No, UM-Flint is a small (3700 full-time degree-seeking undergrads and another 2000 part-timers) commuter school. Middle 50% ACT 19-26, compared to 24-29 at MSU and 29-33 at Michigan. So there’s some overlap in the entering class stats of students at UM-Flint, and MSU with MSU clearly the stronger of the two, and very little overlap between UM-Flint and Michigan. UM-Flint’s entering class stats are similar to those of some more widely known “directionals” like Western Michigan (middle 50% ACT 19-25).
UM-Flint does boast some notable alumni, however, including documentary filmmaker and political gadfly Michael Moore, former U.S. Senator Don Riegle, and counterculture poet/political activist/underground newspaper publisher/manager of the proto-punk band MC5, John Sinclair.
BC – good arguments. Although I think you under-estimate the growing OOS effect. OOS went from 43 to 49% at UM in the last four years. That’s HUGE.
UVA has been capped at one-third for decades. If you gave UVA six more points to allocate to OOS seats, I think its student stats would explode. And UNC could do even more if it got an extra six points to play with.
Both UM and UVA have sky high yields for the in-state pool. At in-state pricing, both schools are an incredibly deal.
Also agree that UCB and UCLA have much more of an egalitarian ethos which do make them a bit of a different animal than UM, UVA, UNC.
@theloniusmonk Where are you getting those numbers for UM? I think you misread or miscalculated?
Georgia Tech still has the highest SAT score avg of any Public school, and for it’s class of 2022 it was in the 1450’s. I know for certain UM is not that high.
I live in Michigan, and have been working in higher education here for decades. While there are lots of die-hard UofM fans ( mostly due to alumni in the family and/or football), there is also an enormous chunk of the population which couldn’t care less that UM Ann Arbor has a worldwide reputation for academic excellence. They are more than happy to attend not only MSU, but Wayne State, Central Michigan, etc. Grand Valley State seems to be growing fast, and is very popular among bright suburban Detroit kids–whom most people on College Confidential probably assume are on their knees praying for admission to UM.
I think one reason that obsession with elite colleges is relatively rare here is that there are still so many well-paying auto industry jobs. EVERYBODY here knows someone who went to a directional, or didn’t go to college at all, who has a cottage “up north,” a boat or two, and a shiny new SUV in the driveway.
But the lower 25% range for UM on standardized tests doesn’t overlap with the 75% range for any of those. I agree Grand Valley is becoming more popular, and MSU always has been, etc., but numerically there isn’t much overlap in stats. I’d say the answer to not praying for UM is most kids show up to high school, take classes, take the standardized tests, and are fine with where that sends them. I’d guess that’s true for most of the country outside of some wealthy enclaves in major metropolitan areas.
“@theloniusmonk Where are you getting those numbers for UM? I think you misread or miscalculated?
Georgia Tech still has the highest SAT score avg of any Public school, and for it’s class of 2022 it was in the 1450’s. I know for certain UM is not that high.”
Per UCLA’s 2016-17 Common Data Set, its middle 50% ACT composite is 25-33, not 29-34. That 25th percentile score is well below the norm for this group of schools…
But just as most students submit the ACT for Michigan, most submit the SAT for UCLA. Those numbers are also rather soft at the 25th percentile level, 570-700 CR and 580-740 M. A 570 CR puts the student at the 60th percentile for all “SAT users” (college-bound students taking the SAT in the 11th or 12th grade). The 580 M is at the 67th percentile.
“But I think you perhaps overstate the degree to which it’s OOS stats alone that are driving up overall entering class stats.”
BC – How about this math to show how the IS/OOS mix impacts the overall stats?
Both UM and UVA happen to have a middle ACT range of 29-33. To keep it simple, let’s say the average for both is 31.
Let’s assume the IS ACT pool at UM has a 30 ACT. Since UM is 50/50, that means the OOS pool would have a 32 ACT in order to hit an overall average of 31.
Let’s assume the UVA IS pool also has an average 30 ACT. But UVA is 67/33. So to hit a 31 overall average, the UVA OOS average would have to 33, right?
When I use the word elite, I usually mean a school with a less than 15% acceptance rate. Within that, there is a small ultra-elite tier of Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. The first three produce disproportionate numbers of Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents. The last three produce high numbers of founders of startups, which eventually IPO. All could be considered feeder schools for IB/VC/PE. Some of these schools have Saudi royalty and Chinese princelings. In short, their graduates will be running the world someday.
@roethlisburger, yield can be engineered - Colby certainly figured that out, but scores, short of those that superscore as compared to those that don’t, is a measurement that stands on its own.
Those “new” sat numbers are a prediction as the new sat CDS is only for the class of 2021( onward), which will come out later this year.
When they do come out I wouldn’t count on those new numbers being that high. Most schools aren’t seeing that type of increase ( a whopping 90 point increase in one year :)) )
“@roethlisburger, yield can be engineered - Colby certainly figured that out, but scores, short of those that superscore as compared to those that don’t, is a measurement that stands on its own.”
Test scores alone are not that great a metric. Some schools seek out high test scores more than others in admissions. For example:
HYP all have a 32-35 ACT range. Notre Dame and Vandy also have a 32-35 ACT range. Stanford is 31-35.
Yield can be gamed by ED, but only by so much. Yield is about the best single metric there is. Adding in admit ratio (i.e. YTAR) is even better.
Yield is not the best metric for anything. It can’t be gamed easily, but it can result from far different factors than simple academics and career outcomes.
For example, Notre Dame has a huge yield because it is the Catholic school of choice. Brigham Young has the third highest yield in the nation, because it serves the same role for LDS people. Same with Yeshiva for Jewish people. My understanding is that Vandy has a huge yield because Vandy focuses so heavily on test scores, and accepts so many high test score students who lack awards and major ECs, and otherwise do not get into other tippy-top chools. As a result it is the by far the best school that many of its applicants get into, so they attend. University of Alaska and University of Nebraska have a huge yield because only Alaskans and Nebraskans are applying there and there are no other notable in-state options. Berea College has the highest yield among LACs because it has a special mission and discounted tuition. And so on.
“When I use the word elite, I usually mean a school with a less than 15% acceptance rate. Within that, there is a small ultra-elite tier of Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. The first three produce disproportionate numbers of Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents. The last three produce high numbers of founders of startups, which eventually IPO. All could be considered feeder schools for IB/VC/PE. Some of these schools have Saudi royalty and Chinese princelings. In short, their graduates will be running the world someday.”
Harvard, yes on congressmen/women, but Yale and Stanford don’t have a significant advantage even taking into account the size of their undergrad college. I’d put Harvard alone, then have Stanford, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale in the next tier.
As for running the business world, Yale, MIT, and Stanford are not that well represented wrt where Fortune 500 CEOs obtained their undergrad to have a significant advantage over other colleges. In fact a lot of colleges do better than Yale and MIT for sure. Harvard, of course is again on top.
As for startups I assume you mean again taking into account undergrad enrollment, if not then MIT is fifth according to an article on entrepreneur.com with Stanford/Berkeley/Penn/Harvard ahead of it. Stanford is clear number one, but again MIT is not that much better than other colleges to be on Stanford’s tier. In fact the article mentioned that two schools with the highest average VC funding was CMU and Princeton at $12M and $11.4M respectively, while Stanford’s was $5.1M.
The most recent common data set (16-17) on the UM website has the middle 50% for SAT being:
Reading 640-730
Math 670-770
Writing 650-740
But most kids submit ACT scores to UM, so that’s the number that should be more relevant. And easier to compare."
First off you can’t just conveniently change to ACT to suit your argument, your initial ranking was based on SAT scores of 1400. Even if you take the old SAT 2400 scoring, UM’s middle 50% is 1310-1500, putting the medial at 1405.
“So the 25th percentile on a 1600 scale mathematically has to be below 1400.”
Are you talking about the student population overall of all test takers or colleges as well? There are a lot of colleges saying their 25th percentile is 1400 or better, Cal Tech for one says it’s 1500.
