U of M vs. NYU

Colleges & Universities University of Michigan
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<p>“NYU has a better law school and MBA program than Michigan.”</p>

<p>I am not sure that is the case. NYU and Michigan Law and Business programs are usually ranked within 3 spots of each other and have similar ratings according to scholars and recruiters.</p>

<p>“Neither school is worth going into debt over.”</p>

<p>I agree with that statement. In fact, I do not believe any university is worth going into debt for, which is one of the main reason why most posters here have recommended Michigan in the first place. </p>

<p>At any rate, here’s one way of looking at it:</p>

<p>Michigan peers according to ennisthemenace: NYU</p>

<p>NYU peers for undergraduate education according to the academic world: Boston College, Brandeis, College of William and Mary, Colorado-Boulder, Emory, Indiana University-Bloomington, Maryland-College Park, Minnesota-Twin Cities, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Rice, Texas-Austin, Tufts, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, UC-San Diego, University of Florida, UIUC, USC</p>

<p>Michigan peers for undergraduate education according to the academic world: Cal, Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Penn and UVa.</p>

<p>There is clearly a disconnect between ennisthemenace and the mass of the intellectual elite. One can choose to follow ennisthemenace…or the whole of the academic world. I wonder which is better?</p>

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<p>As someone who is a student at Michigan and has a brother attending NYU, as well as an older sister who attended NYU, I can say that the two schools are relatively equal academic-wise. The main difference that it comes down to is:</p>

<p>-Sports or no sports?
-Campus College Town or City?</p>

<p>Seriously, it just comes down to what type of college experience you want. Both are huge schools, have a lot of alums, and a great reputation.</p>

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<p>This has definitely helped. Made things come to light that I would’ve never known. </p>

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<p>“There is clearly a disconnect between ennisthemenace and the mass of the intellectual elite.”</p>

<p>ennisthemenace thinks exactly like goldenboy, a poster banned from this forum. hmmmmm</p>

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<p>I am very glad it helped! </p>

<p>Go Blue!</p>

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<p>" Michigan has slipped a bit in the rankings, has a public school system and state that feeds it in shambles, and seems dedicated to athletics."</p>

<p>The state of Michigan is not in a “shambles.” It is running a budget surplus and is in better shape financially than many other states. Enough with the histrionics already! </p>

<p>" Michigan has slipped a bit in the rankings, has a public school system and state that feeds it in shambles, and seems dedicated to athletics."</p>

<p>You mean the USNWR rankings of top private universities with a few token elite publics thrown in to give it any semblence of credibitily? Michigan has not slipped one iota when it comes to the only numbers that cannot be easily manipulated to fit the USNWR formula to gain rankings. That is of course, the peer assessment scores. When the PA score of NYU is anywhere near Michigan’s, then we can have a discussion over which school is “better” academically.</p>

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<p>Instate rates for Michigan over full pay at NYU is really a no brainer. Michigan all the way!</p>

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<p>To the OP: I don’t understand how NYU can place you in the engineering school when you applied ED for General Studies. Did you indicate that you are also interested in engineering?</p>

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<p>Oh come on now bluebound. You are being ridiculous. </p>

<p>The low GPA’s for incoming NYU students is a perfectly valid thing to bring up when discussing selectivity. Even if you chose to compare on like terms by looking only at other private entities and using class rank to abstract away the GPA’s, NYU has just over 60% of their students in the top 10% of their class, wheras most other Michigan-esque private universities with similar selectivity have 85%+ of their students in the top 10%. NYU is simply not as selective as Michigan. They just have a strong emphasis towards test scores which most other universities, including Michigan, do not.</p>

<p>Although NYU is ranked only 4 places below Michigan in the USNWR rankings, you need to realize that they are only one agency. Not a single well respected ratings firm has NYU ahead of Michigan, and of the ones I know, NYU is anywhere up to 67 places behind U-M. </p>

<p>Again, in terms of finances, it’s not even a competition. Michigan has an endowment in excess of $9 Billion, NYU’s is less than $3 Billion. Michigan receives on average over $300 Million per year from the state in allocations and outlay funds, NYU receives $0 because it’s a private entity. Michigan Athletics can make anywhere up to $40 Million in profit in a year, most of which goes towards non-athletic funds, where NYU’s athletics is in a state of perpetual financial loss. Even if you look at the credit ratings of the two schools, Michigan has the highest possible rating, where NYU is below most of its peers with an AA-minus and billions of dollars of debt. This is all despite the fact that NYU has MORE students to manage with their money than Michigan.</p>

<p>The fact of the matter is that NYU cares much more about it’s image as a top school than it does actually being one. It’s why NYU’s admission philosophy gives ridiculous emphasis to test scores, because they know class rank & GPA’s aren’t considered in rankings. It’s why NYU outright fabricated their student/faculty ratio that was reported to external agencies, because they saw other universities getting away with it, and they knew it would improve their national perception. It’s why NYU has one of the largest advertising and marketing departments in the country, when most other universities don’t even have one.</p>

<p>I apologize that I had to write so much, but what you are saying is just so far beyond reasonable that I felt compelled to reply.</p>

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<p>

What is this “academic world” exactly? Why would I care about what university presidents and scholars think when the people that matter to me the most are my parents, peers, employers, and my social circle?</p>

<p>None of my classmates and relatives consider NYU and Michigan to be on different tiers academically; they all acknowledge that they are both great schools that offer a different environment. </p>

<p>I looked at the most recent Annual Report which listed where The National Merit Class of 2013 is currently attending. I"ll admit that NYU doesn’t do as well as Michigan but to suggest that U of M is on par with the Ivies and those schools you listed besides Hopkins and UVA is ridiculous.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
Harvard: 268 Scholars
Yale: 178 Scholars
MIT: 177 Scholars
Stanford: 176 Scholars
Duke: 139 Scholars
University of Pennsylvania: 121 Scholars
University of California, Berkeley: 109 Scholars
University of Chicago: 97 Scholars
Columbia: 85 Scholars
Brown: 71 Scholars
Cornell: 69 Scholars
Northwestern: 66 Scholars
Dartmouth: 60 Scholars
University of Michigan: 56 Scholars
…
JHU: 28 Scholars
NYU: 20 Scholars</p>

<p>I guess you are right Alexandre that Michigan’s smartest students are better than NYU’s smartest students. However, the “thickness of intelligence” for UMich student body doesn’t compare to the Ivy League schools who have more National Merit Scholars even though they have a quarter of Michigan’s undergraduate population!</p>

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<p>Thanks for this list @ennisthemenace. Yes, the Ivies do shine out as expected in terms of their quality of student intake. Some other notables I caught at first glance:</p>

<p>The “pretenders”, ie. student class worse than otherwise recognized - BC (5) , Wake Forest (5), Cooper Union (1), JHU (28), Bowdoin (3), Georgetown (23), UCLA (16), CWilliamMary (8), </p>

<p>The “under-rated” - GTECH (33), UVA (36), UNC (37), Pitt (21), USC (53), Harvey MC (16), Texan A&M (24), Northeastern (29), Baylor (20)</p>

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<p>ITT: people arguing over marginal differences between the two schools. Neither school is like HYPM</p>

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<p>@ennisthemenace</p>

<p>It’s important to realize that Michigan is an ACT state and many of the university’s highest represented states outside of Michigan are also ACT states. The National Merit Scholarship is a SAT program. It seems like a very reasonable possibility to me that there are many many students at Michigan who have just never even taken the SAT, but are easily National Merit material.</p>

<p>If you instead look at nationally recognized scholarships outside of the high school level, it is a much better indicator of the academic level of the students. </p>

<p>For example, if you look at the Fulbright scholarships in 2012/2013 and list it by top producing institutions you get something like this:</p>

<p>University of Michigan: 40
Harvard University: 31
Brown University: 29
University of Chicago: 24
…
New York University: 8</p>

<p>Rhodes isn’t a good indicator unfortunately because of their weird district based process, but if you look at the Cambridge’s Gates Scholarship, you will see similar numbers with Michigan doing extremely well. President Coleman was actually one of only two university presidents invited to the board of trustees in part because of the outstanding relationship developed over the years between the institution and the scholarship.</p>

<p>The fact of the matter is that Michigan’s student body as a whole is outstandingly successful post graduation. Michigan has graduated the founder of Google, the CEO of Twitter, the president of the United States, the inventor of the iPod, dozens of billionaires, and many other wildly successful people.</p>

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<p>@GoBlue81 I didn’t check any interest, but I was placed in bio molecular sciences in the engineering school. </p>

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<p>@bluebound18 “To a family with a household income north of $500k, “value shopping” colleges for their kids isn’t really a thing.”</p>

<p>Oh please… when did 500k gross, especially for a family, become anything even close to an income level where tuition cost doesn’t matter? Almost all of the people above me (who actually have to think about sending kids to school) where I used to work gross way more than 500k and tuitions CERTAINLY mattered to them. I would know since not a week goes by without someone whining about their kids’ tuition. (Can’t form an opinion with where I work now since it’s a younger crowd and the only people sending their kids to college are partners who are worth 8-9 digits, but I still hear people complaining about the 30k/year private school cost)</p>

<p>500k gross comes out to about 350 net, give or take, depending on state tax. Assuming one lives in a home that is commensurate to the income level (in Dallas that would be edges of Highland Park or the cheaper parts of Preston Hollow), you’d have about 250k left after all the housing related cost. It’s really not as much as the headline number would indicate, especially if you have more than one kid to send to school.</p>

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<p>When a private school has a clear advantage over a public, then it makes sense to have a conversation. </p>

<p>When the private school does not, then it is not a useful exercise. Cost alone is not useful as an indicator of value, nor does it prove someone is smarter by simply paying more. </p>

<p>In this situation, the OP should be feeling confident and hopefully positive about the opportunity ahead at UM.</p>

<p>Congratulations again, Manduhh. I hope your college career is extremely satisfying and gives you a great start! </p>

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<p>Millions of people live in states with mediocre public universities. The northeast is full of them. </p>

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<p>

Again, most NYU students come from private schools in the Northeast where its much harder to be in the top 10%. The top 10% there go to the Ivies generally so students in the next tier will attend NYU. To attend NYU, they must have rich parents by default and those same families can send their kids expensive high schools. </p>

<p>A vast majority of Michigan students attend less competitive public high schools.</p>

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<p>I think that it’s nice when two posters agree with themselves.</p>

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<p>The chance that TC will be one is pretty damn low. It’s more important how the average person does out of these two universities than how the very best ever have done. </p>

<p>To that end, I don’t know if there’s much of a difference between the two. At least in something like Biochem. However, being instate, it’s clear to me that Michigan is the right choice. The difference is between an NYU degree and a Michigan degree + a small house. </p>