the world of college selection would be a much better place if rankings simply used tiers – perhaps a top tier of 5, a next tier of the next 50, then the next 50, then the next 100 (LAC’s and Universities combined). Sure, there would be debate about schools on the border of each tier, but the endless debate about #3 vs. #10 or #7 vs. #22 would become just so much sophistry. I know a kid who is a first generation college student. He had the enviable choice of deciding between Penn, Brown, and Wisconsin (Madison). He’s a biology whiz … pretty much a prodigy … with bio research Ph.D. written all over him. And yet, Wisconsin – one of the top bio schools in the country (with absolutely astounding research opportunities) never received any consideration, simply because it wasn’t #5 (or wherever USNWR now ranks Penn) or #13 (Brown). How could Wisconsin be any good – it’s in the 30’s. Once Wisconsin was out of the picture, all indications led to Penn being chosen over Brown, but ONLY because of its numbered ranking (the kid is otherwise very artsy and light … not at all preppy or preprofessional … therefore … in many people’s eyes, more the Brown “type” than the Penn “type”). My point is that Penn and Brown are unquestionably in the same tier of schools and decisions would be better made on the basis of fit and style, rather than on an assigned rank number of very debatable validity.</p>
<p>Alexandre, how in the world is Umich better than Rice? I simply do not know how you can possibly garner such an accusation. Rice has magnificent music and sciences departments (better than Umich’s IMO) and a very tight knit community. I’m…I’m still shocked. Moving on…</p>
<p>Alexandre: I agree that The University of Michigan is a wonderful institution, but I believe that its US News Ranking is about right. People on this board don’t overlook either-just look on The University of Michigan section of CC and you’ll find a plethora of posts from prospective students and happy students. I understand that Michigan is your love, but you are not being reasonable in stating that University of Michigan is on par with the other top 15 schools. University of Michigan deserves to be ranked with equal caliber institutions like Carnegie Mellon and University of Virginia(which is I have always called “The Public Ivy,” and not Johns Hopkins and The University of Chicago.</p>
<p>University of California:Berkeley has a great ranking and is far from being overlooked on these boards. UCB probably has as much interest as Harvard.</p>
<p>Lastly, how is Duke overrated? I am not affiliated with Duke, I just simply don’t understand that reasoning. I can understand people thinking Penn and WUST have inflated rankings-because their rankings have shot up extremely quickly over the past few years. However, Duke has kept its spot and reputation over many years.</p>
<p>DudeIntelligence, I think you are confusing what I am saying. I do not believe that quality of education can be ranked. In fact, I know that one cannot rate the quality of education. It CANNOT be done. Different settings suit different learning styles and personalities. A student that thrives at a LAC may fail miserably at a research university and vice versa. </p>
<p>I believe that one can only rate an institution as a whole. Overall, I do not think that Wash U, Rice and Georgetown especially, are as well rounded as say Duke or Cornell or Michigan. It does not mean that they are not respected or that one cannot get an amazing education there, but overall, they are not academic powerhouses. This said, obviously, Wash U. was a better fit for your son, and academically, Wash U has no superiors. But as an academic institution as a whole, I believe that Wash U is not as well balanced as some of the heavy weights.</p>
<p>DevilMayCry, Michigan is better than Rice in the Sciences, Music, the Humanties, the Social Sciences, Engineering, Business, Medicine, Law, the Languages and every other field of study save perhaps Architecture…and then too, that is debatable. Rice has its own strengths mind you. It has, on average, more talented students and slightly smaller classes than Michigan. But this is not about Michigan and Rice, it is about overrated and underrated universities. In case you did not notice, I did not say that Rice was overrated. At #17, I feel that Rice is fairly rated. As an educational institution, Rice is certainly amazing…and as you point out, in some ways, better than Michigan.</p>
<p>Hoo, I do not rate Michigan highly because I went there. I rate Michigan highly because it is generally aknowledged that it is one of the top 10 universities in the US. Not by me, but by the majority of respected professors, adcoms of top graduate programs and top companies. </p>
<p>You may believe that the USNWR ranking of Michigan is right, but the academic world doesn’t. They rank Michigan anywhere between #7 and #11. I have never seen an ranking coming out of the academic world rank Michigan (or Cal for that matter) out of the top 15. </p>
<p>As far as Duke and Penn go, I think they are only slightly overrated. I think that the top 5 spots should be occupied by Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. I really think there is a small but clear drop after those 5. We are talking about fractions here, so it is truly irrelevant, but it is my opinion just the same.</p>
<p>BTW, I think that Northwestern is a much better school than WUSTL. That is my opinion. There is no comparison. I do not care if US News thinks that they are equals. Northwestern is about superior in every field minus Medicine.</p>
<p>Anyway, we are digressing, the point is, state schools are underrated on CC and Cal is underrated according to the USNWR… even if Michigan isn’t.</p>
<p>My opinion, I guess it comes down to 2 things. 1) How competitive a school is to gain admission and the level of the student body; SATs, etc. 2) How strong the departments are and how accomplished the faculty members are.</p>
<p>Some ppl think 1) is more important than 2) and vice versa. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference. Only a few select schools out there accomplish both of those.</p>
<p>Alexandre, where is your evidence considering Umich being better than Rice in humanities, the sciences, and music? I’m not sure about Rice’s engineering, so I will not comment about it at this time. Alexandre, you love Umich, it is your school. However, let’s be realistic here. Umich does not have the grad placement like Duke/Upenn/Columbia nor the prestige.</p>
<p>Devil, with all due respect, I think someone with a 3.8 from Michigan with a 170 on his LSATs and a 3.8 from Duke with the same LSAT will get into the same schools, with a tad different. The Duke label will not carry you farther. The fact of the matter, many unqualified kids at michigan get weeded out and therefore, do not get into the best graduate schools.</p>
<p>Law school and medical school admissions, in themselves, are basically numbers game. The type of university–1st tier, 2nd tier, 3rd tier–will play somewhat of a role, but it will not be as important as your GPA and ultimately your LSAT or MCAT, the great equalizers.</p>
<p>DMC, look at the USNews, or NRC rankings (the latter of which are a bit old, but available on the internet for free). Michigan ranks 12th overall in grad programs, Rice 41st. He is talking about the overall strength of the departments and school, not how much attention undergrads get.</p>
<p>I am sorry, excuse me if you think I am ignorant, I truly believe if you have a 3.7 from Cornell, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, Dartmouth, your chances at med school/law schools/etc… are the same.</p>
<p>I am not sure if that was directed at me. If so, it is evident that students with a 3.7 from any of those mentioned schools will probably have equal chances at law school or med school–they are practically in the same tier.</p>
<p>yeah, law school is number driven</p>
<p>normal Masters and PhD programs depend alot on the schools, not just numbers though, which is more important to most people I would think</p>
<p>Devil May Cry, all the rankings availlable suggest that Michigan is better than Rice in almost every field of study. Furthermore, graduate school placement from Michigan is about the same at it is from Columbia, Penn, Northwestern, Chicago, Johns Hopkins and Cornell. As far as prestige, like I always say, where it matters, among those who can really make an impact on your life (corporate recruiters, grad school adcoms, intellectuals etc…), with people you really want to impress, Michigan is as prestigious as all those schools you claim are superior to Michigan. And for the millionth time, I do not favor Michigan over other schools. I am just tired of all the ignorance you all demonstrate when you say that Michigan is an inferior school.</p>
<p>Rice is on-par with UM in music; both have top-tier music schools.
Rice undergraduate is superior to UM in engineering.</p>
<p>Those are the only two I can speak of with enough experience to be able to say anything conclusively. Rice consistently produces on-par or better undergraduate students who get into stronger graduate programs and their graduates get entry-level positions with vastly higher starting salaries than UM’s graduates. </p>
<p>Rice is smaller, so that may be where you’re getting your impressions from… But nearly all our performance majors went on to jobs with the Chicago Symphony or graduate programs at Eastman, Julliard, NEC, etc., and one of our five or so conducting students just got the assistant conductor job at Cleveland. In engineering, all of our structural engineering majors from this year who are going on to graduate school (and that’s about 50% or so) are going to Berkeley, which is the top-ranked program. I’m at U of I, which is the second-ranked program, but was accepted to Berkeley. I don’t know of any of my peers who accepted starting salaries of less than 50K/yr.</p>
<p>Aibarr, I don’t know who told you Rice was superior to Michigan in Engineering. All undergraduate rankings of Engineerng programs rank Michigan between #3 and #8. Rice never cracks the top 15.</p>
<p>“Michigan ranks 12th overall in grad programs, Rice 41st.”</p>
<p>Umm source?</p>
<p>I don’t know why this is a Michigan vs. Rice debate.</p>