Regarding Schlissel's academic talks recently
http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com/articles/colleges-that-rank-we…
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/na…
Michigan is 29th on the second link list. Currently we are not on the first link list because, well we have not been good at football lately! Schlissel, Hackett, Harbaugh I believe will raise the bar for us to climb both lists. I was a bit surprised that UCLA and USC along with North Carolina were so high?
Five Cali schools in the top 25 academically (I guess I just did not think those institutions, save Cal Berkley and Stanford, were up that high academically).
Interesting article to read with the hope we now have for the future! Even though I was never a UM student, I have multiple family members and very close friends that are either current students are alumni. I take pride in being a Michigan (total school) fan!
January 12th, 2015 at 12:54 PM ^
They're not? By whom?
January 12th, 2015 at 12:34 PM ^
Cool, so we should be Alabama on the football field and Harvard in academics.
January 12th, 2015 at 1:47 PM ^
That's us, baby!
A lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets.
January 12th, 2015 at 12:38 PM ^
Nowhere, is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours.
January 12th, 2015 at 1:17 PM ^
This reply is in response to several comments above: My original intent was to describe that Schlissel's adademic as well as sports are important to the culture comments are interesting when relating them to the first link. I am not debating whether US News is your go to source or not. I thought it interesting that Michigan under the leadership of the three men I mentioned will be on both lists sooner than later and may rise in the first one under Schlissel.
Please do not take offense if you are an alumnus and feel like these rankings are an injustice to your degree(s). The intent of the forum was to mention that with the people in place it will be fun/cool/exciting to see Michigan climb the rankings and be added to.
Go Blue!
January 12th, 2015 at 2:28 PM ^
Universities near the U.S. coasts and their population aggregations receive favorable consideration, in part, because the "analysts" are situated there. These analysts tend to direct their own children to schools proximate. Chicago and Northwestern are located in or near the midwest's grandest population center, and Notre Dame is "the" preeminent Catholic university, but otherwise midwest schools repose in what the coastals refer to as "flyover territory." There also is persistent belief in this country that if you pay more to attend a university you must be obtaining a superior education. Plenty of key hiring and decision-making people recognize that Michigan is an elite school across the distribution of UG concentrations, particularly in STEM disciplines. Although I am pleased to learn that Dr. Schlissel has committed to elevate our stature.
January 12th, 2015 at 1:43 PM ^
Again, people get super-worked up about a 5th-tier magazine's rankings of colleges that apparently treats a private school with a total enrollment about equal to an average UM freshman class (Tufts) as being as good as Michigan because they goose a couple of acceptance criteria and *shocking* have smaller class size than a big state university like UM. I'm not picking on Tufts because it is a good school, but this isn't even apples and oranges; this is apples from Chile and beets from the middle of Iowa. UM is a great public institution, and virtually any other ranking over than USNWR has shown Michigan at least holding steady if not improving. UM hasn't "slipped" as much as other schools have caught up/figured out how to game the ranking systems.
January 12th, 2015 at 2:10 PM ^
Our law school was almost always rated highly yet not on top. And then Bollinger, a New Yorker, took the reins and we shot up overnight to, else near, the #1 place and ahead of even vaunted Harvard (my SO's school). Once Bollinger departed the U. our law school ranking normalized. The intake metrics for Law remained essentially the same during, pre and post Bollinger. Majority of this popularity contest is subjective crap. A Michigan degree is a valuable tool in your kit bag but, as always, YOU are the one charged with deploying it.
January 12th, 2015 at 2:57 PM ^
There's more to it than that. I read an analysis of this a ways back and the US News rankings now have a decided bias toward smaller, less diverse (academically not racially) schools. It turns out it's easier for them to marshall the students and alumni to respond in greater relative numbers and more consistently to the questions that produce these rankings. It's more involved but that's the gist of it.
January 12th, 2015 at 5:26 PM ^
Absolutely. That's my issue with the rankings - it's full of subjective/quantity metrics. And again, not crapping on the schools around UM, but schools like Tufts, Wake Forest have advantages because of their size and how the rankings are constructed, and it's why Notre Dame somehow is a top-20 school here despite virtually every other ranking system putting it quite a bit farther down.
January 12th, 2015 at 3:58 PM ^
A few years ago when my daughters were applying to college, i spent some time looking at the rankings. The criteria and formula are clearly arbitrary and subject to manipulation. To me, the most important criterion was what US News called "academic reputation," which was based on a survey of academics from other institutions. UM scored very high, much higher than its overall score. But that criterion counted only 25%, so UM suffered when other criteria, like alumni giving, were figured in.
The reason I thought that academic reputation was the most important is that it is the clearest indication of what your degree is worth. Like anything else, it is worth what knowledgeable people think it is worth.
January 12th, 2015 at 4:34 PM ^