| By Pookdogg (Pookdogg) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 02:29 pm: Edit |
I know that we aren't supposed to care about the skewed US News and World Report rankings, but it's like a bad TV show (Newlyweds, or maybe Celebrity Fear Factor): you keep coming back to it.
Anyways, Berkeley ended up at No. 21, with T-3rd in undergrad business and 3rd in undergrad engineering. Go Bears.
For Mr. Tri_Fm and that Shitakewhatsis miss, UCLA stayed out of the Top 25 at No. 26. And Berkeley maintained it's position atop the Public Universities list. Maybe next time, Bruin fans.
So Berkeley maintained it's position on the list, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a down year for Cal. w00t!
| By Hwtf (Hwtf) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 03:04 pm: Edit |
hah to all who said ucla would beat us
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 04:09 pm: Edit |
Without trying to argue too much about the sanctity of 'alumni giving rate' which, to me, is a completely bogus metric - if they are going to consider it, shouldn't they count the tax contributions of any Cal alumni that still resides in the state of California? It's not as if they're not 'giving' to their school, in fact I'd wager that they're probably giving a higher overall net percentage of their income to the school than most private school alumni.
The reason public school alumni giving is lower is fairly obvious, we're -already- giving to the school. The school is part of our community, a state service that our parents have paid into and that we have, and will, continue to pay into. Every time we collect a paycheck, we're making our small little gift to the support and future potential of our alma matter. It's also something that, because of this support, we feel more entitled to. It's our right as exemplary California students to attend an exemplary California school. They are not bestowing a mighty privilege upon us, as one might perceive an admission to some Ivy League school, because we've been raised all along to expect that our university system will be there for us. God knows, we've put enough money into them to have earned this right. Thus, our inclination to feel indebted to our schools after graduation is probably less.
I'd love to see what these rankings would look like without this farcical concoction. I'd imagine that many of these top privates would find their rankings undercut something fierce.
(I know, I know, I lied about arguing over alumni giving rate, and bickering about the ranking methodology for this is probably a dead horse. =)
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 04:26 pm: Edit |
Pookdogg, actually, UCLA did make it into the top 25, although by the barest margins possible. It's tied for #25.
| By Newbears (Newbears) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 01:52 am: Edit |
Well, at least we can call ourselves the best public school in United states this year...
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 05:15 am: Edit |
Newbears, the USNWR is a sham. It is a joke.
Don't get me wrong, Cal is THE best public school EVERY year. And that is coming from a Michigan alum. Cal is the flagship state university. Sure it has its problems, but from an academic point of view, it has no equals among state universities. Cal is not only the best state university, it is one of the top 6 or 7 universities in the nation, private or public.
I would say Michigan is the clear #2 among state schools and then you have UVA, UCLA, UNC, Wisconsin, Texas etc...
The reason I say the USNWR rankings are a sham is because if they were accurate, Cal would be ranked anywhere between #6 ands #8 annually. Michigan would be ranked anywhere between #9 and #12 annually. UVA, UCLA, UNC, Wisconsin, Texas and Illinois would all be in the top 25.
Clearly, the USNWR is very anti state institutions. But who cares? Graduate school admissions committees and corporate recruiters at Fortune 500 companies know the truth and that is all that matters.
| By Framoin (Framoin) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 11:41 am: Edit |
"w00t!"
stop w00ting, it's making me sick...
GO BEARS.... (im a sophomore in high school)
| By Mysticwistful (Mysticwistful) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 11:50 am: Edit |
How can UC Berkeley ever make it into the top 6 when there is HYPSMC?
| By Socalnick (Socalnick) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 12:24 pm: Edit |
mabe its because were trying to rank overall not just admissions selectivity. honestly unless your majoring in physics cal tech is not better then berkeley.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 01:05 pm: Edit |
Socalnick, HYPSMC comes purely by prestige, and mostly by admission selectivity. Also, admission selectivity has induced stronger academic environment such that with a student/prof ratio 3:1 and avg student's SAT score of around 1510, Caltech beats Berkeley easily. When you are talking about the number of top majors, Berkeley beats YPSMC altogether, but the major/specialty itself doesn't really show undergrad prestige.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 01:22 pm: Edit |
Rtkysq and Mysticwistful, nobody here is attacking Caltech. I was merely commenting that Cal is one of the nation's top 10 universities and the best state universities. So take it easy and let us not compare the incomperable.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 01:51 pm: Edit |
Alexandre, nobody here is defending Caltech, especially in Berkeley forum. I merely explain the pseudo-root of the term HYPSMC. I also agree with you that Berkeley deserve a spot in top 10
| By Esun (Esun) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 05:46 pm: Edit |
I've actually devised the best way to create a #1 US News ranked school. It would have only 19 students, so that 100% of its classes had a class size under 20 (which is something they rank). If I could just get around 1000 people to apply (not very much), I would have a 1.9% acceptance rate. A faculty of 10 would result in an approximate 1:2 faculty:student ratio (higher than any other). Then I'd just have to make sure all 19 students graduated and went on to graduate schools. #1 rank based purely off useless statistics! (I know, US News isn't that bad, but it's funny to think about it...).
| By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 08:09 pm: Edit |
Stanford and Berkeley got totally shafted by US News. East Coast bias......gotta love it!
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 08:20 pm: Edit |
My personal opinion is that Harvard, Stanford, and Cal are the greatest schools in the US.
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 08:20 pm: Edit |
I think if you ignore the 'master rating' list, the rankings seem a bit more realistic. Perhaps I'm just saying that, however, because Berkeley scores so well.
#3 Overall UG business school
#3 Overall Eng school
- #2 Computer Eng school
- #3 ChemE school
- #2 CivE school
- #3 EE school
About the only other schools that show up with as much regularity in any of the major and subfield lists are MIT and Stanford. Aside from UPenn for business, I don't see -ANY- Ivy league schools in this list. For being #21, we seem to be doing a resoundingly decent job of kicking the ass of the east coast Ivies.
Perhaps you could argue that maybe we are unequally biased by having such a strong Biz and Eng school, but many of our other programs are also very well regarded. I think that, as soon as you factor out alumni giving rates and other artificial metrics (e.g. selectivity), the truth becomes a lot more apparent.
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 08:28 pm: Edit |
The only schools ranked very highly in a multitude of subjects are Cal, Stanford, and UCLA...oops I mean Harvard. Well, there are others but none with the consistency and strength of the 3 I mentioned. Any idiot can see there is bias.
| By Foreignboy (Foreignboy) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 11:36 pm: Edit |
Esun - haha.
| By Hypspomonagi (Hypspomonagi) on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 11:50 pm: Edit |
2003
Cal 21
UCLA 26
2004
Cal 21
UCLA 25
2005
Cal 22
UCLA 23
2006
Cal 23
UCLA 22
2007
Cal 23
UCLA 20
2008
CAl 24
UCLA 18
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Saturday, August 21, 2004 - 12:52 am: Edit |
And for those students looking for a tangible distinction between what makes a #21 school and what makes a #25 school, we can now point to 'ability to mathematically extrapolate based on existing data' and 'ability to look up and read easily found facts'. =)
1997:
UCB - 27
UCLA- 31
1998:
UCB - 23
UCLA- 28
1999:
UCB - 22
UCLA- 25
2000:
UCB - 20
UCLA- 25
2001:
UCB - 20
UCLA- 25
2002:
UCB - 20
UCLA- 26
2003:
UCB - 20
UCLA- 25
2004 (Previous Yr):
UCB - 21
UCLA- 26
2005 (Current):
UCB - 21
UCLA- 26
2006 (Projected):
UCB - 21
UCLA- 26
2007 (Projected):
UCB - 21
UCLA- 27
UCLA Regression: .0067016317016264x^4-.16193991193983x^3+1.4138500388496x^2-5.0243460243454x+31.17094017094
UCB Regression: .0017482517482522x^4-.065009065009075x^3+.83896658896665x^2-4.1684796684798x+26.87024087024
Values above rounded, but what's a couple decimal places of precision between friends?
| By Calbears2007 (Calbears2007) on Saturday, August 21, 2004 - 03:27 am: Edit |
hmm could Hypspomonagi be the same person as Mr. Shitakirimusume? i noticed that both seem to be making the same predictions that have no real basis.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Saturday, August 21, 2004 - 07:47 pm: Edit |
Kryptic, when you say that you don't find any listings of Ivy schools under the headings of top business schools, don't you think that's a bit unfair? The fact is, all the Ivies except Penn, and most elite schools in general, don't run formal undergraduate business programs. There's a long-standing debate over whether an undergraduate business program really makes sense - because many educators feel that business classes cannot be properly digested by students who don't have any real-world business experience. Whether you agree with that or not, the point is that a lot of elite schools simply think that running a formal undergraduate business program doesn't make sense. Is it really fair to punish a school just because it chooses not to run certain programs?
Let me put it this way. What's arguably the best undergraduate program to go to if you want to get a top job on Wall Street or at a top consulting program? One way is to get a B.S. in business from Wharton. Another way is to get a B.S. from Haas. Another way is to get a B.S. in management from Sloan/MIT. Those are all good ways. Yet I think we'd all agree that another effective way is to get a regular bachelor's degree from Harvard or one of the other non-Wharton Ivy undergrad programs, or from Stanford. The Wall Street banks and the major-league consultancies are filled with guys who don't have undergrad business degrees, but sport undergrad degrees from an Ivy or from Stanford. Just because Harvard doesn't offer a formal undergraduate degree in business doesn't automatically mean that it's a bad place to go to establish a future business career. Heck, Harvard is arguably the best place in the world to go to do that.
And you also talk about engineering, or lack thereof in the Ivies. But again, the fact is, the Ivies have historically not specialized in engineering. Should they be unduly punished for that? Why should Harvard or Yale be punished for not ranking highly in chemical engineering if they don't even offer chemical engineering as a major?
Consider the professional health sciences. I'm sure you'd agree that people shouldn't go around unfairly punishing Berkeley for ranking badly when it comes to medical school, dental school, nursing school, or pharmacy school, because Berkeley doesn't even have any of those schools. And just like you noted that Berkeley kicks ass on the East Coast Ivies when it comes to the engineering subfields, I could sit here and break down all the subfields of, say, nursing, and note that Berkeley simply gets its ass kicked in all of them, because, again, Berkeley doesn't even offer nursing. Is that really fair? Nor is it particularly fair for Berkeley to be punished for running a "bad" (or at least not highly ranked) bioengineeing/biomedical engineering program, because the Berkeley's bioE program is very young and needs time to ramp up, and doesn't have a major medical school backing it up the way that that Johns Hopkins Medical School offers backup for the top-ranked JHU biomedical engineering program. One would therefore be far too quick to say that Berkeley is a "bad" place to do BioE.
The point is that certain schools choose to do certain things very well and other things not so well or not at all. You should judge schools based on the programs that the students there are actually in. Surely we'd all agree that you shouldn't go knocking MIT because it doesn't offer a strong program in Art History. After all, I think it's fair to say that not too many people who go to MIT are interested in majoring in art history. By the same token, if you are absolutely deadset on getting the finest engineering education in the land, you probably aren't going to be seriously considering Harvard or Yale. You have to judge schools on the things that most of the students there are actually doing. If most of your students are techies, as is the case at MIT and Caltech, then it's fair to judge that school predominantly on its tech programs, and unfair to judge it on its nontech programs that only a few of the students care about anyway. Vice versa is also true. It's equally unfair to punish schools like the LAC's for not having bigtime graduate programs if they have no or only a few graduate students, or schools for having a "bad" undergraduate program if they hardly have any undergrads - like UCSF (yes, UCSF runs a very very tiny undergrad program), or Rockefeller (I don't think Rockefeller runs any undergrad programs). You gotta look at what students you have and what they want to study and weigh the rankings accordingly.
| By Irock1ce (Irock1ce) on Saturday, August 21, 2004 - 10:44 pm: Edit |
Wharton would crush Harvard if you want to talk about IBanking. I had a friend who is in Investment banking, came outta Haas and worked for CSFB for 3 years. He knows whats hes talking about.. and Wharton graduates are by far the most sought after in IBanking firms.
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Saturday, August 21, 2004 - 11:14 pm: Edit |
"It's equally unfair to punish schools like the LAC's for not having bigtime graduate programs if they have no or only a few graduate students..."
Well Sakky, I guess we disagree again. It seems like we disagree on just about everything in the world! Let me explain why. When we are doing a comparison between overall quality of schools, a school should definitely be penalized for not having a particular program. A well rounded great university such as Cal is academically strong in almost every subject. Sure Cal doesn’t have strength in every department especially if the department in question is nonexistent. But when one looks at the overall picture, a school is great based on what it does and Cal does almost everything good. Now, I understand your point. The thing is that your logic is flawed. Without a doubt a school should be penalized for its lack of a specific program. If I wanted to major in Art history I probably would not even consider Caltech. So it should be penalized. It is penalized by not even being considered as a choice. In fact, a school without the major I want should be penalized even more than a school with a weak department. How is that not apparent?
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 03:15 am: Edit |
Irockice, you are correct regarding Penn/Wharton and IBanking. However, you must look deeper into it to appreciate the situation. Wharton is a Finance machine. Haas, Michigan and other undergraduate Business schools as well as Harvard, Stanford etc... cannot come close. Each year, Wharton's undergraduate wing graduates 400 undergrads that majored in Finance. That's colossal!!! Michigan, one of the top 3 or 4 BBA programs, graduates just 40 Finance mojors each year! Haas and MIT have similar numbers to Michigan. Even if you look at the top 10 BBA programs in the nation, they will not have 400 Finance majors graduating annually combined.
I am not taking anything away from Wharton mind you, but what a one-stop shop! It is right next door to Wall Street and they have 400 kids to chose from!
But that does not mean that other schools are not equally as effective. Of Michigan's 40 Finance majors who hit the workforce last year, 20 got jobs with the Big 4 IBanks (JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers). Those are pretty good numbers and odds. Many others ended up with good IBanking houses like UBS, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch etc...
I am sure Haas and MIT have similar successes.
So yes, when it comes to sheer numbers and dominance, Wharton is God in the IBanking World. But other universities hold their own in terms of effectiveness.
| By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 02:40 pm: Edit |
And what if one day Investment Banking is no longer as hot as it is today? Wharton is a one-trick pony.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 02:57 pm: Edit |
Not really Stanfordman, on top of having a top 3 Business program, Penn has a top 10 Law School and a top 5 Medical School. In the disciplines, Penn is ranked in the top 25 in most subjects, and is extremely strong in Economics and English. It is also very strong in Biomendical Engineering.
Clearly, Penn is most famous for its Wharton school, but I would not call it a one-trick pony.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 03:24 pm: Edit |
Allright, now, about the contention of bias in the USNews. I think that's a serious subject that deserves to be discussed. I hope we can have a fair discussion of this subject without all the name-calling and teeth-gnashing that generally accompanies topics like these.
*Anti-West Coast bias in USNews?
Whether there's bias or not in the USNews undergraduate overall ranking, I don't know if you can attribute to to a truly "anti-West Coast" slant. Remember, not that long ago, USNews anointed the California Institute of Technology as the #1 undergraduate program, and last time I checked, the California Institute of Technology was located, well, in California.
Furthermore, if USNews really was biased against the West Coast, then why does USNews rank the West Coast graduate schools so highly? Consider the USNews graduate business school rankings. Only 3 business schools have ever occupied the #1 ranking - Harvard, Stanford, and MIT/Sloan, and of those 3, the one that has won that title the most times is Stanford. Or consider the USNews PhD departmental rankings, and you'll see Stanford and Berkeley and to a lesser extent Caltech absolutely dominate those rankings. How could this be happening if USNews truly was biased against the West Coast?
*Bias against state schools
Here, I actually think there is some truth to what people like kryptic and alexandre are saying. I agree there probably is some bias against state schools within the USNews undergraduate ranking.
But I don't think it's as drastic as some people make it out to be. The sources of bias against state-schools within the ranking is 3fold, and I argue that 2 of them are actually not sources of bias at all, but rather are rightfully considered as knocks against state schools.
The first one is that state schools have less money per student than private schools and are therefore unfairly shafted in categories like "financial resources", "faculty resources" or the like. However, I would argue that it's completely fair and right for state schools to be downgraded when it comes to financial resources. There is a relationship between the money that a school spends per student and the quality of the experience that a student has there. As a student, all other things held equal (ceteris parabus) you should prefer to go to a school that has lots of tutoring services, counseling services, computing services, and other such available resources without having to fight through hordes of other students to get to them. Ceteris parabus, you want to go to a school where class sizes are small. If you don't agree with that, then ask yourself why does Berkeley run the freshman/sophomore seminar series of classes? You want to go to a school where lab-resources for your lab classes are plentiful and new, where you don't have to wait in a huge line to use the only available chromotography machine that's not only older than you are, but breaks down as soon as you get to the head of the line. Your educational experience is not being improved by waiting in line and then waiting some more while the T.A. is trying to fix the machine. Those are the sorts of things that can happen when your school doesn't have money.
Another supposed source of bias is selectivity - public schools are less selective to state residents and state schools therefore supposedly unfairly lose out when it comes to selectivity.
But again, I would argue that there's nothing unfair about it. Selectivity is indeed a critical component in determining the quality of an education. The fact is, students spend only a minority of their time interacting with faculty The bulk of their time is spent interacting with other students. And every person in the world is, to some extent, a product of the environment around them. If you only see people around you who are brilliant, who study and work extremely hard, and who accomplish great things, then you will tend to raise your game. On the other hand, if you're surrounded by people who aren't that brilliant, who don't study that hard, and for whatever reason don't accomplish great things, then you will tend to lower your game. That's the way human beings work - we all tend to copy what we see around us. Anybody who's ever studied sociology should know exactly what I'm talking about. It takes a mentally strong and confident person to continue to work when the people around him have decided to pack it in and go partying and drinking. Most 18-22 year olds don't have that kind of mental strength.
Hence, I would argue that faculty/financial resources (as in spending per capita) and selectivity are rightfully included as important components when determining the quality of a particular program. A program that doesn't have lots of financial resources and isn't selective deserves to be downgraded and rightfully so. Again, for those who feel the need to flame, here me out. Public graduate programs tend to enjoy higher rankings than undergraduate public programs, and I don't find it a coincidence that those top-ranked public graduate programs spend at a more comparable level to the top-ranked private graduate programs and that the gap in selectivity to those top-ranked graduate public programs vis-a-vis the top-ranked private programs is far lower. UCSF Medical School, for example, is ridiculously selective and doesn't shirk from spending lavishly on the students that it does have. The Berkeley PhD programs are just as selective as those at any other school in the nation, public or private. The Berkeley English PhD program is not in the habit of admitting students who are of a conspicuously lower quality than the English PhD programs at Harvard or Stanford.
Now, the third source of bias - that of alumni donation - is, I agree with krypic, somewhat questionable. I agree that a lot of Cal alumni, or alumni of public schools in general, don't donate because they feel that they already contribute through taxation. I understand what USNews is trying to measure - basically, USNews wants to measure alumni satisfaction and they are using donation % as a measurement proxy - but I agree that this slants the rankings in favor of the private schools. A fairer way would be for USNews to compare public school vs. public school, or have the rankings somehow indexed with state taxation rate or something like that.
But if none of that works, feel free to ignore the alumni donation part of the USNews ranking. It's only worth 5%, so it won't materially affect the final outcome.
But the bottom line is this. While the low alumni-donation rate may not serve as a valid criticism of public schools, the low spending per student and the lower selectivity are. I don't want to be overly harsh, but you can't expect to admit lower quality students and to spend less money per student and expect that not to hurt the quality of the education. Something's gotta give. Notice how the elite public graduate schools operate. The UC medical schools maintain extraordinarily tough admissions standards and don't shirk on the spending they do have.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 03:44 pm: Edit |
Sakky, you seem to forget a very key point. Economies of scale. Your entire arguement about spending/student is faulty. A university has to build a lab whether it has 5,000 students or 50,000 students. The same number of students are going to use that lab, but under the column of spending/student, the school with 5,000 students spends 10 times more money per student.
According to Professors at Cornell and Harvard university, state universities spend as much per student as do smaller private when economies of scale are factored in.
As far as selectivity, I completely fail to see the relevance ot hat. What on earth does selectivity have to do with the quality of the university? Even if there was a correlation between selectivity and the quality of a university, UC-Berkeley is the 13th most selective university (ahead of tied with Columbia and ahead of Cornell) in the country and Michigan is the 18th most selective university (tied with Northwestern and ahead of Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago). But I personally do not believe that selectivity has anything to do with academic excellence. Of course, in a school where the average student is a moron, the faculty is going to have to move slowly. However, once the average dtudent is intelligent and driven, it doesn't matter whether the school accepts 10% or 60% or whether the mean SAT score is 1300 or 1400.
Anyway, I will stick to what I know for a fact. Cal is one of the top 6 or 7 universities in the nation. Michigan is ranked anywhere between 9 and 12. Wisconsin, Virginia, UCLA, Texas and Illinois are all top 25 universities. All the professors on Earth know that and all the CEOs and corporate recruiters on Earth know that. Nobody else (including me) knows what they are talking about since our opinion cannot even move a mite!
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 03:55 pm: Edit |
I would agree with you, Sakky, that faculty:student ratios and spending:student ratios are important considerations. I believe, also, that it does tend to favor private schools - and not necessarily unfairly. However, as with student selectivity, I think these things set up a propensity or a possibility - that they may correlate with infringed educational abilities, but that they do not necessarily cause infringed educational ability. Students at Berkeley may have fewer resources, and may get less faculty attention, but does actually translate into a lesser quality education? I believe there is a reasonable argument for the case of "not necessarily".
By it's very nature, the "sink or swim" environment of Berkeley is more likely to strengthen the core of its dedicated students. Students who would have coasted along and been successful at someplace like Harvard have to work that much harder to be successful at Berkeley. They need to engage with their education to an extent that is not the case at many Ivies. Sure, this is basically a euphemism for "they need to self study more" - but isn't this, really, a better training for the real world than always being in a passive learning mode? Yes, the 'failure' rate may be higher. Sure, it demands more out of students, but I'm still not convinced that this is necessarily bad. If you succeed at Berkeley, you can succeed anywhere. If you succeed at Harvard, what does that really tell you?
So, if we are concerned with ranking educational quality, what we need to look at are "what level of knowledge does the top 30% of the class possess?" and rank that. (arbitrary #, but whatever) How does a top student at Harvard compare with a top student at Berkeley? It's only by looking at this that we can factor in differences in "raw education content provided" and "student ability". When ranking schools, I think it's more important to look at what the school really provides, and not just what the students are able to absorb. If I'm a top student and I'm picking a school, I don't really care what someone that got a 1200 on their SATs is likely to experience. What will *I* get ouf of my time at Berkeley? Is the top student at Berkeley disadvantaged? Do they have an educational gap? I'm not sure they do. Clearly, you can draw such distinctions between places like SFSU and Berkeley, so the metric has teeth - but if a student engages actively in their education at Berkeley and makes use of the resources available, and succeeds, can you honestly say that the level of knowledge they possess is 20 places below that of Harvard?
As for selectivity, in theory your argument sounds good. Yes, you spend more time with your peers, and the quality of your peers will dictate a lot about the quality of education you receive. If the student body sizes between Harvard and Berkeley were the same, this argument would have merit. However, they're not. As all of us know, who have gone through 'normal' educational channels, as well as 'elite' educational channels, we tend to associate with people of similar abilities. The student body at Berkely is enormous, and sure there are a lot of people there that may not be intellectual 'equals'. But when class sizes are 200+, even if you only want to 'hang' with the smart kids above the 'average' school level, you still have over a hundred people to pick from. But maybe you're really snooty and only want to chill with the top 10%, well then you still have over 20 people to choose from in each and every class. No one is forcing you to hang out with the stoners or the people that are stumped by stoichiometry.
In the end, from what I've seen of Harvard graduates, from Stanford graduates, from Berkeley graduates, and from hundreds of other 'elite' school graduates, I've never really been able to discern an educational gap between them. There have been some maturity gaps but, in general, there haven't been any jobs I'd hire an Ivy grad for that I would feel a Berkeley grad would be unprepared for. I believe the preparation and educational quality at each set of schools is very comparable, if not almost entirely equivalent. But, of course, this is just my opinion. I haven't attended each of these schools, I've just been responsible for hiring what they produce.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 04:18 pm: Edit |
So shyboy13, I suppose then you would have to agree that Cal should be punished for having no med-school, right? Wow, I look at all the med-school subspecialities like internal medicine, geriatrics, AIDS, and whatever, and I note that Berkeley gets its ass absolutely kicked in each and every single category!!! Same could be said for a dental school. Harvard, Columbia, and Penn have dental schools - where's Berkeley's? Yale, Columbia, and Penn have nursing schools - where's Berkeley's? Cornell and Penn have vet schools, where's Berkeley's? Couple that with the fact that national health care costs have been rising as a % of GDP for decades and that health-care may well be the new dominant economic field to get rich in. Computers and information-technology may be waning, as health-care may be taking over as the new 'sexy' field to be in. Yet Berkeley has minimal presence in offering medical-degrees, dental degrees, nursing degrees, pharmacy degrees, or most other professional-degrees in health-care. Damn, I guess that means Berkeley must be a terrible terrible school.
The fact is, that's terribly unfair. I don't choose to go down that road because it's unfair. UCSF is, in effect, Berkeley's medical school, dental school, nursing school, and pharmacy school. UCDavis is the vet school for not just Berkeley but for all of UC. It's like the old joke that Harvard can afford to have an engineering school that isn't top-notch beacuse everybody knows that Harvard's real engineering school is MIT, and by the same token, MIT doesn't need a med-school or a law school, because Harvard is right there.
But OK, fine shyboy13, let's say that you're right. Let's say a school should be punished mercilessly for not even having certain particular programs. In that case, then Berkeley drops down for conspicuously lacking professional health-sciences schools. In that case, not only is Berkeley no longer a serious contender for the best school in the country, but it isn't even the best UC anymore. UCLA now takes over, because UCLA actually has a medical school, a nursing school, and a dental school. And the best public school in the country is no longer Berkeley, but is either UCLA or Michigan - because, again, Michigan actually has a medical school, a dental school, a nursing school, and a pharmacy school - all categories in which Berkeley earns a big fat zero. So according to your own rules, shyboy13, Berkeley loses whatever claim it has on not only being the best public school in the country, but also the claim on even being the best public school in California. Are you absolutely sure you want to walk down this road, shyboy13? Or do you now prefer my definition of what makes a good school? Which is it going to be?
Now to Irock1ce, stanfordman, and alexandre, I don't want to get into a debate over who's best when it comes to I-banking, because I think it misses the point. The point is that I think we can all agree that just because a school doesn't offer a formal bachelor's degree in business administration doesn't mean that it's a bad place to go to get a business career. For example, you cannot simply conclude that just because Harvard doesn't have a School of Business open to undergrads, that doesn't mean that attending Harvard undergrad can't set you up for a very nice successful business career. Hence the undergraduate business-school rankings (Wharton #1, MIT #2, Berkeley #3 etc.) may be correct, but are also misleading. Yes, Haas may well be a highly ranked undergraduate business school, but I don't know that you can simply say that Berkeley then kicks ass on Harvard. It just means that Harvard doesn't have an undergrad business school. That's like me saying that Loma Linda kicks ass on Berkeley when it comes to medical school, because Berkeley simply doesn't have a med-school. Heck, if you insist on looking at things that way, then in the med-school category even the shabbiest Caribbean medical school kicks ass on Berkeley.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 04:26 pm: Edit |
Kryptic and Sakky, small private universities do not have smaller classes than Michigan or Cal. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Cornell, Brown and Johns Hopkins all have as many classes with 50+ students as Michigan, Cal, UVA, UNC and UCLA. They do have a slighly higher percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students, but it is not significant enough to warrant a distinction.
Again, it is another misconception surrounding State universities.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 04:47 pm: Edit |
Alexandre, what are you talking about?
I didn't buy the 2005 USNews, but I can present here the 2002 raw US News data, and I note the following,
1st column - school name
2nd column - % of classes with 20 or fewer students
3rd column - % of classes with 50 or more students
Berkeley -54, 17
Michigan Ann Arbor - 48,16
UCLA - 49,23
UNC Chapel Hill - 40,13
Virginia - 48,15
Harvard 75, 13
MIT - 72,11
Princeton 69, 11
Stanford 69,12
Yale - 77,8
http://www.umbc.edu/oir/Comparative%20Data/2002/final%20tables%202004.pdf
So, now unless the data for 2005 (3 years after my data ) are radically different, then I think the data proves my point. Alexandre, are you seriously trying to tell me that you don't see any significant difference in those 2 sets of numbers? Really? Your naked eye should tell you that the difference not only exists, but is substantial. The private schools all seem to have a far far higher percentage of classes with 20 or fewer students than the publics. Furthermore, the private schools also seem to have a significantly lower percentage of classes with 50 or more students. Just eyeballing the data, I would say that those private schools have an average of about 11% of classes with 50 or more students, whereas those publics have about 17% or so. That's almost a 50% difference (17/11= about 150%).
Now I freely agree that some private schools do indeed have huge class sizes. But I don't think we should be talking about cherry-picking just some private school. You have to compare the best privates vs. the best publics. You can't go around comparing the best publics against the not-best privates. Head to head, the best publics cannot boast of average class sizes that are as small as the best privates.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 05:04 pm: Edit |
Let me give you this year's data:
Brown 66,11
Chicago 59,6
Columbia 73,8
Cornell 44,23
Dartmouth 56,9
Harvard 73,13
Johns Hopkins 57,16
MIT 63,15
Princeton 72,11
Stanford 69,14
Yale 75,8
Cal 54,17
Michigan 49,16
UCLA 50,22
UNC 51,12
UVA 48,15
And I never said there wasn't a difference. I said the difference is not a significant one. You make it sound like the average class at the elite private universities is under 10 and at elitate public universities is over 50. It is not nearly as significant. The average class at the elite private school is somewhare in the high teens and at the elite public universities somewhere in the mid to high 20s. Like I said, insignificant and in both cases, the vast majority of profesors could not care less about their undergraduate students. If a student needs to be pampered and spoon fed, he/she will never make it in the real world. A University is supposed to offer a student the opportunity to study. What students make of that opportunity is entirely up to their own initiative. University students are adults, and no professor at a major university will accept to handhold a student.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 10:56 pm: Edit |
Oh come now, seriously. I never said that the elite famous private schools were perfect. I've said it before, I'll say it again, the best undergraduate educations are to be had at the LAC's.
But that's not the point. The point is that all other things held equal, you want to minimize your class size in order to maximize the quality of your undergraduate education. Are the private big-name schools like Harvard perfect in this regard? Of course not. But they are better. And that's the point. You might call the difference not significant, but again, all things held equal, you yourself must concede that you'd prefer to be at the school that has lower class sizes.
But I agree with you that class size is only one factor. Other factors are equally important. In particular, I will not forget the story told to me by other Berkeley students about how they were forced to melt their own pipets for Ochem lab at a time when Berkeley was under budget crisis and couldn't afford to buy disposable pipets for their labs. That's just a simple time-wasting activity that does not contibute to anybody's education. How much OChem are you really learning by having to make your own damn pipet? Nor is this an isolated incidence. Spending per student on services like tutoring and counseling are also significantly lower in the public schools. There are numerous other examples of penury. Each one by itself may mean little, but put together it all adds up to an overall lower quality experience.
Now, I do agree with you that it is largely up to the own students to take initiative and take responsibility for their own education. But then you must agree with me that, as the lower graduation rates at the public undergrad schools attest to, that a lot of those students can't or won't take that responsibility, and that begs the question that if you're not going to take that responsibility, then why should the school admit you in the first place? After all, you don't see UCSF Medical School admitting lots of med-students who then later drop out or are thrown out for poor academic performance. So if you believe in the importance of personal responsibility, then you should agree with me about the other idea I've been proposing on CC which is that public schools like Berkeley should simply not admit those students who aren't going to graduate anyway. So, care to join me?
| By Dstark (Dstark) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 11:04 pm: Edit |
Most Berkeley students do graduate. There isn't any rush because the school is so cheap for in state students. Take 5 years, double major, buy all the equipment you want. Use the money you save for a downpayment on a house.
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 11:07 pm: Edit |
Now if only we didn't have this stupid 130/136 unit credit cap, we'd never have to leave...
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 11:20 pm: Edit |
But dstark, again, that's not the point. The point is that the graduation rates at the public schools for undergraduate students tend to be significantly lower than at the private schools.
Case in point - yet again, you don't have the spectacle of all these UCSF medical students lollygagging around, taking an eternity to graduate, and/or lots of them never graduating at all. But why not? After all, most UCSF students are California state residents and therefore enjoy cheap tuition also. Same thing can be said for law students at Boalt, UCLA, or Hastings - you don't seem them dragging along taking years and years. You don't see MBA students at Haas or UCLA/Anderson taking forever to graduate. But again, why not - most of them are also enjoying cheap in-state tuition. So why is it that the UC graduate students don't seem to have much of a problem in not only graduating, but also graduating on time, yet the UC undergrads seem to have difficulty? Why only them?
| By Dstark (Dstark) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 11:31 pm: Edit |
Why you are comparing grad school to undergrad? There is no comparison.
Berkeley students pay way less for an undergrad education than other students. They can take their time. Some people like going to college.
What's the rush?
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 11:52 pm: Edit |
Of course I'm going to compare grad to undergrad. That's the way to test the theory over whether lower cost really does result in slower graduation times. After all, you contend that lower cost is the reason that UC undergrads seem to take a long time. Well, if lower cost really is such a factor, then logic dictates that UC graduate students should also be going slow, because those graduate students also enjoy lower cost. But they don't take it slow. Hence we have 2 populations that enjoy low cost education, yet one population seems to take its education slowly and the other population doesn't. That calls into question just how important a factor cost really is.
Consider another factor. If it's really true that lower cost is the reason for slower gradution time and/or lower graduation rates, then it would stand to reason that those students who get more financial aid in the form of grants, and hence pay less cost, would graduate slower than equivalent students who don't. I am not aware of any studies that bear this out. If you know of any, please feel free to post them.
The point is that the evidence does not bear out the contention that lower price has a serious effect on graduation times. Occam's Razor would dictate that far far more important of a factor is the culture of the school. UCSF medical students graduate on time at a much higher rate than UCBerkeley undergrads do simply because UCSF Med School admits only very high quality applicants, provide top-quality student services to those students that it does bring in , and enacts and educational environment where it is simply not acceptable for a student to be lollygagging around. That, my friend, is the most important reason why UC undergrads tend to lollygag around and suffer from lower graduation rates relative to the top privates. Low cost is a very minor factor when compared to the culture of a particular school.
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 12:12 am: Edit |
Financial aid is only valid for a fixed number of terms. You can't just milk it. As for why, perhaps, people might take longer to graduate - just as dstark mentioned, some people love college. Me? I've amassed over 120 credits from various schools, and Berkeley still only considers me a junior. I love learning, I love studying, and if it weren't for the mandatory graduation that Berkeley forces on you after 136 credits - I'd probably never leave. There's just so much that you can learn at a place like Cal, the entire world is at your doorstep. Why would you ever want to leave?? I've done the career thing, and trust me - making gobs of money isn't nearly as fulfilling as learning how the world works, what makes people tick, or the intricacies of deepspace astronomy. It's hardly lollygagging, it's the sign of a curious mind that's always unsatiated - exactly the type of person that you want at a school like Berkeley.
Compared with many LACs that have drastically fewer options, the wealth of what Berkeley offers is in itself an incentive to stay longer. People stay because they like it, not because they're dense or the education is lacking. I would say that early graduation rates are a sign that the school is treating education like a mill and trying to grind you out as fast as possible, or that students hate the campus or educational experience there. But when students stay for five-six years? That means they love learning, that they love being a student. These are good things. How could you ever perpetrate that a longer graduation window is bad??
| By Dstark (Dstark) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 12:20 am: Edit |
Sakky, all three of your paragrahs are illogical.
Obviously, you could never get into Berkeley.
I hope you enjoy where you do go or will end up.
Good luck to you.
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 12:26 am: Edit |
Sakky, going back to comment you made saying that Berkeley must be terrible because it doesn’t have a medical program. How can you come to such a crazy conclusion? Especially since you were trying to use my logic as if that were something I would say. Although UCSF is somewhat akin to Cal’s medical program, lets say it is not. Should Cal be penalized for not having a medical program? Of course it should. No one goes to Cal to become a MD! Period! So, even though I respect the heck out of Cal, I must say that it should be penalized when making that particular comparison. So if I wanted to go to medical school, Cal should be penalized so much that I wont even consider it. It will be penalized in my personal choice more than a school with a week program. After all, a small number is still greater than zero. There is no way around it. The thing is that Cal is so good at just about everything else that the lack of a medical school would STILL make Cal one of the best schools in the nation.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 03:00 am: Edit |
I seem to have missed quite a few of the responses here on this thread, so let me do so now.
Economies of scale - Alexandre, I have 2 responses here. First, since you display an understanding of economics, I would agree that such a thing as economics of scale exists. But on the other hand, so does a thing as diseconomies of scale. Larger does not always mean more efficient. At some point, larger means less efficient - when your organization becomes so large and unwieldly that one part of your organization has no idea what the other part is doing. And, frankly, that's not a totally inaccurate way to describe the Berkeley administration at the very least. At the very least, even the biggest Berkeley booster would concede that the Berkeley administration has gone well beyond the point of diseconomies of scale. I would actually argue that quite a few other things at Berkeley have gone well beyond the point of diseconomies of scale, but the administration is a slamdunk case.
Secondly, even if you insist that economies of scale exist, Berkeley still doesn't look all that good. Check out the budgets of UCBerkeley and that of Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and the other privates that Berkeley competes with, and you'll see that not only does Berkeley clear far less per capita, but Berkeley spends less even on an absolute case.
Check it out for yourself: In FY 2004, Stanford spent about $2.3 billion. In FY 2003, Harvard spent about $2.5 billion. In FY2003, MIT spent about $1.7 billion. In FY 2003, Yale spent about $1.5billion total. In FY 2002 (before the budget crisis hit full-force), Berkeley spent about $1.3 billion.
http://cgi.stanford.edu/dept/businessaffairs/bondholder/cgi-bin/php/budget_books/2004-2005/05.all.php
http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/budget/factbook/current_facts/income_expense_33.html
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/annualreport/2003/pdf/finsch/bk03schb.pdf
http://web.mit.edu/facts/financial.shtml
http://www.yale.edu/oir/factsheet.html#Institutional%20Finances
Hence on both a per-capita and on an absolute scale, Berkeley clearly cannot be claiming to be holding a serious advantage in economies of scale over the top privates. Heck, Harvard and Stanford each outspend Berkeley by a ratio of almost 2:1 even though both Harvard and Stanford have far fewer total students.
OK, not to kryptic, you say that you actually like the 'sink of swim' attitude of Berkeley. The problem I amd many other people have with the sink or swim attitude of Berkeley is that, well, a lot of students sink. That is to say, a lot of Berkeley students flunk out because they can't or don't want to handle the coursework. And what good does that do to anybody to admit so many students that end up not graduating? Now of course I recognize that you can't be perfect - every school ends up admitting some students who can't cut it. But the problem is with degree - Berkeley seems to admit a conspicuously large % of students who don't have what it takes. Why?
I believe a far far better way of going about doing things is simply to admit a higher quality of student in the first place. Case in point - the Haas School of Business admits a very high class of students for its MBA and its undergraduate program, and doesn't go around trying to weed out the students it does bring in. If you really believe that sink-or-swim is the best way to provide an education, then because Haas doesn't subscribe to sink-or-swim, then you have to concede that you believe that Haas is wrong. Is that what you're saying? Or put another way, if you ask what assurance do you have that a Harvard graduate learned anything, I could use that same logic and ask what kind of assurance do I have that a Haas MBA learned anything?
Now about the contention that the level of knowledge of the top-ranked students is the only thing that matters or, as you put it, "...if a student engages actively in their education at Berkeley and makes use of the resources available, and succeeds, can you honestly say that the level of knowledge they possess is 20 places below that of Harvard? "
Well, I don't have to answer that question. Why? Because it's already been answered. For example, ask yourself why is it that far far more Harvard graduates than Berkeley graduates win the major-league post-undergrad academic prizes like the Rhodes Scholarship, the Marshall Scholarship, the Truman Scholarship, or other such contests? For example, in the year 2002, Berkeley had its first Rhodes Scholar since the 1980's. Impressive until you realize that since 2002, Harvard College graduates have won 17 (that's right, 17) Rhodes Scholarships, despite the fact that the Harvard College student body is only a fraction of the size of the Berkeley student body. Now, if you say that the top Berkeley graduates are really equivalent to the top Harvard graduates, then shouldn't those Berkeley graduates be winning more of those prizes? Surely you're not trying to say that the selection committees for those prizes have an anti-Berkeley fetish, are you? {And even if you do believe that, well, that's even more of a reason to choose Harvard over Berkeley}.
Or consider the graduate-school angle. Look at any of the top-ranked law schools of med-schools and you will notice that across the board, a disproportionate number of the students there did their undergrad at one of the top privates, and much less so from Berkeley. Basically, HYPSM grads have seem to be more successful in getting into top graduate schools than are Berkeley grads. Consider the following facts. Let's look at the Yale College and the Berkeley grads who try to get into Stanford Law:
Yalies got into Stanford Law with a 19% admit rate. Princetonians got into Stanford Law got in with about a 15% admit rate. Berkeley grads? Add it up and you get about a 6.5% admit rate. In any case, it's lower than the Yale/Princeton rate.
Now, lest you think that perhaps this is just a geographic anomaly (in that lots of Berkeley grads will apply to Stanford because it's local), consider this. Let's look at a major East Coast law school - say Harvard Law. Princetonians get into Harvard Law with a 26% admit rate (39/148). Yalies? 27%. But Berkeley? Add it up and you get about 17.5% - significantly lower.
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/career/Undergrad/GradSchool/pre-law8.html
http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm#senior
http://www.yale.edu/career/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/statistics2003.pdf
Basically, as far as top graduate-school admissions are concerned, HYPSM students seem to have a significant edge over Berkeley students. So the graduate schools, by who they are offering admission to, seem to prefer HYPSM graduates to Berkeley graduates. But if those Berkeley graduates really are the equivalent of the HYPSM graduates, then why would the adcoms be giving that preference? Are you saying that those adcoms are unfairly biased against Berkeley grads? {And again, even if you believe that, then that's only more reason to choose to go to HYPSM than Berkeley).
Now let me deal with a possible objection - that of "self-selectivity". You might say that only the top students from HYPSM are going to be applying to the top graduate schools, so maybe we're getting an unfair picture of Berkeley. I disagree. True, only the top students from HYPSM are applying to top graduate schools. Clearly the guy with a 2.0 from Yale isn't going to be applying to Stanford Law. But the same thing is true of Berkeley grads. Only the top Berkeley grads are going to be applying to top graduate schools. I'm not aware of any good reason as to why HYPSM grads would be any more self-selective than Berkeley grads when it comes to applying to top graduate schools. If anybody can think of a good reason why that might be the case, hey, I'm all ears. But the point is I believe that the self-selectivity factor washes out. Only the top Yale and Princeton grads and only the top Berkeley grads will be applying to Stanford Law or Harvard Law, and yet the Yalies and Princetonians seem to be getting in at a higher admissions percentage. If all those top graduates really are equal, then why would there be a significant difference in admit rate?
The point is that while you and I might not be able to distinguish between the quality levels of top HYPSM and top Berkeley grads, apparently the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee can. Apparently the adcoms at the top graduate schools can. And their opinions matter, because we all know that Berkeley students want to win the big awards like the Rhodes, or to get into the top grad-schools.
Now, finally, let me expand on the importance of selectivity. Again, I would reiterate, we are all to some extent products of our environments. Why do you think parents around the country are concerned about living in good neighborhoods away from the bad element? Simple - because parents know that kids are impressionable and tend to copy what they see around them. If the kids in the neighborhood are responsible and high-achiving, then your kid will tend to be responsible and high-achiving. If there's a bad element around, then your kid may easily fall into that bad element.
The same thing is true of college. Most 18-20 year olds are not fully formed, mature, confident adults. They are immature, half-adults, still suspectible to outside pressures. You place these kids in an environment full of people who may not study very hard or accomplish very much, then some of these kids will inevitably be tempted to fall off the track of achievement. That's an inevitable fact of life and is a direct consequence of low selectivity.
Furthermore, don't discount the importance of selectivity when it comes to class quality. Don't you remember those really good classes in English or social-studies back in high school when all the students were chiming in with really cogent points? You know that in those classes, you really learned a lot from your other students. The same thing can and does happen in college. When you can get a really good barnburning discussion going, you can really learn a whole heck of a lot.
Yet that learning is predicated on all the students having good ideas and having prepared properly. If that discussion was instead filled with students who don't have good ideas, who aren't creative, or who quite simply haven't even done the reading or are completely unprepared, then your own education has been impaired. You've missed out on a great discussion you could have had, if not the school hadn't admitted all these students of lesser quality. Hence, the lower selectivity has hurt your education.
But the point is clear. You're more likely to get a better education when the students around you are better. You will be spurred and motivated to learn more if everybody around you is a top-quality student. You will also learn more from your fellow students if those students are better.
But fine, let's have it your way, alexandre. If you really believe that selectivity has nothing to do with educational quality, then you have to believe that Berkeley would do just fine with open admissions. Why even have an admissions process? Berkeley should just open its doors to anybody and everybody who wants to study there, and you are convinced that Berkeley would not degrade in quality. Is that what you're saying?
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 03:03 am: Edit |
Ah, Dstark with the ad-hominem comments. Why don't you email me privately and we'll figure out once and for all, whether I could get into Berkeley or not, or perhaps to a school most Berkeley students would prefer to be at. Then after that, we can talk about what kind of schools you can get into.
| By Dstark (Dstark) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 03:12 am: Edit |
I already graduated from Berkeley many years ago.
I wasn't planning to start again.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 03:14 am: Edit |
Shyboy13, it's not I that came up with the conclusion that Berkeley is terrible because it doesn't have a medical school. I was just following the logical path that you drew out that if a school doesn't even have a certain program, then it earns a zero in that category.
And because of that big fat zero, it's now difficult to say that Berkeley can now claim to be the best public school in the country. A zero is a pretty big thing to overcome, you must admit.
Now, would that still mean that Cal is a top school? Sure. But you must admit that it drops down, because according to your rules, no medical school means a big fat zero that is averaged into its "overall" ranking (again, your concept, not mine). Hence, according to these rules, I think it's entirely conceivable to say that Berkeley is no longer the best public school, and that UCLA or Michigan is, because those places actually have medical schools, and not just any med-schools, but good ones.
Take Michigan as an example. Its business school is about the same rank as Berkeley's. Its law school is ranked higher. Its engineering school is ranked lower, but not hugely so. Its undergraduate school is ranked lower, but, again, not hugely so. Its PhD programs are ranked lower, but again, not hugely so. And Michigan actually has a top-ranked med-school, whereas Berkeley earns a big fat zero in this category. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that Berkeley now loses, overall, according to your definition of what an overall school is.
What I'm attempting to illustrate is that your logic seems dangerous. You are perfectly free to adhere to your own logic as long as you're willing to suffer its consequences. And if you do, you must admit that Berkeley's status as the top public school is now in jeopardy.
As for myself, I don't subscribe to a theory of "overall school". If look at schools from program to program. When you're an undergraduate, you should care about undergrad programs. When you're a med-student, you should care about med-schools. Should we criticize MIT students because they didn't go to a "good school" (because MIT doesn't have a law school or a medical school and therefore MIT must not be a "good school)? Is Princeton now a terrible terrible school because it has no professional schools whatsoever? Should we criticize Caltech because it also has no professional schools? Yeah, all those Caltech and Princeton alumni went to awful schools, right? Is that what you're saying?
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 04:06 am: Edit |
Sakky, Michigan's budget is $4 Billion. Does that make it the best? The reason why Cal does not have a huge budget and schools like Harvard, Stanford and Michigan do is because they have medical schools and medical schools have HUGE budgets.
http://www.umich.edu/~oapainfo/TABLES/Bud_All.html
And graduation rates at Cal and Michigan are 85%. I don't see how that's different from most top private universities. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Notre Dame and Stanford all have graduation rates in the 95% range. But all the other schools, be it Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Rice etc have graduation rates in the 85%-92% range. There is not much of a difference. You are nit picking here...reaching for such insignificantly differences.
As for the acceptance rates of Cal students into H,Y and S law schools, I am not surprised. Harvard and Yale have a partnership and are obligated to accept each other's talent. As for Stanford, so many Cal students apply to Stanford Law that if they were to accept more than 10%, Stanford's entire Law school class would be made up of Cal alums! The reason why Cal does not have that lofty 25% acceptance rate into H,Y and S law schools is not because the students aren't qualified, it is because so many qualified students apply that if H,S and Y were to accept 25% of the Cal applicants, there would be no room left to accept students from other schools.
But make no mistake, Cal and Michigan are selective. Like I said, Cal is the 13th most selective university in the country (as selective as Columbia) and Michigan is the 18th most selective university in the country (more selective than the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins).
Class size is important Sakky, but no, I would not care if the average class size was 18 or 28. If a professor cannot handle more than 5 graduate students at once, do you really think it will make a difference whther he has a class of 18 or 28 undergrads? To me, that is insignificant. I am more concerned with the academic environment and in that regard, Cal and Michigan have no superiors.
But Sakky, none of this matters. Really. Ask a professor at Duke or Penn or MIT to name you the top 6 or 7 universities in the country, and invariably, all will list Berkeley among them. If you ask them to list an additional 5 or 6 university, Michigan will make the cut. Ask corporate recruiters which campuses are their most valued, and again, invariably, Cal and Michigan make the top of the list.
Finally, nobody ever claimed that Cal was equal to H,P,S,Y and M. But it comes right after those 5 schools. And Michigan is not far behind. All we are saying is that, at the very worst, Cal should be ranked in the top 10 and Michigan in the top 15. It is you who seems to believe that Cal and Michigan should be ranked out of the top 20. Nobody in his right mind can defend such an argument.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 05:14 am: Edit |
First off, the numbers that you showed me were revenue numbers. I was talking about expenditures (i.e. spending), which is not the same as revenue. The following link is what you should have presented.
http://www.umich.edu/~oapainfo/TABLES/GreyBook/GreyBk_AC_FY04.pdf
However, I agree with you that hospital spending should not be counted. The problem with the UM figures that you presented is that they lump together the UM medical school and the UM hospital all into one and call that "auxiliary expenditures" or something like that (auxiliary expenditures is mostly UM Health Services, which is basically the hospital).
Yet the fact is, the numbers I presented before for the other schools generally do not include numbers for hospitals, but only for medical schools.
Consider this. Harvard actually, technically speaking, runs 2 major hospitals - Mass General Hospital and Brigham + Women's and a host of other smaller ones like Mt. Auburn hospital, Beth Israel Deaconness, etc. etc. The annual budget of MGH is about $800 million all by itself. Yet none of these organizations are counted as normal Harvard spending (if they were, then I think it's easy to see that Harvard's "spending" would easily exceed the $2.3 billion figure that I cited previously).
http://www.mgh.harvard.edu
http://mghra.partners.org/res_gov/about_mgh.htm
Or, again look at the following quote from the STanford data I cited.
"The budgets for the Stanford Hospital and Clinics (SHC) and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
at Stanford (LPCH), both separate corporations, are not included in this Budget Plan."
http://cgi.stanford.edu/dept/businessaffairs/bondholder/cgi-bin/php/budget_books/2004-2005/05.all.php
I have no information as to whether the Yale data includes spending on the Yale Hospital. I believe that spending is not included, but I admit I have no information either way. It may or may not be included. But if you want, fine, feel free to ignore the Yale data.
But surely, the confusion over hospital spending is not present when we're talking about MIT, a school that doesn't have a medical school and certainly no hospital.
Now as far as whether you think that the graduation rates are significantly different, oh, I have to seriously disagree. There is a huge difference between an 85% and a 95% graduation rate. Turn the numbers around to understand their full effects. An 85% graduation rate means 15% won't graduate. A 95% graduation rate means 5% won't graduate. Hence, a random Berkeley student is 3 times more likely to not graduate than, a person who goes to a school with a 95% graduation rate. Yeah - 3 times more likely. Am I really reaching now? Remember, we don't just go to school just to go to school. You go because you want to actually get a degree. Yet the fact is, a given Berkeley student is about 7 times more likely to go without a degree than a person who goes to Harvard (98% graduation rate). I'd say that's a pretty damn big difference.
And your contention that "so many students from Cal apply" to the top law schools, I regret to say, ain't true. Look at the numbers yourself. In the last year, 66 Berkeley grads applied to Stanford Law. 209 Yalies applied to Stanford Law. That's right - 209, more than 3 times. Of those 209 Yalies, 18% got admitted. Of those 66 recent Berkeley grads, 2 got in. Doesn't exactly support your contention that Stanford Law would be absolutely "swamped" with hordes of Berkeley grads, now does it? Heck, even if Stanford Law was to admit a whopping 25% of all Berkeley students that apply, we're talking about a grand total of 16 Berkeley grads who would have been admitted last year. Compare that to the 37 Yalies who were admitted to Stanford Law last year. Look at the numbers yourself. No room left for the other students if more Cal students were admitted, you say? Let's assume that all 37 actual admitted Yalies and all 16 of these hypothetically admitted Berkeley grads all chose to attend. Why does Stanford Law seem to have no problem in being overrun with 37 Yalies, but all of a sudden, when we're talking about Berkeley, now Stanford has to worry about being overrun with 16 Berkeley grads?
http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm#senior
http://www.yale.edu/career/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/statistics2003.pdf
And about your contention that Harvard and Yale have some sort of cross-partnership arrangement such that they will unfairly accept lots of each other's graduates. Well, again, that makes it all the more reason to go to Harvard or Yale. If something is unfair, then you want it to be unfair in your favor, not against you. At the end of the day, you go to school to advance your career. If going to Yale makes it easier to get into an elite law school like Harvard Law, then that's a good reason to go to Yale. The question then is why can't Berkeley do the same for its grads? Why can't Berkeley strike some sort of partnership with Stanford Law?
Now, did I ever say that Cal and Michigan aren't selective at all? Clearly I never did. You can't pull out a quote where I said that. What I said is that they could stand to be more selective. After all, Cal's Haas School of Business is extremely selective, and nobody criticizes it for doing that. In fact, that's a big reason why Haas is so damn good. Michigan's law school, medical school, and business school are also extremely selective - far more selective than its undergraduate school. It's no coincidence to me that Michigan's professional schools earn higher rankings than its undergraduate school does. I don't hear you condemning UM Medical School for being "too selective".
Now I do agree with what you said in your second-to-last paragraph. Berkeley and Michigan would probably be considered very highly by profs. That's not surprising to me considering that most profs are tuned to research, and Berkeley and Michigan are both research powerhouses.
But that's not the point. The OP was referring to undergraduate rankings, and that's what I was talking about, and what I thought everybody else was talking about. If you want to talk about graduate schools and/or research, then I would agree that Berkeley and Michigan belong in the top 10 - heck, if we're talking about PhD programs, then Berkeley might belong in the top 3. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about undergraduate education rankings. That's what the OP was talking about, so that's what I'm talking about. When you're talking only about undergraduate programs, I regret to say that I don't think that neither Berkeley nor Michigan is a top 10 program. Graduate schools and/or research? Yes. But undergraduate education? I don't think so. I believe there are far far better run undergraduate programs.
{Personally, it's not just the top 20 according to USNews, but more importantly also the top-ranked LAC's. For example, I believe that Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore have higher quality. undergraduate programs than Berkeley or Michigan. Maybe not as 'prestigious', but in terms of quality, it's difficult to say that the LAC's don't run very very well-built undergraduate programs.}
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 09:16 am: Edit |
Sakky, you are comparing Cal and Michigan to the top 5 universities. I never claimed that Michigan and Cal are top 5 universities. At the undergraduate level, among research universities. there are 5 clear leader in undergraduate education as far as I am concerned. That does not mean they offer better educations, but as institutions, they are the top 5. Those are:
Harvard
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Yale
We do not disagree on that point. Where we disagree is in the schools that immediately follow those 5. I believe there is a group of 12 or so universities that are directly beneath the quintet above, and all 12 are roughly equal. Those 12 are:
Brown
Cal-Berkeley
Caltech
Chicago
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Johns Hopkins
Michigan-Ann Arbor
Northwestern
Penn
You seem to believe that Cal and Michigan do not belong. I guess there are worse things than disagreeing on wuch irrelevant issues.
Finally, I never compare research universities to LACs because they are totally different. But I think you are wrong if you think LACs offer better educations. In some ways they do, but in other ways, they do not.
| By Foreignboy (Foreignboy) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 11:08 am: Edit |
What, no UVA?
Blasphemy!!
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Monday, August 23, 2004 - 12:18 pm: Edit |
“If look at schools from program to program. When you're an undergraduate, you should care about undergrad programs. When you're a med-student, you should care about med-schools.”
That is exactly what I was saying. One would not consider Cal for medical school because it doesn’t have one. In other words, Cal is penalized in that comparison. It is penalized so much that it gets a zero.
“What I'm attempting to illustrate is that your logic seems dangerous. You are perfectly free to adhere to your own logic as long as you're willing to suffer its consequences. And if you do, you must admit that Berkeley's status as the top public school is now in jeopardy.”
Sakky, even if you give Berkeley a zero for its lack of a Medical school, which I do, Cal would still be on of the best schools in the United States and I stand by that. Trust me, I would absolutely love to say that UCLA is greater than Cal. After all, I chose UCLA over Cal. The fact is that I cannot live in dreamland like so many others and must admit that Cal is indeed greater.
Now, there was a discussion about economies of scale. The thing is that Cal indeed does have a tremendous amount of resources. When we consider the fact that many of the resources are public goods, per capita analysis becomes irrelevant.
One last thing about selectivity. No one can say that Cal is not selective. Even the “dumb” students at Cal are pretty bright. If we took the top students at Cal, you would find that they are pretty much on par with the Harvard students. Or, to put it another way, Cal has just about as many high caliber students as Harvard. Keep in mind that I am being bold in comparing Cal to arguably the greatest school in the US. Don’t you think that is pretty daring for me compare #21 to #1? Anyway, how can you say that a Cal student is surrounded by ill prepared students? Oh yeah, if a person is ill prepared at Cal, they fail. If a person is ill prepared at other schools, they dont fail. I doubt Cal is infested with ill prepared students.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 09:19 am: Edit |
No no Alexandre, the group you put Caltech in your list is wrong. Caltech is a technical school, and the only reason why people regard more highly on HYPSM than Caltech is because it is a very specialized technical school. Let me give you an illustration, when you ask a science/techie student or science/techie professor for that matter, you will invariably get Caltech in the top #1-#3. If you are trying to compare as whole by including majors other than tech/science like business, law, etc, you will be a laughing stock if you go to Caltech with this option.
Bottomline: When you want to include Caltech, it belongs to HYPSM league, otherwise don't include it at all in your list. I don't see any arguable reason as how Michigan is up to Caltech's standard??
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 09:28 am: Edit |
Don't fret Rtkysg, I am not a rating authority. My ratings are my own, not a well circulated periodical. As I clearly indicate above, my ratings are a matter of personal opinion. I have no problems with Caltech. But I personally do not believe Caltech is in the same league as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, etc... It may be in terms of selectivity, but not in terms of reputation and overall academic excellence.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 10:38 am: Edit |
Obviously, you prefer to stay put in your subjective view and I don't write to change your opinion, nevertheless I'm so surprised that you in turn adamantly dispute when people classify Michigan with its realistic level peers like UIUC, UT Austin, Purdue, and Gatech. You then try to compare and put Michigan into Ivy league prestige with Brown, Columbia, Penn, Cornell (yes I know your graduate school is Cornell, but it doesn't mean your undergrad alma mater is at the same level). Ridiculous, don't you think?. Also although Berkeley's undergrad reputation is not so good, its graduate school's reputation surpass Michigan's by far unfortunately, and I hence also conclude that Michigan is not at the same level as Berkeley.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 10:58 am: Edit |
There is no need to get personal. Your comparing Michigan to Purdue and Georgia Tech proves just how much of a reliable analyst you are.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 11:11 am: Edit |
Sure, as reliable as your comparing Caltech to Michigan
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 11:23 am: Edit |
I did not compare Michigan to Caltech. They cannot be compared. But they are both part of a group of universities that are not quite as highly regarded as H,P,S,Y and M but more highly regarded than schools like Vanderbilt, Georgetown, UCLA, Texas, Illinois, Emory etc...
At any rate, once again, I do not see the purpose of your personal attacks. I always clearly state that I am merely giving my opinion. Besides, this is a Cal-Berkeley thread. Let us leave it at that.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 11:44 am: Edit |
Really? Michigan is more highly regarded than Georgetown and UCLA? Then you mean Michigan is as highly regarded as the Ivy League or Duke?
I didn't say Caltech is as highly regarded as HYPSM (you can't expect a specialized tech school to have business & law depts. and hence highly regarded), in fact nobody, except techie/scientist wannabe, ever regard Caltech as a choice, however I did say Caltech has the same prestige as HYPSM.
I have no personal attack intention, but your post here is for everyone to look at, isn't it?, you then must be able to accept the fact that some people will post contradically (but it doesn't mean that I have personal enmity or whatsoever).
If you want to end this issue it's ok, as you wish, I don't mind. But as soon as you write highly disputable things, remember that people have rights to contradict it and put into highlight.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 11:54 am: Edit |
Yes, Michigan is more highly regarded than UCLA and Georgetown. Only one state university equals Michigan and that's Cal, which I would gladly admit does not merely equal Michigan, but actually surpasses it. I have always admitted that Cal is THE #1 State university in the country. But Michigan is generally and widely considered the second best state university in the nation.
At any rate, I think you and I have a different definition of prestige. To me, prestige means recognition. Prestige, where universities are concerned, means that the cream of society's crop (lawyers, doctors, professors, researchers, intellectuals, chiefs of industry, artists, authors, Politicians and highly educated and cultured people in general etc...) recognize a univesity.
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 12:41 pm: Edit |
I admit that Michigan is more highly regarded than UCLA but I must say that the difference is not huge. Of course, huge is a subjective term and to Alexandre’s defense, he never really said that the difference was huge. Michigan is ranked high in many subjects but so is UCLA. On average, Michigan is ranked higher but nevertheless, UCLA is a name seen on almost everyone’s rankings. The dated NRC, US News individual department rankings, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings all suggest that UCLA should be ranked higher than #25 which US News claims. I just never mentioned that before because everyone is subjective in thinking their school should be ranked higher. Further, I only think it should be ranked a few notches higher anyway. I just don’t want this discussion to turn into how bad a school UCLA is.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 12:45 pm: Edit |
"Yes, Michigan is more highly regarded than UCLA and Georgetown."
Yeah right !! Michigan is usually only put as a safety, where Georgetown is often put as a reach. You may want to ask most CC boarders if that's true. Using your definition of prestige, I think it's pretty absurd to measure recognition from the trifling dept of the school, i.e. trying to find engineering recognition from Harvad is silly, similarly to find medical/law recognition from Caltech. But I think you should agree with me that Harvard command the highest recognition possible for non-tech (along with YPS) as Caltech for tech (along with M).
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 01:25 pm: Edit |
Rtkysg, although you quoted Alexandre, I still wonder if your response was directed toward me. I am a UCLA graduate and FREAKEN proud! I think the vast majority of posters on CC dont really understand universities. The thing is that unfortunately I think UMich is slightly better than UCLA. I would like nothing better than UCLA to be the best school in the world. The problem is that it is a top 20 university and a top 15 at best. I just never mention that on these boards because many people will disagree. Oh, and to the laymen, UCLA is an extremely sought after school. It is the most applied to school in the nation and thus has a relatively low acceptance rate.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 01:40 pm: Edit |
Shyboy13, LOL why the world you think that my response is directed to you ? 
I personally think that UCLA is in the same league as Umich, and I also know that UCLA is a very popular school and thousands of Californian are dying to get in there. The pseudo-ranking given by USNEWS IMO is not accurate, hence saying school #10 is better academically than #20 based on USNEWS or anyother commercial based ranking lists is absurd, I believe most students know the 'inherent' ranking among the universities, hence saying Michigan is better than UCLA is very doubtful (You can hardly find 10 out of 10 UCLA students admit that Michigan is better). But I think I miss your point in your post, that is, I don't know what to respond to your post since mine is for Alexandre 
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 02:09 pm: Edit |
Yes, we Bruins know we are good. I have never met a Bruin that thinks they don’t/didn’t attend a very top notch university. It is just a few CC’ers who think differently. Also, I have never met a person who thinks UCLA is “bad” and I went to grad school with people from all over the world. And I do in fact believe that the vast majority of people in California think of Michigan as inferior or at most equivalent to UCLA. Whether or not it is true I am nevertheless glad because I live in and have no plans on moving out of California.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 02:47 pm: Edit |
Shyboy, thank you for your objectivity. And I agree with you entirely. Michigan is considered only marginally better than UCLA. But that's not because Michigan isn't excellent but rather because UCLA is awesome.
Rtkysg, you are incorrect in your assumption that Michigan is a safety to people who consider Georgetown a reach. Besides, I was not discussing selectivity. I thought we were talking about recognition. Again, you speak about things you do not know. My sister and my father studied at Georgetown. I went to Georgetown Prep (a Georgetown affiliated school) and took several classes at Georgetown University. I respect Georgetown a great deal, but it is not held in the same regard as Michigan. When I was admitted into Michigan and Georgetown, my father and sister strongly advised me to chose Michigan because like most people, they recognized Michigan as the better of the two universities.
As for selectivity, again, you seem to speak from opinion not fact. Georgetown's selectivity rank is #16 and Michigan's is #18.
MEAN SAT:
Georgetown 1375
Michigan 1310
MEAN UNWEIGHED GPA:
Michigan 3.8
Georgetown 3.8
% in TOP 10% OF HS CLASS:
Michigan 90%
Georgetown 83%
Obviously, Georgetown needs to accept a mere 3,000 students each year whereas Michigan has to accept 12,000 students, so Michigan does have a higher acceptance rate, but that does not mean that Michigan students are weaker than students at other top universities. But I believe that schools like Michigan, Northwestern, UCLA, Cornell, Chicago and Johns hopkins are better than schools like Georgetown, Emory and Washington University, even if they aren't as selective.
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 03:18 pm: Edit |
When talking about public schools, however good they may be, there's a lot of regionalism involved. Most people outside of California won't have the luxury of attending our fine institutions. As such, their reputation and prestige doesn't tend to transfer across state lines so well. Although Berkeley has made a name for itself, most people outside of California are -not- aware that UCLA is a quality school. God knows, when I was in Oregon - most of us thought that it was just a surfer school, and we were even on the West coast. Even Berkeley's reputation doesn't transfer quite so well to places like NYC and the New England states, since many of the top students there tend to stay in the same region. My sister in law, however, who grew up in Ohio, attended UMich and she tells me it's one of the most respected schools in the country there. Having done hiring, I've certainly seen good things from UMich engineering students. I imagine the same situation exists with UVa - no one out here is going to take its reputation for quality too seriously - but our skepticism doesn't not necessarily translate into it being a lesser quality school. We just don't know many people that have any experience with it, since it tends to draw a regional audience.
The net of this meandering, incoherant diatribe, however is that this whole debate over relative quality of UCLA vs. UMich is absolutely ridiculous. I haven't heard from anyone here that attended both schools for their undergraduate degree, and I'd wager most people don't even know more than the most cursory of details regarding the other university. You're basically arguing from prejudice and a position of ignorance. It's okay, it's human nature. But acknowledge it and put a bit more faith in the people that -HAVE- carefully evaluated each school. As horrible as the methodology is, if USNews (and other sources) place UMich in the position it's in - it's unlikely to be completely undeserved.
| By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 03:18 pm: Edit |
(Erasing an accidental double post)
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 03:35 pm: Edit |
Kryptic, three points I would like to make:
1) All universities save Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford and maybe Cal, are subject to regional preference.
2) Cal, Michigan and UCLA are actually ranked much higher than 21-25 according to most other sources. Only the USNWR ranks them outside of the top 15. Fiske gives all three of them ***** (the highest rating) for academics. The Gourman Report ranks all three of them among the top 10 nationally...at the undergraduate level. Even the USNWR ranks them much higher than #21-25 (Cal #6, Michigan #9 and UCLA #18) in terms of academic quality.
3) The people at the USNWR are not experts on universities or they are only interested in selling the magazine. But they are completely innacurate in many respects. And I am qualified to judge them since I have put thousdands of hours on evaluating universities in the past 10 years and I am about to start my own college consulting company due to excessive demand for my services.
| By Sakky (Sakky) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 05:17 pm: Edit |
"Sakky, you are comparing Cal and Michigan to the top 5 universities. I never claimed that Michigan and Cal are top 5 universities"
I am doing that comparison? I beg your pardon, but I don't think so. Pardon me if I'm mistaken, but I believe that it's actually shyboy13 who's actually doing that comparison.
After all, if you look through shyboy13's arguments, you will see that he believes that if a school doesn't even offer certain kinds of programs, then it earns a zero in the programs for the purposes of determining overall school quality. To extrapolate from that argument, it must then be true that because Princeton has no professional programs, Princeton earns a zero in all those categories and therefore Michigan and Cal are far far better schools than Princeton. Heck, if you look at Princeton the way shyboy13 wants to look at it, you must agree that Princeton is a pretty darn mediocre school. By the same token, because MIT lacks a law school, a medical school, and most humanities PhD programs, it gets zeroes in all those categories and so MIT is clearly a worse school than Michigan and Cal.
Again, notice it's not me that put forth this idea. Somebody else did that.
Now don't get me wrong. I don't have an inherent problem with shyboy13's definitions of better or worse. He's allowed to use whatever definition he wants. What I question is how much value those definitions really have. According to shyboy13's definition of what's better and what's worse, it's inescapable that Princeton is a worse school than Michigan or Cal for the simple fact that Princeton lacks professional schools and therefore earns zeroes in those categories. Yet the fact is, I think we'd all agree that most, and certainly most undergrads, who are admitted to both Princeton and Michigan will probably pick Princeton unless they can't pay for it. Does anybody seriously disagree with that? If not, then what does it really mean to be "worse" when most people will pick the "worse" school over the "better" school?
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 05:34 pm: Edit |
Sakky, I, Alexandre, never said Michigan was equal to Princeton at the undergraduate level. I always clearly state that Michigan is not as good as H,P,S,Y and M. ALWAYS. If you can find a post composed by me that says Michigan is equal to those 5 at the undergraduate level, show it to me. What I am saying is that the USNWR comprehensive ranking is off. Cal belongs among the top 10 and Michigan among the top 15.
This said, I would most likely pick Michigan over Princeton if I had to do it all over again. Ann Arbor is way cooler and more fun than Princeton, the students at Michigan are on averahe better grounded and happier and I would not have done better for myself had I gone to Princeton. I got offers from Lehman Brothers in London, Goldman Sachs in NYC and Amgen in Thousand Oaks when I graduated from Michigan. I also got into top graduate schools, including Cal and Columbia (Economics PhD programs) right upon my graduation from Michigan and Kellogg (MBA) and Cornell (MILR program) in 1999. The only two schools I may have picked over Michigan are Harvard and Stanford. And I was a 3.5 student, so its not like I was exceptional at Michigan.
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 06:26 pm: Edit |
Ok, I am going to probably be the most unpopular person in the world for saying this but here it goes. A school is great because of the strength of its programs. A school like Cal is great because it is strong in almost everything. Cal doesn’t have a Med school, for example, so it gets a zero in that category. The strength of the rest of its programs are enough, in my opinion, to make it one of the best schools in the US. If we can imagine a school exactly like Berkeley except it had a medical school, it would be hard to say that Cal was just as good. Now, just because I say it is third doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Keep in mind that I never even went to Cal so there should be no real bias on my part.
My ideas do not suggest that schools like MIT and Caltech are poor schools at all. They are so good at what they do that it likely makes up for their lack of variety. I can say, and this is where I may get into some trouble, that I have often questioned the true greatness of these types of schools as a whole. I am not alone here as I have talked to quite a few people who feel this way also. The same logic can be applied to a school such as Brown that is strong in relatively few subjects. Almost no one is willing to accept the notion that Brown is not an extremely strong school so even if I feel this way, it is meaningless as it won’t be accepted by the general public. Same thing with your prides and joys the LAC’s.
A great university is great at many things. You could find schools that are better at certain things than Cal. It is hard to find schools that are better than Cal at mostly everything. Berkeley is one of the most well-rounded universities in the US.
| By Kazz (Kazz) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 10:36 pm: Edit |
"Cal doesn’t have a Med school, for example, so it gets a zero in that category. The strength of the rest of its programs are enough, in my opinion, to make it one of the best schools in the US."
but would Cal be as good in its other departments IF they had a medical school to spend resources on?
something would have to give.
| By Webhappy2 (Webhappy2) on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 10:47 pm: Edit |
I believe a lot of schools can be fairly self-sufficient, esp. if they charge lots for tuition (which would be harder for Cal, as a public) + win money in research grants.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 02:59 am: Edit |
Alexandre,
You seem like to think that your post is objective because it's based on some data, but do you realize that the way you conclude based on those data may not be accurate at all? For example the data of the percentage of top 10% HS class, what do you think the implication of this number when HS standards differ among states. From an engineer point of view, the way you conclude using those data is often inaccurate.
You seems like to stick around recognition, well, tell me national accomplishments which bring Michigan to its uppermost recognition (E.g. Stanford->Silicon Valley, MIT->MIT Radar-lab, Caltech->NASA JPL, Harvard->President/CEO producer, Berkeley->Livermore nuclear lab, Yale->president producer, Princeton->Institute of Advanced Study, etc), particularly tell me Michigan national accomplishments which surpass UCLA national accomplishments? (notice that when I say national recognition, I would prefer Nobel Laureates to regular professors)
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 04:03 am: Edit |
Michigan does not have a distiguishing feature. It is a very well rounded university.
Michigan alumni have sat in the Oval Office, walked on the moon, won Olympic Gold Medals, won Nobel Prizes, held the office of Supreme Court Justice and Surgeon General, been Chairman of the FED, and CEOs of countless Fortune 500 firms. The current Presidents of MIT, Columbia and Princeton are Michigan alums, although I think Vest is retiring this year, after 15 great years as president of MIT.
Michigan is a main hunting ground for companies like J.P.Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Dow Chemical, Ford, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, Lockheed Martin, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Medtronic, General Electric, Intel, HP, Microsoft, Apple, McKinsey, Booz Allen, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young. Each of those hires at least 10 Michigan graduates annually. Starting salaries for Michigan graduaduates are mong the highest in the nation. Actually, Michigan's alumni base was rated the 4th wealthiest per capita in the entire country by Forbes Magazine in 1997 or 1998.
Michigan is also one of just 2 universities (Stanford being the other), to have top 10 programs of Business, Engineering, Law and Medicine and Michigan is just one of 4 universities (Stanford, Harvard and Cal being the others) to be ranked in the top 15 in every single discipline (from languages to History, from English to Physics and from Economics to Mathematics) known to man. By that reckoning, Michigan is one of the 3 or 4 most versatile academic institutions in the country.
Michigan also spends more on research than any university in the country except for Johns Hopkins. It owns and operates one of the top 10 hospitals in the country and is one of just 10 universities to have an Endowment exceeding $4 Billion.
Oh, I almost forgot, Michigan is also the only university to have won National Championships in Division I Football, Basketball, Hockey and Baseball!
In short, Michigan is very well rounded. That is what makes Michigan one of the nation's top universites.
And by the way, you are entirely correct in saying that different states have different HS standards. I did in fact take that into consideration. I told you, I am an authority on the subject. I have studied it at great legnth. The Michigan HS system is certainly respected. If you want to compare Michigan HS to California HS, I would be glad to do so. You can check out those number in the Almanac for your self if you wish, so don't take my word for it:
EXPENDITURE PER HS STUDENT:
California: $7,000
Michigan: $9,000
National average: $7,800
MATH, READING, and SCIENCE ACHIEVEMENT SCORES:
California: 52, 61, 40
Michigan: 70, 77, 69
National average: 65, 74, 59
MEAN SAT SCORE OF HS STUDENTS:
California: V 499, M 519, Total 1018
Michigan: V 564, M 576, Total 1140
National Average: V 507, M 519, Total 1026
It would appear that Michigan HS students are certainly not behind...and by that reckoning, graduating in the top 10% of one's HS class in Michigan is pretty much as good as graduating in the top 10% of one's HS class in California or most other states for that matter...if not better. According to most sources, the University of Michigan is considered "Most Selective". According to the USNWR, Michigan is the 18th most selective university in the US. Cornell and Georgetown are #16, Northwestern and UCLA are tied with Michigan at #18 and Chicago (Nobel Prize central since you value Nobel Prizes so much) and Johns Hopkins are #24. But I do not believe selectivity is an indicator of a university's overall excellence. Eventhough Chicago is rated a little lower than Michigan in terms of selectivity, I actually believe that it is a little better than Michigan in terms of academic excellence, and it has nothing to do with their Nobel Prize winning professors (all 7 of them who simply do not teach undergrads!).
Rtkysg, I am not trying to convince you that Michigan is a good university (your disrespect for Michigan is yours to cherish), I am just correcting you when you say that it isn't. I will not stand by and watch anybody mislead the students on this forum.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 11:53 am: Edit |
Well, you don't seem to understand my point, look I may be wrong later on, but this what I was trying to imply from my previous post:
For the applicants to Georgetown, how many of them are from the private school (generally thought to be of higher standard), and how sure are you that the top 10% of the HS are made significantly not from these private schools, considering that Georgetown is rather small and exclusive school, famous for politics and the applicant pool is relatively not well-rounded.
On the contrary, as you said, Michigan is well-rounded, and its applicant pool typically consists of public high school in Michigan state (correct me if I'm wrong), hence the top 10% of HS may not be able to be accurately used for comparison.
Again you often quote USNEWS for selectivity; if Stanford's president dismiss the totality of USNEWS to be used for accurate gauge, so do I. According to USNEWS, Caltech and MIT is less selective than Columbia, but do you really think so ?
I does not hold the least any disrespect for Michigan, as I told you many times. However, your view, as you may argue about me, is so often skewed by mere a magazine ranking USNEWS.
| By Dstark (Dstark) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 11:57 am: Edit |
Well, the guy who ran Stanford a few years ago said both Berkeley and Michigan are among the top half dozen universities in the US.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 02:48 pm: Edit |
Dstark, every professor in America, and most CEOs and corporate recruiters rank Cal in the top 10 and Michigan in the top 15 (that's being conservative). I really don't understand the origins of Rtksyg's extreme prejudice. And he claims to know more about Michigan than I do, telling me that my point of view is skewed. That is condescending to the point of insult.
He pretends to know Georgetown, Cornell and Michigan as well as I do, and he is convinced that Cornell and Georgetown are better recognized. My two sisters and I all got our MAs from Cornell. We spent 2 years and thousands of dollars in Ithaca. My eldest sister got her Bachelor and Master degrees from Georgetown (SFS). My father got his PhD from Georgetown. Out history with Georgetown goes back 40 years. My father is a donor. I attend Georgetown's Preparatory school. And the guy honestly thinks he knows Cornell and Georgetown as well as I do. I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff. And now, he is trying to say that the Michigan students who graduated at the top 10% of their HS class are not as good as the Georgetown students who graduated at the top 10% of their HS class. As if that could be measured!
And then he tries to invalidate the USNWR selectivity rating by saying that since it states that MIT and Columbia are more selective than Caltech, is MUST be wrong! First of all, USNWR rates Columbia's selectivty #13 and Caltech's #4. So I do't see how USNWR says that Columbia is more selective. Secondly, MIT is #2 and Caltech is #4 in terms of selectivity. I don't see how that is enough of a difference to disqualify the USNWR selectivity rating.
I am not big fan of the USNWR, but two things they get right are the selectivity rank (which means nothing anyway) and the Academic Rating since it is given out by academics who know universities inside and out.
| By Dstark (Dstark) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 02:58 pm: Edit |
Alexandre, it does crack me up when people who have never gone to a school act like experts.
We know the truth about Michigan and Berkeley.
I don't know where the prejudice against some great state schools comes from?
Elitism?
The worry that someone might be getting a better bang for the buck?
The fact that you can have fun and get a great education?
Mental illness?
| By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 03:39 pm: Edit |
Dstark, I dont think that Rtkysg has anything against public schools. Then again, I dont know him. I am just judging by his posts. I really could be wrong. I personally agree with everything you have said about prejudice against public universities. I dont know where it comes from either. Elitism, mental illness, and ignorance are all possible explanations.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 04:13 pm: Edit |
chill out Alexandre, I don't see any reason to fume over my post. Let's make things straight here:
You are the one who first bring in your issue about the top 10% HS percentage, and the way you embolden your claim with the data is just inaccurate/unreliable. I was trying to point that out.
For selectivity ranking, I think I mixed it with acceptance rate. Well sorry, but I'll be happy if you could give me the link since I don't have the premium issue. Anyway, do you know why some data like peer assessment score in USNEWS is not totally accurate, esp. for undergrad? You think the academics really know inside-out of the universities and have no bias attitude? think again !
Dstark, can you tell me then whether by going to a certain school you will certainly know better the recognition/prestige comparison between your school and others? Similarly, will you see the unbiased image of your school better than rest of the world? I ain't no expert (if one ever exists) in such issue, my post is totally based on friends' testimony (some are UMich alumni) & experience. Anyway, Dstark, I doubt your own ranking list is formed by USNEWS; It's more likely formed by your parents', teachers', mentors' and friends' experience, isn't it?
I don't have any prejudice against state schools, I merely point out that Berkeley is in the same league as Ivy league (in overall image) while Michigan is not. Why the accusation?
Do you know something about yin and yang, Dstark, when you admit one word, elitism, into your point you are likely to attract the opposite word, inferiority complex into play. So be careful with such double-edge sword judgement. 
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 04:50 pm: Edit |
Well then, let me be the one to tell you that Michigan, in terms of overall image, is considered as good as most Ivy League schools. You may have met Michigan alums who don't think so. I have met Stanford and Ivy League Alums who feel their school is overrated. Many students at top 10 universities are disatisfied with the education they receive. You may also have met the occasional Michigan idiot. I met idiots at MIT and Stanford too. But those are personal opinions and do not represent the facts. You so easily dismiss the opinion of academics. But those academics know more about universities than most of us do. Most of them studied at a couple of the top schools and taught /worked at several other universities. They have dealt with faculty and students from several other universities. They evaluated undergraduate and graduate students from dozens of schools and universities accross the nation. They know universities much better than most, and their assessment is usually quite accurate.
It is generally agreed, by top academics and chiefs industry, that Michigan is on par with Brown, Cal-Berkeley, Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Penn. Each of those schools is different. Some are considered a little better (like Cal-Berkeley) others perhaps a little weaker (Brown). But they are each considered elite for their own special reasons and those reasons are many and legitimate.
There is an old saying which I am sure you are familiar with. The saying goes something like this; "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." If the parts of Michigan are made up of 60 or 70 (more than any other university) top 5 and top 10 departments, and the university is considered one of the 20 most selective universities in the nation, and the university is one of the top 2 research spenders and that university has a top 5 rated faculty and one of the 10 largest endowments, chances are, that whole of the university is one of the top 10 in the nation.
| By Dstark (Dstark) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 05:36 pm: Edit |
Rtkysg, the key words in your post are "I ain't no expert".
In my field, I knew who was great or not.
Maybe, others in their fields know the same?
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 11:35 pm: Edit |
Sorry Alexandre, but again our paths diverge from this point of view. Alexandre, Dstark too (so that you will not be such a cynic), my own experience and perception root to technical background, a bit biased perhaps, but I would make some justification later on.
I'd say first about Caltech and why it deserves in the same league as HYPSM. I'm not sure whether you refer to top academics and chief industry in non-tech fields, but if yo do, then I think they don't really qualify for the assessment of science/tech schools including Caltech. I'm currently a PhD grad student at MIT and have met tons professors in my line (engrg/science) and they mostly agree with me. This is why Caltech grad have easy placement at MIT/Stanford/Harvard etc and Michigan's grads have much harder placement at top grad schools. Do you know that in tech/science, PhD program is almost equivalent to working for professors acting as the graduate adviser, hence you can see their preferrence from the way they recruit grad students, not from their filled-up USNEWS questionnaire, do you get my point now?
Previously I've worked, well not very long, in Silicon Valley. Guess what? Caltech grads on the average receive slightly higher salary than Cal EECS/MIT/Stanford's grads (MIT's command the upperbound pay) and significantly higher than Michigan/UIUC's, when I asked informally to my supervisor, he said that simply Caltech grads have gone through the toughest course in US and prove themselves well. Now for interview, Stanford/MIT/Caltech grads command better chance than the rest (Cal follows closely). The tenure at Caltech (for science/tech) is as hard to obtain as MIT/Harvard/Stanford/Cal and harder than the rest of the universities, I know this since I've considered and asked around for university tenure job as an alternative to industry option.In science and tech, Caltech commands the highest respect in the academics and industry (together with MIT/Stanford), but you can't say the same for Brown, U.Chicago, or Cornell. Why? Because in liberal art and humanity, HYP take the crown and get the highest respect. You may want to argue that U.Chicago's economy program is just as good as Harvard's, but remember that the average of Harvard's undergrad hold higher respect than U.Chicago's in the academic/industry, why? again because the selectivity and student quality come into play. Notice that for the very same reason, Wharton is clearly more prestigious than the rest of UPenn, and Cal grad school is much more elite than its undergrad school. Unfortunately, they are parts of the universities, for the reverse is true, we are going to have HYPSMCBW (W=Wharton) in the uppermost league.
By the same reasoning, Michigan is separable from Brown, Cornell, and some other Ivy leagues. Take Cornell and Michigan for example, although you may argue they have similar program etc etc, Cornell will command higher respect, esp. for engineering, why? again the average Cornell's students have better qualification than the average Michigan's, and Cornell grad has better chance for an interview than Michigan grad. Also Cornell grads have better chances for placement at top grad schools and obtaining tenure job at Cornell is normally harder than Michigan.
Again I'd like to emphasize that certainly exist Michigan professors and students who obtain the highest national credit and reputation, and towards this exclusive group, the academia and industry would respect them at HYPSMC level. However, you must admit that in the average, this does not happen.
Now I'll be glad if you would explain your view with something different from a mere USNEWS ranking scores. Dstark, you may also tell me if what I'm saying above is wrong.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 10:06 am: Edit |
But Rtkysg, you keep going back to your little corner of the world. A university's prestige/reputation is not limited to the point of view of a small group of people from one or two or 5 disciplines. You are talking about the perception of departments, not universities. I would never deny that Caltech is better, albeit marginally, than Michigan in Engineering. But Enginering is not Michigan's strength and even then, Michigan is considered one of the top 6 or 7 in the nation.
But I digress. A university's reputation is derived from the opinion of an entire society. The sum of the educated people both in academe and industry put together. The lawyers, medical doctors, dentists, politicians, bankers, marketing analysts, consultants, historians, anthropologists, sociologist, economists, authors, artists, musicians as well as the engineers and the physists, mathematicians, computer scientists, geologists and chemists. A school like Caltech impacts merely 5 or 6 of those dsciplines. Michigan impacts them all. Lawyers in Florida and Washington, dentists in Southern California and South Carolina, Doctors in New York and Texas, Investment Bankers and executives in London and Chicago all respect Michigan and firmly believe that it is one of the top 10 or 15 universtities in the US.
I also completely disagree with your assessment that Michigan's faculty and students are not as respected as those at other top universities. Michigan's faculty is consistantly ranked among the top 5 in the nation. It is indeed easier to get tenure at Michigan and Harvard than it is at MIT or Caltech because Michigan and Harvard have faculties of 2,000+ and student bodies of 20,000+. They need faculty galore. But that does not mean their faculties are weaker. It just means that they don't need to axe talent. But to say that Michigan's faculty and students are not as respected as those at other schools is completely wrong.
Michigan is ranked among the top 10 in over 70 disciplines. You cannot be ranked so high in so many disciplines and not have an exceptional faculty. And those guys are paid for it. When taking cost of living into consideration, Michigan professors are among the 10 best paid in the the nation.
http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/aaupresults.php?Year=2004&State_Type=All%20states&Category_type=I&Sort=&Unranked=0&limit=-1
Michigan students are sought after by the top graduate schools and the top companies. On an annual basis, over 1,000 of Michigan students go to top 10 graduate schools in their chosen fields. Close to another 3,000 get jobs at fortune 500 companies. Michigan graduates (both from the undergraduate and graduate schools( are paid as much as those coming out of the top universities. When I started working for Lehman Brothers right after graduating from Michigan, my salary was equal to my coleagues who had just joined from Wharton and Sloan.
And the suposed lack of respect afforded to Michigan in Silicon Valley is news to me. My friends at Cisco, Intel, Sun (which was founded by Bill Joy, a Michigan alum), Google (which was co-founded by Larry Page, a Michigan Alum), Oracle etc... tell me that Michigan is one of the top 5 or 6 schools on their recruiting list, ahead of Cornell. In fact, Cisco is opening an office in Ann Arbor purely for the purpose of recruiting talent from the university. Furthermore, according to the NRC and the USNWR (two independent ranking sources), Michigan is ranked ahead of Cornell in overall Engineering and in Electrical Engineering. I guess you are hanging out with the "we hate Michigan" club.
Your claim that Caltech is on even footing with Harvard is preposterous, as is your claim that Michigan does not belong in the same league as Brown and Cornell.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 12:32 pm: Edit |
Alexandre, I think you mixed up the definition of prestige and being well-known, although of course, you have every right to form your own definition. You simply discard the notion of prestige for individual field and try to take the overall average, but this doesn't make sense since we mostly agree that Julliard is the most prestigious art schools, we also often say that Harvard's engrg dept. is not prestigious and so on. The notion of prestige is more often linked to the quality status rather than quantity status if you know what I mean. When you refer to superficial recognition, Penn state is more well-known than UPenn based on Gallup poll 2003. Wait, rtkysg, you must count only the people from top academics and industry!! Well, in that case, I would further up counting only the people from respective field. Do you see where I'm heading?
I have no reason to join 'Michigan hate group', heck, some of my good friends were from UMich. Believe me, the salary distribution I mentioned previously was true, at least in my company. This however doesn't mean that Michigan alumni can not catch up with the salary since once you work, only your job performance matters. And again, I didn't say that all Michigan alumni must be less strong than HYPSMC alumni, certainly there're some exceptions, but this unfortunately is not the general case, and I don't think Michigan have the 29 Nobel laureate (science) Caltech produce, does it (correct me if I'm wrong)?
Now let us assume that Michigan and Cornell have equal prestige for graduate level including their faculty. We now focus on the undergrad prestige, and guess what? Michigan students' profiles are not as stellar as Cornell or Brown students', and this consequently divides them into a different prestige level.
Oh yes, I agree that Caltech is not as prestigious as Harvard, in fact no school in US is as prestigious as Harvard. However, I do think Caltech is on even footing with SYPM, and yes I don't think Michigan belong to the same league as Brown and Cornell. If you don't believe me, try to post a new thread on this issue in the CC Ivy League forum and see the result yourself.
BTW, can you give me the list/link to USNEWS selectivity ranking. Thx.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 03:09 pm: Edit |
My definition of prestige is not off...maybe yours is. Clearly, your English is quite weak. Prestige, as it is defined by the Oxford Dictionary:
"The level of respect at which a person or thing (universities in our case) is regarded by others. Widely recognized prominence, distinction or importance."
Caltech is not on even footing with P,Y,S or M. It is on even footing with Chicago, Cal-Berkeley, Duke and yes, much to your disgust, Michigan.
And you seem to think that I compare Michigan to H,P,Y,M and S at the undergraduate level. I do not. Michigan cannot quite compete with H,P,Y,S and M. Michigan is a top 10-15 university, but it is not a top 5 university. Now, if you look at the enitre university, including graduate schools, Michigan is not on the same footing as Cornell...it is actually superior to Cornell. Michigan's graduate departments are ranked above Cornell's accross the board. The only exception to that rule are English, Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science. In all other disciplines and in all professional schools, Michigan is ranked ahead of Cornell. Michigan is considered one of the top 4 universities in the country when graduate schools are factored in. So when I compare Michigan to Brown and Cornell and Chicago and Johns Hopkins etc...I am talking about undergraduate education.
And your claim that "Michigan students' profiles are not as stellar as Cornell or Brown students', and this consequently divides them into a different prestige level" is entirely wrong. Michigan's undergraduate students are rated as highly as Cornell's...and even slightly higher than Chicago's and Johns Hopkins'. But the difference is actually insignificant. You really underrate Michighan and that only speaks about your ignorance. I would expect that from an uneducated person, but not from an Electrical Engineer. And no, I am not going to post this on the CC boards. I will take the word of the Peer Assessment rating and other more reliable sources. People is these forums are simply not knowledgeable enough. They know about their universities and that's about it. Look at you. You genuinely believe that Caltech is as well recognized and as good a university as Stanford and Yale.
I cannot provide you the link to the premium selectivity ranking because it would be a breach of copyright laws and I will not do that. But I will give you the actual rank:
SELECTIVITY RANK:
#1 Yale
#2 MIT
#2 Princeton
#4 Caltech
#4 Harvard
#6 Stanford
#7 Penn
#8 Duke
#8 Washington University
#10 Brown
#10 Dartmouth
#10 Rice
#13 Cal-Berkeley
#13 Columbia
#15 Emory
#16 Cornell
#16 Georgetown
#18 Michigan-Ann Arbor
#18 Northwestern
#18 UCLA
#21 Notre Dame
#21 USC
#21 William and Mary
#24 Chicago
#24 Johns Hopkins
And other selectivity rankings from Newsweek/Kaplan are very similar.
| By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 04:01 pm: Edit |
Allow me to interject. I definitely think Caltech is on par with Stanford, Yale, MIT, and Princeton. In fact, I think it's on par with Harvard as well. Caltech is on a level above most other universities in the US, even though some people may never have heard of it.
As a top public school, Michigan is on the level of Cornell, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Columbia, Duke, UPenn, and Chicago. It definitely deserves a place among the top ten universities, its US news Ranking does not do it any justice. It's one of the most severely underranked universities on US News along with UC Berkeley, and Michigan has got a ton of prestige.
However, I still think Caltech is on a level above Berkeley and Michigan. For most high school valedictorians and ivy-league aspirants, Caltech is viewed as a top prize along with Harvard and Yale. It's super selective, and super prestigious among those in the know.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 04:16 pm: Edit |
Thank you for your listing Alexandre.
You simply neglect the possibility of different implications that can be derived from your Oxford dictionary's definition. Look at how these words: "well recognized prominence, distinction and importance" can be used with different weightage when defining prestige. Particularly you emphasize on well recognition while I more on distinction/prominence. You argue that Caltech is not well recognized since it has impacted only on a few disciplines, on the other hand I would argue that Michigan has no prominence and distinction in many of its discipline. Michigan may be in the top 10-15 for its famous majors, but Caltech is in the top 1-5 for its prominent majors (science/tech). The different is whether you put more weightage on the quantity or the quality to define prestige. You seem to have a lot of knowledge and data, however your analysis and reasoning skill is undoubtedly very poor.
To prove the strength of student body, instead of taking a vote in this CC forum where everybody generally is either prestige-whore or attentive to good schools, you rely only on the USNEWS peer assessment ranking from professors who don't give a s**t about the ranking and are often biased (e.g. Michigan alumni in MIT faculty will definitely favor Michigan over Cornell), and you still can call that reliable? I would not expect that from an intelligent Michigan graduate.
Caltech is not as well-known as Yale/Stanford (esp. in the world, Stanford is more well-regarded and recognized), yes, but it commands equal prestige. Many science/tech students will turn down Yale/Stanford for Caltech (i.e. average Caltech admits are usually Stanford/MIT & to a lesser extent Harvard admits and vice versa), but hey, I guess there're not so many students will turn down Cornell/Brown for Michigan (i.e average Michigan admits are not Cornell/Brown admits, but the reverse is more likely to be true)? Admit it! I dare you again to post this issue to the CC forum. I don't understand why you look down and underestimate these CC posters? They actually have obtained their experience from their family, friend, and academic environments. They collectively are the ones who really know the prestige of a school because they vigorously try to differentiate marginally layer and layer among the universities. They are certainly not worse than academics and industry who will recklessly fill-out the USNEWS questionnaire and forget it on the next day. Both you and I know exactly how a working adult normally doesn't give a d**n about the schools' ranking, but focuses more on job performance and office politics.
ahh, Stanfordman99, this guy is really neutral and have no elitism attitude , just one or two persons more like him giving such support for Michigan, Alexandre, I'm willing to concede that Michigan is as prestigious as Cornell.
Again thx for the selectivity list
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 05:19 pm: Edit |
I turned down Cornell and Brown to go to Michigan. I also turned down Chicago, Duke, Penn, Columbia and Cal. I have rarely met a Michigan student that did not have a choice of other top ranked universities. According to Fiske, many Michigan students get into Northwestern, Cornell, Duke and Penn and sometimes (not often or always mind you, just sometimes) chose them over Michigan.
Anyway, we are not going to agree on this point, but I will keep my eyes open to make sure you do not spread lies to students on this forum. Like I said, I will not allow you to mislead kids.
Stanfordman is not "neutral" nor does he "lack elitist" attitude. He simply knows his universities. Maybe you should learn from him.
Finally, I do not look down on the CC posters, but I do not believe they are qualified to pass judgement on institutions other than their own. If you go to any university forum in this site and look around, the students will always recommend their own schools over clearly superior schools. I have seen Vanderbilt and Washington U. students seriously recommend their school over schools like Chicago and Cornell. They genuinely believe that their schools are better.
| By Rtkysg (Rtkysg) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 11:40 pm: Edit |
May be you are a first rate/cream student at Michigan, or you have turned down Wharton and Harvard altogether, I don't know. But I know for sure that such decision is not the option for most people in the Michigan thread.
As I said previously, I'd be happy to end this issue, however, I will also make sure that you don't bluff our younger generation here as a Michigan troll.
When some CC posters here recommend Vanderbilt/Wustl over Chicago/Cornell, they don't make up the university prestige like what you did, but they describe the advantages, be it its environment or location, of their choice of schools.
| By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 04:46 am: Edit |
I graduated from Michigan with a 3.5 GPA...barely. I was not the cream of Michigan student body...not even close. Most students around me where just as capable. And I did not say I got into Harvard. I always admit that I woulkd most likely chose Harvard and Stanford over Michigan. I would indeed pick Michigan over Wharton. Michigan's Business school reputation is not as good as Wharton's, but it is not far behind and the quality of life at Michigan blows away the Penn quality of life.
I repeat, and I am tired of your insinuations, many Michigan students pick Michigan over Penn, Cornell, Duke and Northwestern. I was not unique. All the students from my High School who chose Michigan, picked it over at least 1 other top 15 university.
The top 25% (as big as Harvard's and bigger than Y,P,S and M entire entering Freshman classes) of Michigan's students graduated at the top 1% of their High School class, with 4.0 unweighed GPAs, a bunch of 5s on their AP exams and SAT scores between 1400 and 1600. Those are actually slightly better than H, Y,P,M and S averages. All of those had the option of going to another top 10 university. They chose Michigan because it has top 10 or top 15 academics and an incredible quality of life.
The 50-74 percentile of the students graduated in the top 5% of their High School class, with 3.8-3.99 unweighed GPAs and SAT scores in the 1300-1390 range. Many of those students had option of going elsewhere.
The 25-49 percentile graduated in the top 10% of their High School class with 3.6-3.79 GPAs and scores of 1200-1290 on their SAT. Some of those, especially the URMs (which make up the bulk of those students), had the choice of going to other top universities.
The bottom 25% of Michigan student body do not usually belong to the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Pharmacy, Architecture and Urban Planning, Engineering or Business. They usually belong to the colleges of Nursing, Art and Design, Music, Natural Resources and Environment or Kinesiology. Those students pick Michigan because it is usually ranked in the top 5 in the nation in those fields (especially Nursing, Kinesiology and Music), but they are not academic in nature. They are the reason why Michigan's SAT scores appear low, but don't be fooled, even those students are terribly gifted at what they decide to study and I would never give up their presence at Michigan just to bolster the numbers. But if Michigan did not have those colleges, the mean SAT score of the school would jump from 1310 to 1350. By the way, the school your own girlfriend attends, Cornell, has a similar characteristic. Where it not for the schools of Human Ecology and Agriculture, the mean SAT score at Cornell would jump from 1370 to 1410.
I am not a Michigan troll. You will never see me recommend Michigan over S, H, P,Y and M. Those are the only schools in the country that are appreciably better than Michigan and I will always admit that. Look at my posts and tell me when I have acted like a troll. I have always been even handed in my recommendations. You will not see me claim that Michigan is better than Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke or Chicago or any other top 15 -20 university. You are the one that goes around saying that Michigan is only as good as Georgia Tech and Purdue. I care nothing for your opinion, but like I said, I will not stand by and watch you mislead students.
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