I’ll go even further, and point out that you’re just wrong…
Since US News started ranking schools, these have been the results for the south’s generally agreed upon two best public schools versus Michigan (rankings from the overall list, including private schools)
1983: Michigan (#7) ranked, no southern schools included.
1985: Chapel Hill (#9) outranked Michigan (#12) and UVa (#13) was ranked.
1988: Michigan (#8) outranked all southern schools, but Chapel Hill (#11), UVa (#15), and UT (#26) are included on the very limited list (UT is the last inclusion).
1989: UVa (#20) and Chapel Hill (#23) outrank Michigan (#25)
1990: Michigan (#17) outranks Chapel Hill (#18) and UVa (#21)
1991: UVa (#18) and Chapel Hill (#20) outrank Michigan (#21)
1992: UVa (#21) outranks Michigan (#22) which outranks Chapel Hill (#25)
1993-1998: UVa outranks Michigan (Chapel Hill usually in close contention with Michigan)
1999: UVa and Chapel Hill outrank Michigan
2000-2004: UVa outranks Michigan (Chapel Hill always within four places of Michigan, UT, Georgia Tech, and Florida start making regular appearances in the top 50).
2005: Michigan (#22) outranks UVa (#23) and other southern schools are further behind
2006: UVa (#24) outranks Michigan (#26) and Chapel Hill (#26)
2007: Michigan (#23) outranks UVa (#24) and Chapel Hill (#27)
2008-2019: UVa outranks Michigan by 2-4 places (which outranks Chapel Hill, the majority of years by 1 placement only)
2020: Michigan (#24) outranks UVa (#26) and Chapel Hill slides to #32, behind #31 UF.
2021: Michigan and UVa tie (=#25) and UF and Chapel Hill tie just behind them.
2022: Michigan outranks UVa by two places and Chapel Hill by more.
Sources:
(thru 2019)
https://datasciencetexts.com/diversi...anks_race.html
(post 2019)
https://andyreiter.com/wp-content/up...22-23-24-1.pdf
You’re quite wrong. The school are basically the same quality. FWIW, Michigan partially built its academic reputation on political scientists and survey research (hence why the term
“The Michigan Model” refers to the set of academic work produced by those scholars). Many of whom left the school and department in their later years to go to… UVa, Chapel Hill, and University of Houston. Some of them even eventually renounced the model altogether.