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Old 08-31-2008, 08:31 PM
 
Location: Chicago
6,359 posts, read 8,766,806 times
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It's no Bible, I'll admit and can do as much bad as good, but still I'll share

USN&WR 2009 rating system has changed and top 125 schools are now Tier One.

U-M can in at 26 (three publics ahead of it: Cal, UVa, UCLA). Closest B10 schools to U-M: UW at 35, Illinois at 40.

MSU was actually clustered in with a group of B10 schools, coming in at 71 (Minn 61, Purdue, Iowa with 66 tie, IU 71). MSU, I believe was around 35th nationally among the publics, ahead of numerous schools identified as the oldest flagships in their respective states.

States coming in ahead of Michigan (7th) with at least 2 schools on board:

California: Cal, UCLA, a number of other UC's
Virginia: UVa, W&M
Texas: UT, A&M
Pennsylvania: PSU, Pitt
Indiana: Purdue, IU
Ohio: OSU, Miami

The Big Ten, getting all schools to place 71 or higher, obviously came in ahead of any other BCS conference in that stat by far.

Whether that will ease any of the pain over Utah over Michigan or Cal over Michigan State for you guys, I don't know.
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Old 09-01-2008, 08:40 AM
 
Location: Grosse Ile Michigan
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Often these ratings are slanted in favor of West, or east coast schools depending on who did the study. You can play with statistics hundreds of different ways to get modified results.


I do not remember the sources, but there used to be two different studies. One was heavily slanted towards CA schools the other slanted towards East Coast schools. Michigan schools were always considerably higher in the rankings int he east coast slanted study.

It really does not matter. Any school in the top tier of either study is going to produce consistently excellent job candidates. As a participant in employment selection, I can tell you that I do not care whether someone came from Stanford, Michigan, or Wisconsin. If they graduated from a top school with good grades, I can reasonably assume that they they are reasonably bright and have a good work ethic. Anything else can be taught.


(Exception - Berkley. I tend to avoid candidates from Berkley, or at least be careful of them. too many problems over the years with Berkley graduates.)
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Old 09-01-2008, 12:05 PM
 
Location: Chicago
6,359 posts, read 8,766,806 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens View Post
Often these ratings are slanted in favor of West, or east coast schools depending on who did the study. You can play with statistics hundreds of different ways to get modified results.


I do not remember the sources, but there used to be two different studies. One was heavily slanted towards CA schools the other slanted towards East Coast schools. Michigan schools were always considerably higher in the rankings int he east coast slanted study.

It really does not matter. Any school in the top tier of either study is going to produce consistently excellent job candidates. As a participant in employment selection, I can tell you that I do not care whether someone came from Stanford, Michigan, or Wisconsin. If they graduated from a top school with good grades, I can reasonably assume that they they are reasonably bright and have a good work ethic. Anything else can be taught.


(Exception - Berkley. I tend to avoid candidates from Berkley, or at least be careful of them. too many problems over the years with Berkley graduates.)
they are ridiculous as you say and rather meaningless. But they do offer some fun.

I was wrong about MSU's ranking about public schools. I checked again and it was 30th.

Here's what's interesting about that is that if you count only the states that have schools higher ranked than MSU, you will end up seeing about 19 states (including obviously Michigan itself). All those 29 schools higher ranked than MSU come from states with one or two schools on the list with the exception of California with a number of UC's among them.

Why is that interesting? Because it means that MSU is higher ranked than the highest ranked public university in 60% of our states. That is impressive.
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Old 09-02-2008, 07:56 PM
 
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As someone pointed out earlier, UofM/MSU is not really like Cal/UCLA. UCLA was never an ag school. It started off as the LA satellite location of Cal and evolved over the years as LA grew in importance (there's a famous story where Berkeley forced UCLA to answer their phones as "University of California" until it got to the ludicrous point where almost everyone thought they called Berkeley by mistake). Both are now in major, world-class metros. Neither UofM nor MSU are in this setting. You can't judge public schools in a vacuum as they're intimately tied with their state. CA is a HUGE, rich state. Using this perspective, you can argue that both CA and MI school overachieve while states like NY and even IL underachieve (U of I is a great school but it's largely due to Chicago readily supplying the top students without much effort. U of M's reputation is astounding when you consider how shallow their in-state student pool actually is, which is why they heavily recruit from out-of-state unlike U of I).

That said, U of M/MSU is more like UCLA/Davis and recent rankings reflect this. Davis is the traditional ag school in CA. U of M built a great national reputation starting in the 19th century as one of the few places where people could get a top-notch education outside the 13 colonies. It filled this niche before Northwestern, U of Chicago, Wash U in St. Louis and other prestigious Midwestern private schools really came on the scene as legitimate alternatives. Now U of M is kind of an odd bird - tradition worthy of a private but with a public mandate around its neck. The reality today is I don't know any academic who would choose U of M over Cal and I know very few that would choose U of M over even UCLA. Student applications reflect this trend also. This is no slight against U of M, but reflects the reality of their surrounding environments - money, students, business, culture, etc. You have more resources, you do better. I would also hesitate to compare the Big Ten to Pac 10. The Pac 10 is more about representing the entire West where states aren't nearly equal in stature like the Midwest. If the Pac 10 was composed of the top academic schools, like the Big Ten, the bottom half would get bumped off by the Cal system alone - San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine, Davis, etc - unlike the Big 10 which includes all the best public schools which happen to represent the Midwest quite well.
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Old 09-03-2008, 06:56 AM
 
Location: Chicago
6,359 posts, read 8,766,806 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cato the Elder View Post
As someone pointed out earlier, UofM/MSU is not really like Cal/UCLA. UCLA was never an ag school. It started off as the LA satellite location of Cal and evolved over the years as LA grew in importance (there's a famous story where Berkeley forced UCLA to answer their phones as "University of California" until it got to the ludicrous point where almost everyone thought they called Berkeley by mistake). Both are now in major, world-class metros. Neither UofM nor MSU are in this setting. You can't judge public schools in a vacuum as they're intimately tied with their state. CA is a HUGE, rich state. Using this perspective, you can argue that both CA and MI school overachieve while states like NY and even IL underachieve (U of I is a great school but it's largely due to Chicago readily supplying the top students without much effort. U of M's reputation is astounding when you consider how shallow their in-state student pool actually is, which is why they heavily recruit from out-of-state unlike U of I).

That said, U of M/MSU is more like UCLA/Davis and recent rankings reflect this. Davis is the traditional ag school in CA. U of M built a great national reputation starting in the 19th century as one of the few places where people could get a top-notch education outside the 13 colonies. It filled this niche before Northwestern, U of Chicago, Wash U in St. Louis and other prestigious Midwestern private schools really came on the scene as legitimate alternatives. Now U of M is kind of an odd bird - tradition worthy of a private but with a public mandate around its neck. The reality today is I don't know any academic who would choose U of M over Cal and I know very few that would choose U of M over even UCLA. Student applications reflect this trend also. This is no slight against U of M, but reflects the reality of their surrounding environments - money, students, business, culture, etc. You have more resources, you do better. I would also hesitate to compare the Big Ten to Pac 10. The Pac 10 is more about representing the entire West where states aren't nearly equal in stature like the Midwest. If the Pac 10 was composed of the top academic schools, like the Big Ten, the bottom half would get bumped off by the Cal system alone - San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine, Davis, etc - unlike the Big 10 which includes all the best public schools which happen to represent the Midwest quite well.
Cato,

I disagree with you on a few points, particularly:

"U of I is a great school but it's largely due to Chicago readily supplying the top students without much effort."

I really don't see that as an opition. Sure, the U of I is the state's only flagship institution. But that huge suburban Chicago college aged population is heading en mass to other flagship schools that aren't in Champaign: particularly to Iowa City, Bloomington, and Madison.

The U of I may benefit from the fact that it offers such few in-state spots in a school that is Illinois's only flagship in the largest state of the Middle West.

But there are down sides, too. In the larger pond that is Chicagoland, U of I (no mater how loved) can not match the relationship between UW and Milwaukee, Detroit and U-M, and Cleveland and OSU. There are just too many other fish out there that the U of I swims with in the Windy City.

Then you have the situation unparrelled in Mid-America where a quality, top notch, high ranked flagship public university is the third highest rank in state. I don't question that NU and U of C draw from a different pool, or that private status differs from pubic, but the top of them are among the highest ranked schools in the nation and their Chicago location gives them a real edge over the U of I in visibility.

Third U of I disadvantage that may affect reputation: it can not compete with U-M or UW as a bastion for highly sought out out-of-state students that add to desired diversity. Why? Again: the number of slots. U of I has all the slots for those wanting to go to an in-state flagship school in the largest state of the region. Thus Indiana (through IU and Purdue) and Michigan (with U-M and MSU) give bascially twice the number of such slots as the state of Illinois gets from its single flagship.

Does 90%+ in-state enrollment hurt all schools that have such per centages? Sorta. The only place where those numbers are not a negative is not really in a state. It's in something different, perhaps something we can call a nation state. And so for the "nation" of California, those 90% numbers at Cal and UCLA are hardly an issue. California is different. Hell, UC is different.

Finally, U of I is a stellar instituion on its own rights, a school that depends on the state of Illinois for funding and direction about as much as U-M does in Michigan. Its engineering and business schools are among the best in the nation and the curriculum tends to be top notch across the board. We in Illinois would never look at U of I as anything but a peer institution to U-M and UW....while, believe me, feeling very good and very impressed with who we are sharing that status.

*****

I can't argue with you about the state of Michigan or U-M and MSU, but I do see some things differently.

Sure Cal and UCLA got to where they are differently than U-M and MSU. The differences are innumerable, including as you noted that the former are both part of the same UC system where U-M and MSU are under different governing boards.

But I would contend that the post-WWII flood of college students, the growth of colleges and universities, and the need to realter curriculum for a far more technological and education-necessary world literally has divided the history of higher education in America into two groups: Pre-1950 and Post-1950.

Thus each state in the nation got to one of two flagships on different routes, but the needs of 21st century America has far more overlap in in-state flagship curricula than once existed.

MSU looks a lot more like U-M curriculum wise today than it did when "agricltural and mechanical sciences" was dropped from its name.

You mentioned UCD as a peer to MSU due to its agricultural heritage. But UCD itself has evolved considerably from those "roots" and truthfully when agriculture was at its strongest, UCD didn't even exist as a university. It was a part of Cal, in fact Cal Farms, Cal Aggies, since Berkeley was just about the worst place to grow anything that required accerage. Just like today's UCSF was once nothing more than the UC Medical Center, not a separate institution.

UCD is one of the most respected UC's today and is a full service institution with its own med school in Sacto.
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Old 09-03-2008, 06:40 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by edsg25 View Post
Cato,

I disagree with you on a few points, particularly:

"U of I is a great school but it's largely due to Chicago readily supplying the top students without much effort."

I really don't see that as an opition. Sure, the U of I is the state's only flagship institution. But that huge suburban Chicago college aged population is heading en mass to other flagship schools that aren't in Champaign: particularly to Iowa City, Bloomington, and Madison.

The U of I may benefit from the fact that it offers such few in-state spots in a school that is Illinois's only flagship in the largest state of the Middle West.
So you don't think the in-state tuition is a huge advantage for the U of I? The fact remains, the top 5% or so of the nation's HS grads will generally go to the top 20 universities unless there's something else in the equation. So U of I and Georgia Tech get some elite engineering students who couldn't get into MIT or Cal Tech and even some who did get into one of these schools but didn't think the cost was justified, or wanted to be close to home, or had a significant other, etc. Where state universities not named Bekeley thrive is in the next tier of HS students - 5-20% or so. Growing up, I don't know any Illinoisan who took Madison over UIUC if they were accepted to both. Besides the cost difference, there wasn't a significantly better program across the border. If a student was accepted to U of I, they definitely did not attend Iowa, Purdue, Ohio State, or Minnesota unless they played sports. A few went to Indiana for music if they weren't accepted out East or at Northwestern. A small minority did apply to U of M and some went, but many from this group also applied to schools like Stanford and Brown and went there if accepted. Anyway, a disproportionate amount of the nation's top 5-20% reside in IL thanks to Chicagoland and its great school districts. The fact that the U of I can offer a disproportionate amount of these excellent students a much lower tuition rate is a HUGE advantage. This doesn't make the U of I a lesser school, but it is what it is. To see what the U of I would be without the top-notch feeder schools from Chicagoland, look at the University of Arizona - very similar schools. U of A has some great programs, but it struggles to get good students b/c Phoenix does not produce nearly the quality of students that Chicagoland does. It also has to compete with ASU as a legitimate alternative like MSU, but even more so since it's in a real metro. There is no peer public institution in Chicago that can compete against U of I, or they would be sweating bullets in Urbana. So with that said, I still stand by my opinion that the U of I is not an overachieving system - I would put U of M at the top of this category followed by Cal, UVa, UNC, Wisconsin. U of I reminds me of Penn State - both great schools, but they really could do more with their resources and state student pool. I think SUNY, Rutgers and Missouri do the worst jobs considering their state demographics and resources.

Last edited by Cato the Elder; 09-03-2008 at 06:50 PM..
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Old 09-03-2008, 07:05 PM
 
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Originally Posted by edsg25 View Post
MSU looks a lot more like U-M curriculum wise today than it did when "agricltural and mechanical sciences" was dropped from its name.
And Davis looks a lot more like Berkeley and UCLA. I have Davis colleagues being ridden hard by the dean to improve Davis' ranking as a national institution and they hate it. Now they have the pressures of a school like Berkeley but without the prestige and resources. For many years Davis was considered the next tier after Cal and UCLA but it has lost some significant ground to San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Irvine in recent years. The funny thing is that the "ag" background helped get them near the top originally. My vet grew up in San Diego and didn't dream about going to Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, or San Diego for vet school (assuming they even have schools). He desperately wanted to go to Davis but was rejected so he "settled" for Penn. Davis' new president realized the failure of the previous regime's plan to "Berkeley-ize" the school at the detriment of their traditionally strong programs. Now they are re-strengthening these programs while developing the bread-and-butter programs across the board that determine your standing as a national research institution - history, english, math, chemistry, etc. Unfortunately, since they don't have the resources of Cal and UCLA, they are sacrificing the programs that weren't traditionally strong or are not bread-and-butter, but that's another story for another time. Heck, even Cal and UCLA are sacrificing programs like Asian Studies. Where MSU did a better job than Davis was in not neglecting their traditional strengths while still developing the bread-and-butter programs that made them a legit national university.
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Old 09-05-2008, 11:22 PM
 
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Cato,
I think you kind of miss the point about MSU, which is why it’s not a good comparison to Davis and most other traditional A & M type schools. First of all, you cite MSU as being a good ag school, but do you know what an agricultural curriculum really is? (I don’t mean to sound condescending, b/c most MSU alums don’t really know, either. Many think it was simply teaching kids how to milk cows, slop hogs, grow crops in rows or properly shucking corn. That stuff was the practical side taught as periodic short courses for practical, non-degree farmers. You should really consult the history which gives an excellent picture:

History of Michigan State University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fact is, MSU went beyond this EVEN IN THE 19TH CENTURY and offered a mix of traditional liberal arts and lots of sciences - it was considered one of the pioneering botany college/university of that period, in terms of groundbreaking experiments in pre-genetics and in highly distinguished profs and alums: 2nd only to Harvard. Even though the degree was only a B.S. in ag (and then, in 1885 in mechanical engineering), the coursework was general/rounded which made the school unique (and a leader) among A&M schools and more like a small university/college. It early developed museums, herbaria, state-of-the-art research labs in separate buildings (a big deal in those days)… of the smaller, college-sized schools in the Midwest, it was practically comparable to Oberlin which was the most developed and prestigious undergrad-oriented institution west of the Alleghenies prior to 1900.
UC Davis, on the other hand, despite being UC Berkeley’s “farm adjunct” when founded in 1909, really only gained fame as a technical research institution after WWII, really, not until the 1960s. And even then, it has not developed its liberal arts curriculum as evenly as MSU has over time.
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Old 09-06-2008, 07:42 PM
 
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No, I think I understand. Yes, Davis came along later, but so did Berkeley in comparison to U of M, that's why the analogy of MSU to Davis holds much better than MSU to UCLA. You know that's what we've been discussing the entire time, right? Regardless, Davis is now ranked higher than MSU in every higher education ranking. Everything came later in Ca because...the state developed much later...no sheisse, Sherlock. And as I mentioned in my anecdote about my vet, it's been a while since Davis was considered Berkeley's "farm school" just as UCLA hasn't been considered merely Berkeley's satellite campus in LA for decades. Now Davis is considered one of the pre-eminent pre-professional schools in CA and the nation.

And yes, when you post on anything here from transit to education, you always come off as condenscending. Not that it matters, but I have degrees from the MIT, Stanford, and Penn and I now teach at U of M. Stop thinking that others on here are stupid and less informed. It makes you come off sounding elitist and patronizing every time.
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Old 09-07-2008, 07:30 PM
 
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Cato, dude, you REALLY have issues. I could give a rat's arse about your fancy degrees because you come off sounding like a self-centered boob...

Fact is (if you choose to consider facts aside from simply ranting) the so called "ratings" of Davis over MSU is a joke and you'd see --- if you are as smart as you THINK you are -- you'd understand that any school hitched to the UC mantra is going to get rated higher.

As to sounding patronizing and elitist, I you need to consult your shrink, not me...
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