“Elite liberal arts colleges send a higher percentage of seniors to medical school than either ND or Michigan without any graduate programs at all.”
Like I said earlier TurnerT, without knowing the GPA and MCAT scores of those applicants at elite LACs, it is not possible to form an opinion on the relative effectiveness of their medical school placement rates. Michigan breaks down placement rates by GPA and MCAT scores. In order to compare how those elite LACs, Notre Dame or any other college or university to another, you would need a similar level of detail.
“The point that we are attempting to make is simply one of where money is best spent.”
And you know for a fact how, and where, Michigan spends its money? Michigan’s endowment stands at $10 billion. Only Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton and MIT have larger endowments, and only Columbia, Northwestern, Penn and UT-Austin match it. Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Notre Dame come close as well. But Michigan (as well as UT-Austin) also benefits from state funding, which is the equivalent of an additional $6 billion. In other words, Michigan’s endowment would be equal to a private university with an endowment of $16 billion.
Michigan’s operating budget is also very large. NOT including auxiliary enterprises (such as medical center) and NOT including research spending either, Michigan’s annual operating budget stands at $2.4 billion. I am also excluding other expenses that are not including on other universities’ financial reports, such as depreciation) Just so that you get a feel for how much that is, Notre Dame’s operating budget (also excluding research spending and auxiliary enterprises) stands at $750 million. Michigan’s operating budget is three times larger than Notre Dame. In other words, it actually spends as much per student than Notre Dame, and I am not even factoring the immense economies of scale associated with a university the size of Michigan. Georgetown’s operating budget (again, excluding research and auxiliary enterprises) is also $750 million. I really cannot fathom why you would say that Michigan does not spend as much money (not even close according to you) as Notre Dame or Georgetown on a per student basis.
Just for comparison’s sake, and this is where your claim shows a lack of insight into Michigan, TurnerT. UConn, which enrolls almost as many students as Michigan (32,000 compared to 43,000), has an endowment of $450 million (22 times small than Michigan’s) and an annual operating budget of $900 million (also excluding research and auxiliary spending etc…). Clearly, not comparable.
“That is another concern when an OOS premed is attending a school with a huge number of med school applicants. Do you think that the current and newly-graduated applicants aren’t bombarding a limited number of STEM profs for LORs?”
mom2collegekids, your concern is justified, but not necessary. While Michigan 3 times more medical school applicants than Notre Dame, have you considered the fact that Michigan’s STEM faculty is also going to be substantially larger than Notre Dame’s (probably by a factor or 2:1). Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Biochem majors at Michigan have access to a very large faculty relative to the number of undergraduate students. For example, there are, at any point in time, approximately 150 Chem majors at Michigan (35/graduating class). Michigan has 60 tenured professors. That’s a 2.5:1 student to faculty ratio. Same goes for Physics and Mathematics majors.
At any rate Georgetown and Notre Dame are obviously excellent universities. I simply object to those who claim that they are vastly superior undergraduate institutions to Michigan. In some ways, they certainly have the edge, in other ways, Michigan has the edge. Overall, they are all excellent and can serve undergraduate students, regardless of their major or career track, equally well.
http://annualreport2014.nd.edu/assets/154217/cont_3771_annual_report_final_for_web.pdf
http://www.finance.umich.edu/reports/2015/pdf/UM_Financial_Report_2015-hires.pdf
https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/v4qv8wxny00gyxkqp4plrpwtboqc38is
http://uconn.edu/content/uploads/2015/02/UConn_Facts_2015_Final.pdf