<p>“Look, where do you draw the line? You arbitrarily claim that there are 20 or so schools besides HYPSM that belong in the same tier. By neglecting to account for clear differences within this tier, you are misrepresenting the quality of these schools.”</p>
<p>It is you are are misrepresenting the quality of these schools. Rice “is not in the same league” as Duke? Duke is “clearly better” than Brown, Cal, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern?</p>
<p>“If Michigan is as good as Duke, then why aren’t both these schools as good as Harvard? What makes HYPSM so special? With regards to selectivity, student body stregth and undergraduate focus, Duke is much closer to Harvard than Michigan is to Duke.”</p>
<p>What makes HYPSM so special? Gee, let me see? They each produced over 40 nobel prize winners? They are all ranked in the top 10 in virtually every field? Their peer assessment score is either 4.8 or 4.9/5.0? Their endowment is over $10 billion.</p>
<p>“Basically, you and Alex are trying to devise a clever way to make Michigan appear like a better school than it really is.”</p>
<p>Really? I have compared Michigan to UT-Austin and UIUC and Wisconsin-Madison as often as I have compared to Cal, Cornell, Northwestern and Penn.</p>
<p>“What are both of you going to say next year when Michigan ranks at about #30 on USNews and its PA score drops below Duke? Believe me, that day is coming.”</p>
<p>I couldn’t care less about what the USNWR does. And personally, the lower it ranks Michigan, the less credibility it will have. As for PA, the day Michigan’s PA drops to 0.3 points lower than Duke, I will admit that Duke is a better university. As long as those two schools have similar PAs, they are equal as far as I am concerned.</p>