Origins of the "Michigan Harvard of the Midwest" saying

I think the saying pre-dates JFK, but that's neither here nor there. Many visiting profs from Harvard around that time would also describe the schools in that way (sure, probably just to win points with their students, but whatever). I know because I know.

I guess you learn something new everyday. I now have a comeback for "Psshh, Michigan is Harvard of the West...hahaha....yeah riiiiggghhhhtttt..."

Michigan is commonly referred to as a Public Ivy.

Public Ivy refers to schools that "provide an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price."

Ha, ask anyone from out of state or in grad school about that one.

The saying that Harvard is the Michigan of the East. It's arrogant, facetious, and completely ass-backwards.

use to rank schools brings us down a bit. stuff like acceptance rates (about 50% for M).

This link gives a different ranking than USNews and tends to rate world research universities a bit higher.

I thought the saying came from our high level of academics and annual success in football during the first half of the 20th century. The times where most of the top schools in the country resided near the east coast (i.e. Harvard, Westpoint, Yale, etc..). I believe the saying is "Michigan, the Harvard of the west" (not midwest as I don't believe teams in the 40's traveled to the likes of USC or UCLA for a football game thus making Michigan pretty far west).

This is not absolute fact but that's the understanding I had of the origin of the saying. I definately would believe this thought/saying was around before JFK said something similar in a peace corps. speech.

Interesting factoid. Did not know the background of the statement, but it just seemed too pretentious to have been created by a UM student/alumni. Kind of like giving yourself a nickname.

As for the rankings, they really are pretty arcane. I remember reading about Newsweek's rankings (might have been in the NYT magazine) and how the magazine was an also-ran until they started pumping out these yearly rankings. Most are subjective, and movement to any great degree always struck me as nothing more than a grab for "controversy" to push more copies - like when Stanford was #1 one year and then #4 the next. Did Yale, Harvard, and Princeton really get that much smarter/better and/or Stanford regress? Probably not - but otherwise the magazine would be a retread.

Finally, Michigan should be better than a top 25 school. It's ridiculous that our school can have grad schools in the top 5 in virtually everything and yet the undergraduate programs are not ranked higher.

Do you know why we're "only" a top 25 school? One category in the U.S. News rankings - "alumni giving rate" - kills us every time. Like most public schools, our per-capita donation rate isn't that high, as a lot of people feel that they are already effectively donating to the school through their tax dollars. If that one category did not exist, we'd be more like top 15. And personally, I think it's a pretty dumb metric for evaluating schools. The idea that donations reflect school quality is a stretch.

(BTW, the anti-Michigan is Notre Dame. U.S. News ranks them below us in a lot of academic categories, but they are always top 5 in alumni giving rate, which is usually enough for them to be ranked above us overall.)

for the simple reason I think my $20,000 per year was more than enough of a donation to my University. Therefore they will never see another dime from me regardless of the fact that I have a well paying job because of that education. I already paid them for that when I passed in my tuition. I doubt I am the only one who feels this way, but you never know.

Always thought UM was more on par with Stansbury than Harvard.

I live in Texas, and sadly, most of my friends and other people in our generation(millenials) don't really KNOW Michigan's tradition, our academic credentials, or our prestige as one of the top public universities in America.

However, the older people I talk with(40+) have a different take on Michigan. They all somehow know someone who attended UM and speak very highly of Ann Arbor & our academics.

I'm used to everyone in the B-school bragging about how "awesome" we are, but nobody outside Michigan seems to care.

Maybe they don't even know what Michigan has done in the past and where we are going in the future.

Maybe it's because I live in the south, but I have a hard time believing that people my age still hold the same respect for Michigan than people did in the past.....

Does it even matter what others view us as? Shouldn't we, as alleged Michigan Men, look within for validation and not outward?

Nor were we the first, nor will we be the last. Ohio University was probably the first to use the "Harvard of the..." thing when they called themselves "Harvard on the Hocking". Duke was always the "Princeton of the South".

I was never crazy about it, but very cool to hear the JFK story, even if that's not where it originally came from. I don't mean for this to sound arrogant (even though I know it does), but I've always thought we were way different, and (for my concerns) better than Harvard.

I went to Michigan for the combination of stellar academic programs in nearly every department, plus great sports and good social life. I would say that if there were rankings for these three categories, we would be at the very top, if not number 1. Even if money or getting in wasn't an issue, I would not have gone to Harvard. I thought about UVA, UNC, and Cal, but football tradition was too important.

i wonder if the abnormally high concentration of new yorkers in markley is a legacy effect of the havard of the east thing... hmm..

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/S...