OT: Michigan Undergraduate quality?
So I'm scrolling down by facebook homepage as I boredly procrastinate on homework when I see one of my friends taking heat from state fans because, you know. My friend (we are both current U of M students) retorts with the whole "state is a crappy school" schpeel, when another state fan quickly swoops in and begins going off on how "only michigan's grad programs are good" and that Michigan's undergraduate program is terrible and only skates by on the rep of the graduate schools.
Now, this is clearly not true, as a glance at any undergraduate ranking would tell you, but all slander usually has a kernel of truth, or at least an origin of sorts. Where would State fans hear or be told such a thing? and is there any truth to it?
October 12th, 2010 at 7:21 PM ^
You're quite right. I actually have a lot of respect or MSU. My analogy was more aimed at "fighting fire with fire" re: the sh*t talking of the OP. Truth be told, I think there are many great institutions in this country, and it's not cool to denigrate MSU... any more than it's cool to call UM's undergrad overrated or crappy.
October 13th, 2010 at 7:43 AM ^
They actually have a very strong osteopathic program as well. I believe it is one of the top in country, although there are only like 8 programs total, so tkae that for what its worth.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:10 PM ^
October 12th, 2010 at 5:34 PM ^
Get national credibility in sports -> more kids apply -> acceptance rates drop -> MSU becomes more exclusive -> more higher caliber candidates apply -> MSU's degree becomes more valuable -> graduates make more money -> endowment grows -> academic ranking rises
Wait, yes you can.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:44 PM ^
Wait, I didn't click the link because I assumed it was worthless, but they really think that doing better in sports will get more students to apply?
Do high schoolers really pay that much attention to how well a school does in sports? I can't imagine someone saying "Damn, Boise State's staring down a BCS bowl, they must have a good ChemE program."
October 12th, 2010 at 5:51 PM ^
However, I should give credit where it is due, and many of the posters basically stated that UM is a better school overall.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:55 PM ^
It can happen with smaller schools. For instance, at Northern Illinois, during Joe Novak's regime, admissions to the school increased a decent amount. There appears to be little explanation other than football.
But the sample is different. NIU is a regional school with students that are almost entirely from the Chicagoland area, with only one or two top programs.
Er, wait a minute. Well. I thought they were different cases.
October 12th, 2010 at 6:29 PM ^
Same thing happened at Rutgers. When Schiano showed up and started winning 8-9-10 games, applications for Rutgers TRIPLED (and have fallen off again since). This does allow the admissions folk to be more selective, potentially leading to a stronger undergraduate class. It is a real effect. To say having winning sports teams at MSU would lead to the same results is debatable, but not flat wrong.
October 12th, 2010 at 7:55 PM ^
I'm calling bullshit on this comment. Rutgers is a very big school, do you know what it would take to make this happen? According to US News, Rutgers accepts 56% of applicants. Their undergrad student body is 38,000, so let's say 7,000 per freshman class. If they accept 56% of applicants, and half of the accepted students enroll (reasonable), then they have around 25,000 applicants per year.
If that TRIPLED as you suggest, and assuming these numbers are from the "fallen off since" as you also suggest, then in one year 50,000(!) additional high school students decided to apply to Rutgers just because the football team won some games. That many people wouldn't make the committment to go to the stadium to watch Rutgers play, let alone choose their college because of it.
I have a hard time believing this.
October 13th, 2010 at 1:42 AM ^
I will admit that my source for this information is a roommate who went to Rutgers, but who did not work in their admissions department. So it is entirely possible that "TRIPLED" is not correct. I suspect that it was an increase of 30%, not 300%, and that I mis-remembered what I was told. This would mean an additional 7,500 applicants, which is somewhat less absurd.
October 12th, 2010 at 10:59 PM ^
i think it'd be more of a factor for grad school - undergrad tends to be based on passions rooted to long-standing sports (historical institutions), academic passions and overall specialization elements. for grad school, i know that i definitely looked at sports as a side facet to what i would be getting moving to a 'new' location foreign to me, etc.
i dunno, maybe it's just me
October 12th, 2010 at 11:30 PM ^
It also happened with OSU. Their rankings the last 10 years have risen significantly. Also, the number of applicants at the University of Miami rose dramatically once their football team became a national power.
I am not going to lie: when I was a 16 year old in Southern Illinois thinking about schools, one of the reasons Michigan stood out to me was, frankly, because it was "cool." Why was it cool? Winged helmets, the Fab Five, and consistent success in sports. I realize this is stupid; however, 16 year olds (at least me 13 years ago when i was 16) aren't always weighing things the way they should. Once I saw that M had great academics and business school, I was sold.
October 13th, 2010 at 12:36 AM ^
It worked for George Mason when they went on their final four run in 2007 I believe? They had many more students apply (and higher quality) after that year because they got their name out there
October 12th, 2010 at 7:15 PM ^
To be fair, I did. I didn't correlate quality of athletics to quality of academics, no. But I did narrow down my list with athletics as one of the criteria. Had to be a D-I school in a major conference, and not the Big Ten so as not to conflict my loyalties (though I did end up applying to Penn State as my last-ditch safety.) Otherwise I'd probably have applied to Northwestern, and maybe Cornell also. They're hella good schools, but football, as part of the whole college experience, matters.
October 13th, 2010 at 9:40 AM ^
I forgot what journal it was in, but in the last 5 years or so there was a legitimate academic paper that demonstrated applications and quality of applications rises after major sports accomplishments (I think it was BCS bowls, final four games, ect.). If I remember right, the effect has a very short half-life though.
October 13th, 2010 at 10:49 AM ^
Luckily, bigger sports nerds than us have studied this. In particular, I point to two U-M PhDs (although one poor soul did get his undergrad from MSU), Mike Cross & Doug Toma. They found that apps go up when basketball or football teams win a national championship. Others have verified the "Flutie Effect" as well (mentioned by another poster: apps go up when a top athlete wins a major award like the Heisman).
More apps are better, and they can make a school appear more selective. But I don't know if the institutions really end up getting better students out of the deal. If I didn't have a stack of things calling for my attention I'd go read the articles and might actually know. I would think that an institution benefits in all kinds of ways when it is in the national spotlight, but the benefits are probably hard to measure and may not be realized immediately.
October 12th, 2010 at 7:22 PM ^
This "phenomenon" (dubbed the Flutie Effect) has been repeatedly disproven. I could see it possibly giving a smaller school some national prominence and, perhaps, draw a couple more applicants, but those students are likely not going to be "better" students than the ones already there. The high-caliber students are the type who dilligently prepare for college admissions and visit schools, check the rankings, identify what majors are best for them, and in general are not the type to be swayed by what happens on the gridiron or basketball court. Case in point: MSU has been a dominant basketball program for over a decade, yet that has not had a noticeable effect upon the admissions numbers.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:35 PM ^
They like to draw contrast between Michigan and their mandate as a land grant university. It's no surprise that they are more familiar with their own history than Michigan's, but the establishment of U of M follows very similar motivations. There was even a couple of land grants involved.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:42 PM ^
was the duder that opted to use a quote from Ari Gold -- a fictional Michigan alum -- to describe how Staee grads should hack on Michigan's academic prowess. Yar har!
October 12th, 2010 at 7:08 PM ^
The last time I looked at the RCMB that thread was directly above one that asked "Is there a more insecure fanbase than Michigan?" I have a new monitor now, the irony bomb exploded my last one.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:19 PM ^
...but the size of Michigan's undergrad student body and the incredible spectrum of opportunties can be overwhelming to some.
For a tiny and vocal portion of those folks, that frustration can morph into the perception that the undergrad experience is not that good when nothing could be further from the actual truth.
October 13th, 2010 at 9:46 AM ^
I entirely agree now having met a handful of alumni who hated their experience after having become isolated or lost in the wash. I will say that I think the self-reliance you need to succeed in that environment puts a lot of big school grads head and shoulders above the liberal arts grads who come out of school having had several advisors hold there hand through every minor life decision prior to the real world.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:29 PM ^
October 12th, 2010 at 8:23 PM ^
Are UMich and MSU really #s 1 and 2 in that field?
October 12th, 2010 at 8:30 PM ^
I know for sure that we are number one. His claim that they are number two is sketchy, but I really couldn't care less because he is the douchiest brah I've ever met from MSU and wouldn't want to waste my time nor anyone else's.
This is the same kid that's taking out 80+ grand a year in loans and is too hung over every day to get his ass out of bed to go to class in the morning. Old sparty habits die hard.
October 13th, 2010 at 9:47 AM ^
As someone with minimal engineering knowledge, I do know they have a cyclotron and are getting some new federal funded particle smasher device.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:30 PM ^
People have to put other people down to justify their decisions. Don't listen to the people from State and don't tell them that their school sucks. You will be happier in the long run.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:30 PM ^
Although the University of Michigan is a good school, it is a handful of the graduate programs that really do give the U its world class reputation (most prominently, the law, medical, business schools).
Personally, I think the undergraduate program is simply too large to really be considered elite. There is certainly plenty of good students and plenty of opportunity for an ambitious student to carve out an excellent education at Michigan undergrad and I even did it myself. But when you are talking about graduating class sizes of 20,000 students per year then I'm not convinced that there is really all that much difference between the student bodies of Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, California or anything other public university for that matter.
So, yes, it could be argued that Michigan's reputation benefits from it's grad schools.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:39 PM ^
one should save one's pennies for grad school rather than undergrad. There's probably not much difference in undergrad psychology degrees from Michigan, MSU, Albion, Marshall, Duke, etc. The difference is much more significant for the grad programs. So if my kid got into Michigan and an Ivy, I'd tell him to go to Michigan undergrad then, if he gets in, we can talk about the $50K/year for Harvard Law.
October 13th, 2010 at 9:51 AM ^
I would disagree strongly. Especially with the Albion and Marshall comparisons. Despite the size, the classes are hands down more academically rigorous at Michigan, and while every person you have them with may not be an academic elite super-star, enough of them are that you get pushed to a deeper understanding of the material. I can say after a few years in an elite grad school that my Michigan education gave me an advantage coming in that I think only a handful of other schools were able to match (Harvard, UNC, WashU, Cal, ect.)
October 12th, 2010 at 5:55 PM ^
But when you are talking about graduating class sizes of 20,000 students per year
Whoa - our actual graduating classes are about 5,000-6,000. And the faculty : student ratio here is not that different from most other schools (public or private) ranked in the top 100 or so in the U.S. News listings. Ivy League schools have large lectures and GSI-taught discussion sections for underclass-level courses as well. That's pretty much become standard across the country. You have to go to a really off-the-radar liberal arts school to get that intimate experience.
October 12th, 2010 at 6:21 PM ^
You have to go to a really off-the-radar liberal arts school to get that intimate experience.
Dennison University, where Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner attended (as did someone I used to date). 5 minute walk from one end of campus to another, tucked away up on a hill and behind a wall. No thanks.
/tangent
October 12th, 2010 at 7:10 PM ^
My best friend attended Dennison and when I visited, I thought it was basically a high school with a decent-sized campus. Just really small school, though a decent education by all accounts. Even there, though, he still had classes with 100 students especially in the intro classes.
October 12th, 2010 at 7:26 PM ^
Yeah, maybe I didn't see the whole thing... Some of it is hazy too because, for such a small school, they do party pretty well.
October 12th, 2010 at 6:51 PM ^
Sorry, I made a mistake with that number. 20,000 is closer to the total undergrad student body population with 5,000 per year in gradating classes. Even so, I think my point about the large student bodies at public schools diluting the quality is valid.
There is also an historical aspect to consider in this. Graduating class sizes were much smaller up until about 60 years ago when the post-WWII GI Bill helped fuel significant growth in college enrollments. Having a bachelors degree from Michigan in 1935 is probably more prestigious than having a bachelor's from Michigan in 1995...assuming you're still alive.
October 12th, 2010 at 7:03 PM ^
Yes, but the number of applications to U-M and other elite public schools has also skyrocketed, causing the acceptance rate to steadily drop. (A decade ago we accepted around 60% of applicants; now it's around 50%.) Really, it's the fact of getting admitted to U-M in the first place that stands out on your résumé as much as anything you do here.
October 13th, 2010 at 9:38 AM ^
If you believe that, you are ignoring what has happened to higher education over the last 75 years. In 1935, you could get a working class job without a high school degree, a middle class job with a high school degree and an upper middle class job with any college degree. All of these jobs paid enough to support your family. The people who went to Michigan in 1935 did not have to compete with, for the most part, women, minorities or people from the lower socioeconomic classes for admission. The people who went to Michigan (or any college for that matter) in 1935 were the elite. It was much much much harder to get in 1995 than it was in 1935.
October 12th, 2010 at 6:52 PM ^
The engineering school would like to direct your attention to there rankings both nationally and internationally
October 13th, 2010 at 9:57 AM ^
would like to direct your attention to the difference between "there" and "their."
(Just having fun with you).
October 12th, 2010 at 5:34 PM ^
No. Top graduate programs are the result of great faculty. The faculty that teach grads are the same faculty that teach undergrads. We have a top notch undergrad program as a result.
There are certain programs that state has that are better than ours (eg Education) or just below ours (accounting). But the same can be said for any state university. Overall, we are higher ranked than they are because we have better programs overall.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:46 PM ^
We are just ahead of State in Education. Michigan is tied for 14th (with OSU) and State is 17th (per US News 2011 rankings of grad schools).
October 12th, 2010 at 5:50 PM ^
I stand corrected. +1.
Either way, why can't we all agree that State and UM are different? Kids who go to UM are smarter most of the time, but it can also be due to motivation or whatever. One of my good friends who I work with, a Sparty, got into UM but chose to go to State to party. He was happy with his experience, finished near the top of his class, and now has a great job.
The Spartys need to accept their school for what it is: it has lower admission and education standards: but it opens the doors for people who aren't as smart or chose not to try in high school. The sooner they are ok with this, the better off they will be.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:59 PM ^
Wait, so your Sparty friend at work got in to Michigan but chose to go to MSU intead? I've never heard a State grad say that before.
October 12th, 2010 at 6:01 PM ^
I've heard people say it, but it's usually not true. More common is the "I could have gone to Michigan but went to State," which is usually straight up bullshit
October 12th, 2010 at 10:34 PM ^
It's more believeable if the person is either a vet or a teacher.
Otherwise, they are probably BSing.
October 13th, 2010 at 10:38 AM ^
Fact is that if 100 kids get into both U-M and MSU, over 80 of them will come to U-M. I think the figure is actully above 85 but we haven't rerun that study for a few years. I can't believe it's changed much, regardless.
So the vast majority of kids, given the choice, will take U-M. There are a small number who make the State decision. I'm sure there are a bunch of reasons, some may be more valid than others.
October 12th, 2010 at 8:29 PM ^
I personally know only two people who took that route. They were naturally pretty smart but neither one had intellectual tendencies. They were both headed for family-run businesses and they just needed a sheepskin for respectability. MSU fit the spec perfectly.
October 12th, 2010 at 5:59 PM ^
Eh, yes and no on education. Our SOE is quite tiny and does not offer many majors for grad school. Also, MSU does a full year of student teaching, where we only do a semester. I'm guessing that the graduate rankings greatly skew the "school of education" rankings there.
October 13th, 2010 at 10:51 AM ^
Hmm.
MSU has an excellent undergrad education school; that's long been accepted. But U-M's ed school is not bad, and I think your statement about student teaching is misleading. I don't know what MSU does, but U-M students are in the classroom for field work for four terms. The final term offers the immersive, lead-teaching experience, but students at U-M are getting professional experience the other terms.
U-M may have a small number of grad programs in education, but they tend to be quite good. Higher Ed, for example, generally trades off the #1 position with a few other leaders.