Regarding Schlissel's academic talks recently

You hit on something very important there. The Top 25 is absolutely dominated by private schools and a lot of it has to do with funding and faculty ratios. State schools have higher faculty/student ratios and are worse funded (consider that tuition for our in-staters which represent 60% of the undergrad body is only $23,000 while these other schools are charging $50,000+ for every student).  For the last 25 years we've always been in the 21-29 area and usually us, UCLA, Berkely, UVA and UNC Chapel Hill are the only five public schools in the top 30 and none that I can remember has ever pierced the Top 20. We were typically around 23 to 25 until about 10 years ago when the State of Michigan really started slashing funding and we started to settle back to about 27 to 29. We've actually become more selective in the last few years since the common application kicked in with our admissions changing from one in two being admitted to one in three being admitted. The funding is what's keeping us from moving up. California gets the benefit of a HUGE applicant pool and they fund their college system very well which is why they are so high. I will never understand why UNC Chapel Hill is up there with the other 4 public schools. Its a very tough school to get into from out of state but thats because they maintain an over 90% in state ratio. Its a good school but I don't see why they're just a ranking point behind us. 

As far as Schlissel's comments, you need to understand what he means. The University's mission does not include athletics. Athletics, just like intramurals, are just something the University provides. The mission of the University is to educate and do research. If you read the interviews he very clearly points out that the AD is its own unit which creates its own funding and its primary mission is athletics which is why its not the University's problem. Truth be told, the President shouldn't have to poke his nose into athletics as long as everything is running right.

Double post. Sorry

Because schools can actually play the metric, game the system, and dump money into the things USNWR thinks are important, too.

See: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/your-annual-remind…

These things are used in decisions by potential students, by graduate schools in choosing between applicants and by employers. I can speak to the latter two. When I was in law school (not at Michigan) I know that they considered grades at a more highly ranked school above a lesser considered school as I worked as an ambassador for the law school. Without revealing too much I can also tell you that a direct family member of mine was on the admissions committee at one of the major UM professional schools and you can bet they considered the reputation of the college you came from.  I  can also tell you as an employer that when confronted with a pile of 200 resumes for a job, I'm going to start by looking for the ones from kids who went to better schools. Sure some of those people may be awful when I interview them but when confronted with nothing but a pile of statistics on paper, what else do you have to go on but the credibility of where they came from and their performance while there?

I know there are people like Bando out there who hate these rankings and think they're worthless. While I respect the idea that, sure, there are some great people who graduate from lesser considered schools, and total losers who graduate from schools with good reputations, ranking like this are part of our society and will always be so for the sake of our graduates and future graduates, the University needs to do what it can to stay as high as possible in these rankings.

I really don't think its a reflection of the education. I can definitely tell you its INFINITELY more difficult to get in now than it was ten or twenty years ago. The average GPA unweighted is now a 3.85 (again, that doesn't account for bumps from AP/IB/Honors Classes) and the middle 50% on the ACT is 30-33. For reference, that's an unweighted GPA of an A- average. Thats crazy.

but your name is crazy

               SAT Math       SAT Reading      ACT

UM           650-760             610-700         28-32

UCLA       600-760             560-680         25-31

Source:

http://www.powerscore.com/sat/help/average_test_scores.cfm