Michigan #92 on Forbes.com America's Best Colleges

Well when you compare them to the other Big Ten teams (for the most part), Michigan is pretty high then. Hard to believe some of them are so low though.

WE'RE JUST AS GOOD AS UM. THAT'S UNPOSSIBLE

-RCMB

The public universities really get docked for large class size. Also Michigan loses a lot of points for having really high out of state tuitions. So basically this list proved nothing about what the best schools really are.

It is hard to belive that there is such a large difference between Northwestern and UM, but a small difference in placement between UM and U of I. U of I should be no where near UM and frankly should not be ahead of Penn State and Purdue either.

Really a shitty list and thats the end of this discussion.

nm

My church rents out Kenyon College's campus every summer for a week for summer camp. That place is amazing, you almost forget that you're in Ohio. They have some of the nicest athletic facilities I've ever seen courtesy of Paul Newman who is apparently an alum.

Its a student made list, obviously by a bunch of idiot OSU students.

Let them count the billionaires who have graduated from UM. After all, isn't that the only thing they're useful for?? Plus they're in bankruptcy as well. Suckers. We are the Leaders and Best. Proof is in the pudding, and below:

Stephen Ross

Sam Zell

Jorge Perez (Ross' partner in Florida)

Bill Davidson

Larry Page (Google)

Wasserstein (from Lazard)

Tisch (owner of the Giants)

Forbes' lists always suck. I thought everyone knew that already?

one public university in the top 50....unbelieveable.

IMO, all that matters at a college is the quality of your peers:

* More intellectual peers increase the odds that you'll learn something useful outside the classroom.  (Contrast this to some couch-burning hicks.  I suppose there'd be lessons there, too.)

* Smarter classmates will create a more competitive environment in the classroom and (if all goes well) push you to higher levels of achievement.

* High-end peers will provide valuable "networking" opportunities in the future.  Numbers matter here (UMich is much bigger than K'Zoo).

- - -

Most other measures are less meaningful.  Class size?  If you can't learn independently by college you'll have a rough time.  Professor teaching the class (rather than a TA)?  The full professor might have lousy teaching skills, especially if he's at a large research-oriented place.  (I don't mean to imply that all TAs are good at teaching.)

I don't have up-to-date numbers on test scores.  I'm sure Oberlin's are good compared to UMich's.  Kenyon's too, maybe.  Denison?  I doubt it.  Anyway, for most courses of study I wouldn't trade UMich for any of them (though Oberlin is certainly interesting).

I didn't cover costs.  Limiting the discussion to Michigan, it's hard for me to understand how anyone would choose expensive K'Zoo College (a fine institution) over UMich *if* basing the decision on the three earlier points.

That list is a crock of shit. 

I had never heard of Whitman College (#16) before reading this list.

Also, who the heck is Harvey Mudd (#22) and how did he get a school named after him?

Harvey Seeley Mudd (born Leadville, Colorado 1888, died Los Angeles 1955) was amining engineer and founder, investor, and president of Cyprus Mines Corporation, a Los Angeles-based international enterprise that operated copper mines on the island ofCyprus.^[1] The science and engineering college Harvey Mudd College was named in memory of him. He was also a Vice President of the Board of Trustees for the California Institute of Technology.^[2]

The list is generated from student rankings.  Now that is an objective way to rank schools.

The list bears no link to reality.  Harvard in at number eight? Really? Take a look at where Michigan's programs are typically ranked, both from an undergraduate and graduate level, and then plug in the numbers for rankings.  For shit sakes, just the engineering component of the North Campus, even pre-Pfizer, was larger than many of the colleges on the list. Then there is the little issue of the 200 or so majors at Michigan, most world class, vs the handful of majors offered, in comparison, by many of the colleges on the list.

How many of the schools on the list have top ranked graduate programs in law, medicine, business and engineering.  Verrrrrry short list.

How many of those colleges have the largest stadium in college football and a town rich in culture where you can walk around the streets, day or night, and feel safe?

Sorry...had to rant.

The algorithm applied by Forbes to determine what college is the best "deal" has always been a joke - I think the military academies are great avenues for intellectual achievement, but saying they are better than places like MIT and Northwestern in large part because they have no tuition (ignoring the whole 2+ years required service) shows the fallacy in their metrics.

This poll is a joke.  First, it is a "student" poll.  A lot of these private schools pump it up by getting a high percentage of their students to vote.  Students at places like Michigan have better things to do.  Johns Hopkins is 88 - get real.

Oh look, Claremont McKenna College is the 9th best college in the country!

EMU is 601!

Haha, why does it say Pittsburgh has a student population of 81?

The U.S. News & World Report annual list is a little sucky, but at least they show exactly what their methodology is.  This looks like a few people got together in a room and picked names out of a hat.  How do quantify the "students' experiences?" How much weight is given to class size, student-to-faculty ratio, etc. and why?  I could have made the same list in ten minutes, except I don't think mine would suck as hard.