<p>goldenboy,
To piggyback what bclintonk said, there’s one more reason why Harvard/Brown vs Michigan analogy doesn’t work. Harvard/Ivies…etc are elite schools with much better brand-name than schools like Boston College, Wake Forest, Miami, Clemson…etc. Even in USN college rankings, it’s really the selectivty and perhaps faculty/student ratio that push ACC schools higher, not reputation (peer assessment). That selectivity is a byproduct of smaller enrollment combined with the more populous region, rather than prestige/desirability. Even Dartmouth has weak graduate programs, it still has a PA score of 4.3/4.4 out of 5.0 because of its Ivy status. You don’t get that kind of effect with ACC schools.</p>
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<p>Somehow i feel this was directed towards me 
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<p>All things considered, UCLA being dissed by the AAU isn’t too hard to imagine, you know, considering that the AAU is nearly 20 years older than UCLA is; and that UCLA didn’t start gaining it’s prestige until the 60s, at least.</p>
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<p>Most certainly. We already get the most funding per student for ANY UC, but that might have to do with being positioned in Los Angeles.</p>
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<p>Having your own medical school, when arch-rival Berkeley does not, certainly helps in that respect. Medical schools by their very nature are usually among the most lavishly funded of any university unit.</p>
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<p>Actually, I must agree with goldenboy on this particular statistical point (although for now I shall abstain from the B10 vs. ACC comparison). Sure, the best 1650 students at UM may indeed be entirely comparable to that of a Harvard class. But that’s not relevant to relevant outsiders such as employers, grad-school adcoms, or the general public who treat the entire UM student body as a statistically aggregated whole. And they are entirely justified in doing so. Given the fact that nobody ever has perfect information on anybody, the best you can do is rely upon statistical correlates, and the fact is, the Harvard brand does indeed statistically correlate more strongly with general talent and motivation than does the UM brand. Now, granted, one could combine the correlational information of the UM brand with other metrics such as GPA and standardized test scores (e.g. GRE, MCAT, etc.) to derive a more reliable measure, but you could also do the same for Harvard. No matter what additional covariates you add, the residual value of the Harvard brand will likely still correlate more strongly with talent than will the UM brand. </p>
<p>The real problem - and one faced not only by UM but all other large public schools - is, to put it bluntly, that the less talented and less motivated students make the rest of the student body look bad by damaging the brand of the school. If UM could retain only the 1650 top-ranked students in a class and eliminate the rest, then I would agree that UM would surely rise up the ranks quickly, and perhaps one day could indeed challenge Harvard. But UM won’t do it. </p>
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<p>As far as I can tell, not a single one of those studies has ever satisfactorily accounted for the fact that personal motivation is not an exogenous variable, but rather is (at least according to the highly plausible premise of goldenboy), actually largely determined by the social environment around you. Let’s face it - if the people around you are lazy, you’re likely to become lazy yourself, and vice versa. {Indeed, that is why parents routinely strive to live in districts populated by motivated and wholesome children because they understand all too well that their own children will tend to copy what neighboring children are doing and they don’t want them falling in with a bad crowd.} </p>
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<p>Actually, if nothing else, that seems to be an excellent reason to choose one of those private schools. If your goal is to enter a top law school, and if they are indeed offering, as you say, ‘rampant grade inflation’ (for which I don’t disagree) that bolsters your candidacy for those law schools, well, isn’t that exactly what you want? Frankly, I think that UM is then being foolish for refusing to provide grade inflation to help its own law-school-bound students. </p>
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<p>Hmmm… pot, meet kettle. Last time I checked, UM was not exactly an open-admissions school. Most (60%) applicants of the Fall 2011 application cycle to UM were not admitted, and plenty of other interested students didn’t even apply because they knew that they wouldn’t be admitted. {Let’s face it, if you have a terrible high school record, test scores and EC’s, you’re not going to be admitted to UM.} Indeed, UM is clearly among the most exclusionary of the 2500 schools in the entire country. The only difference is that they’re simply not as exclusionary as the top privates are. That USNews benefits exclusionary private schools doesn’t seem like a viable complaint when UM also surely benefits from USNews for its exclusionary nature as well. That’s like how the complaints by the Red Sox that the Yankees hold an unfair advantage by maintaining the highest payroll of every baseball team don’t exactly generate much sympathy when you realize that the Red Sox have “only” the #2 or (this season) #3 highest payroll in baseball.</p>
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<p>Of all the arguments you’ve made on this site bclintonk, this ranks up there as one of the most inane. The strength of Harvard’s student body goes well beyond what simple statistical measures like GPAs and SAT/ACT scores could ever begin to measure. If we look past the data noise and simply look at how successful Harvard graduates are vis-a-vis Michigan alums post graduation, you will quickly see that there are perhaps 100 or so kids at U of M in any given graduating class that are “Harvard caliber”.</p>
<p>If what you were saying was true (the top 1,650 Michigan students were equivalent to the top 1,650 Harvard students), then would you agree that Michigan would be as well represented as Harvard on an absolute level at the elite professional programs and jobs especially considering U of M is 4 times larger as well? Reality begs to differ.</p>
<p>Yale Law School 2010-11
<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer;
Harvard: 80
University of Michigan: 8</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins School of Medicine 2009-10
<a href=“http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/sebin/u/p/SOMCatalog0910.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/sebin/u/p/SOMCatalog0910.pdf</a>
Harvard: 39
University of Michigan: 12</p>
<p>Washington University School of Medicine:
Undergraduate Primary Institutions of Matriculating Students, 1995 2011
[Who</a> Chooses WU](<a href=“http://medadmissions.wustl.edu/HowtoApply/selectionprocess/Pages/WhoChoosesWU.aspx]Who”>http://medadmissions.wustl.edu/HowtoApply/selectionprocess/Pages/WhoChoosesWU.aspx)
Harvard: 88
University of Michigan: 48</p>
<p>I could go on forever but you get the point. Harvard could have a perfect 4.0 GPA range and an SAT one that ranged from just 2350-2400 if it so desired but its willing to take well-calculated institutional risks on some of the students it really wants, even if it means lowering their UNSWR selectivity index. Ranking Harvard out of the top 5 would hurt the USNWR brand a lot more than it would hurt the Harvard brand and Robert Morse knows this.</p>
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<p>No i meant we get the most in funding per individual student. UCLA gets around 30k per student, whereas some UCs i think get a third of that. Since they’re all UCs, it’s argued, all of them should get equal funding per student. Apparently no one knows why UCLA gets so much per student lol, but they’re going to try to create some measure to equalize it with the other UCs. Wish i could find the dailybruin article, but unfortunately i can’t find it.</p>
<p>The medical center does however give UCLA that biggest operating budget among the UCs (4.6b or so i think.)</p>
<p>It also has about 3-4k undergrads than Berkeley…and a integrated medical school. Medical research attracts a ton of funding. Funding from whom and for what?</p>
<p>After like 10 minutes of searching for it i found it:</p>
<p>[The</a> Daily Bruin :: Rebenching budget model to evenly allocate state funds per student to each UC campus](<a href=“http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/06/rebenching_budget_model_to_evenly_allocate_state_funds_per_student_to_each_uc_campus]The”>http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/06/rebenching_budget_model_to_evenly_allocate_state_funds_per_student_to_each_uc_campus)</p>
<p>Beyphy, I feel like the cost of purchasing and acquiring resources in LA (especially UCLA’s location in LA) is higher than in, say, Merced and Davis. Equalizing all UC campuses by numerical amount of dollars is pretty devastating for UCLA and probably UCSD (and maybe Berkeley?). Buying the components and paying for the work of preparing a cheeseburger is more expensive in LA, SF, and SD than in Merced, Davis, Riverside, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara etc. Replace cheeseburger with things of actual merit to students. LA students aren’t really benefiting from the status quo right now (its pretty much equal in reality) and are standing to lose from this “reform.”</p>
<p>That may be true, but it’s implied in the article that no one knows why UCLA is receiving that much extra funding. It’s true that UCLA has 4k more undergrads than berkeley, but does that warrant it being funded over $100 million more? </p>
<p>Granted, the article will take note of health sciences and graduate students too, but it states that people have no idea how this money’s being used. Given that it’s a public university, and everyone pays the same amount of money, transparency should be used in how the state distributes the funds.</p>
<p>I’d imagine UCLA’s probably pretty plssed about this though lol.</p>
<p>^ I definitely am pleased about it. Hopefully it continues.</p>
<p>Research Universities and the Future of America </p>
<p>[Research</a> Universities and the Future of America - YouTube](<a href=“Research Universities and the Future of America - YouTube”>Research Universities and the Future of America - YouTube)</p>
<p>UVA’s President Sullivan speaks at 4:25 on the clip!! :)</p>
<p>beyphy, UCLA doesn’t have 4k more undergrads. 1 or 2 but not 4. Just looked at your history to correct. ;)</p>