<p>Not to mention, there are English speaking colleges in non-English speaking countries. Hong Kong, Egypt, Shanghai…</p>
<p>Do you think with this high acceptance rate the rate will go down the next few years because it is too crowded. Or is Michigan money hungry and willing to let in a ton of people and a lot of OOS to get a ton of money?</p>
<p>patriotsfan, every year, Michigan’s applicant pool increases, and every year, Michigan matches that increase with a proportional increase in class size. Of course, the annual increase has usually been modest (5%-10%). Now with Michigan joining the Common Application, increases of 15%-25% will be the norm for the next 4 or 5 years. Will Michigan increase the size of its freshman class accordingly? I hope not, but I would not be surprised if it did. Like I said, in 5 years, I can imagine Michigan receiving 45,000 applications, accepting 23,000 of those applicants in the hope of enrolling 9,000-10,000 Freshmen!</p>
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<p>Or go to Barcelona and party 7 nights a week while taking joke classes with all the other only-English-speaking American kids.</p>
<p>Obviously absurd to have forced study abroad. FYI though, Dartmouth makes you do an internship after your sophomore year.</p>
<p>If study abroad had been a requirement I wouldn’t have come here. It is also pretty pathetic for the school to have to kick students off its campus and send them somewhere else in order to be sustainable. I am with qwerty: absurd.</p>
<p>That is a surprising big increase! Michigan’s infrastructure is probably not ready to handle that. It might get crowded everywhere.</p>
<p>I doubt Michigan (~42,000) will surpass Michigan State (~48,000) as the largest public university by student population in the state.</p>
<p>tenisghs, until I see evidence to the contrary, I am assuming that Michigan’s admissions office is required to accept 50% of the applicant pool regardless of its size. It is time for Michigan to go private. Clearly, the state cares nothing for the sanctity of the University and has turned it into a cheap street walker. I am angry beyond belief. I have warned this was going to happen. Michigan cannot serve the state and remain elite. Those are two seperate and incompatible missions.</p>
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<p>you mean private, right?</p>
<p>Ooops. I was so angry, I even got that wrong! LOL!</p>
<p>Go public, lol. Send 'em over to my bank, we’d gladly handle that IPO</p>
<p>Alexandre, when you’ve calmed down a bit, tell me if you’ve any info of a decreasing yield rate, summer melt, or an increased ‘not returning’ ratio (eg. higher attrition due to economic hardship?).
And if there’s evidence of a premeditated plan. Eg. all year they were recruiting more profs while the getting was good. Do you suppose they planned the increase to offset? Or have you seen/heard the rationale.
Our family hasn’t directly been affected or seen much evidence of overwrought resources, but that’s likely only because there’re only 16 kids in my son’s program, which is selective and by portfolio. And since his degree is a highly specialized BFA, he hasn’t had ANY large classes or felt any lack of direct access to profs.
We also have a sense that the school of music has not in any way gotten less selective, as we know two absolute standouts (including one with a 35 ACT, 3.9ish from a gifted program who’s awesome and was snapped up by NWestern) who were not accepted/or waitlisted.
Just curious as to the fiscal rationale. After all, if they’re admitting 2 more IS for every OOS, it hardly seems economically incentivized.</p>
<p>I’m actually thinking about transferring sophomore year. If they didn’t have such an amazing b-school I’d already have filled out the app, lol.</p>
<p>While I think U Mich will manage to somehow handle the increased numbers of freshman, I have to agree that it’s time for a plan to transition to a private institution. Maybe ultimately something like Cornell, that has part of the university public and part private would work best for Michigan.</p>
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<p>I believe you. Is that data somewhere though?</p>
<p>I don’t really understand. Michigan gives them less money, so they accept more in state students.</p>
<p>They built some nice new buildings(dorms) that I see near downtown. I don’t know if this is enough to make up for increased enrollment…Fall will be crowded won’t it. I was enjoying the summer in Ann Arbor without undergrads.</p>
<p>“Alexandre, when you’ve calmed down a bit,”</p>
<p>In that case, I will get back to you next Spring!</p>
<p>“tell me if you’ve any info of a decreasing yield rate, summer melt, or an increased ‘not returning’ ratio (eg. higher attrition due to economic hardship?).”</p>
<p>Michigan’s yield rate of 43% was pretty much in line with its historic norms. The yield rate in of itself does not explain what happened.</p>
<p>“And if there’s evidence of a premeditated plan. Eg. all year they were recruiting more profs while the getting was good. Do you suppose they planned the increase to offset? Or have you seen/heard the rationale.”</p>
<p>I hear Michigan has built new housing and hired new faculty, but nothing that can explain the explosion in admissions. From 13,500 admits last year to 16,000 this year is unheard of. With the additional dorm space and faculty hires, Michigan was supposed to stay the same size and make college a more intimate experience. Instead, Michigan decided to grow its undergraduate student population far more than its resources will allow, even with the added dorm space and faculty.</p>
<p>“Our family hasn’t directly been affected or seen much evidence of overwrought resources, but that’s likely only because there’re only 16 kids in my son’s program, which is selective and by portfolio. And since his degree is a highly specialized BFA, he hasn’t had ANY large classes or felt any lack of direct access to profs.”</p>
<p>Specialized programs, such as Music, Nursing etc… should be ok. Engineering and LSA are the ones that are going to spin out of control and collapse if Michigan does not REVERSE the damage it did with this latest abomination of an admissions cycle. And I am not exaggerating.This is a DISASTER! Michigan will have to enroll a class of 5,000 next year if it wishes to undo the damage it has done. </p>
<p>“We also have a sense that the school of music has not in any way gotten less selective, as we know two absolute standouts (including one with a 35 ACT, 3.9ish from a gifted program who’s awesome and was snapped up by NWestern) who were not accepted/or waitlisted.”</p>
<p>Selectivity is not the issue. Michigan is becoming increasingly selective, albeit not as rapidely as it should. Availlability of resources, on the other hand, is becoming a real problem. Like I said, at this rate, Michigan will have 30,000 undergrads by 2014. Even when it had 20,000 undergrads back in my days, it was too large.</p>
<p>“Just curious as to the fiscal rationale. After all, if they’re admitting 2 more IS for every OOS, it hardly seems economically incentivized.”</p>
<p>I honestly do not know. Personally, I don’t think there is a fiscal incentive. An extra 1,000 students is a drop in the bucket next ot the cost of operation. I think this outrage to do with pleasing the residents of the state. As long as Michigan accepts over 60% of in-state applicants, there will be no issues. But if Michigan starts accepting less, the state attacks the university and I think the University has a real confrontation phobia. </p>
<p>Michigan needs to get a few alums to run the University (particularly alumni relations and admissions) instead of hiring beaurocrats from Lansing and other parts of the country who:</p>
<p>1) Do not respect Michigan tradition
2) Are more loyal to other universities than our own</p>
<p>too many sub-par instaters are getting into michigan nowadays</p>
<p>are you doing anything about this Alexandre? Unlike you, I do have concerns about selectivity, if you maintain the same acceptance rate, while increasing the applicant pool, while other schools have increasingly lower acceptance rates, you will have a larger number of students who are below-par and overtime it’s like a perpetuating cycle that will turn away some of the better students, together with the lack of student support on a per-student basis, ultimately dilute the michigan brand. u can’t graduate 10k undergrads a year and be elite.</p>
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I’m not sure how this move would please the residents of the state insofar as I suspect Michigan families would not be happy if a lack of resources emerged at what still remains the most expensive school in the state (public, that is). Or is that way too much common sense 
I don’t know what they’re up to exactly here, but I hope they’re aware of the concept of DISECONOMY of scale!</p>
<p>I asked my son about it and he made a few points that surprised me. He pointed out that many students chose Michigan for its size, for the ‘full experience’ and figures those that wanted a really exclusive, intimate setting might have opted for a LAC or Ivy. Again, he’s not felt personally affected by size to date, and he might feel differently if he were. He’s also a ‘hail fellow’ guileless type, so he’s really unconcerned about the elite-by-size phenom (which is odd, since he came from a very very small school that was chosen for the fact that it was SMALL and at least intellectually elite). So even though he refers to administration as “wizards” (in a funny way, the same way he talks about the street engineering in AA as having been conceived by “wizards” under the influence) he seems to trust that they have some inexplicable yet magically viable rationale. </p>
<p>KB is right, I think, to fear that a failure to check rampant growth may well subtly influence and/or dilute the student caliber and brand over time, but I just haven’t seen evidence of that in these parts.</p>
<p>Alexandre, since you recruit for them, is it possible to draft a letter asking for an outline of the rationale? I’m surprised the journalists-in-training at the Daily haven’t been more incisive in their coverage (yet).
I may do the same, just to see if I get a response.
Or maybe submit an editorial to the Freep.</p>
<p>At any rate, keep us posted if any of you hear more about the thinking (or lack thereof) behind it all.
Cheers.</p>
<p>PS Atreen – You are espousing a widely-held misperception when you assume that in-staters are defacto sub-par. This state has 9 million people. It’s entirely possible that 3,000 of them are in the 90th percentile in terms of intelligence or sufficiently disciplined to maintain a very high GPA. Despite its recent fiscal issues, the state has historically had a rigorous curriculum compared to many other states (with a few exceptions, such as NJ, Cali, etc). Statistically, the entering I/Sers have not in any way been weaker than OOS, although that does not account for grade inflation, which is an issue faced by adcoms everywhere and means that district by district they have to adjust or weight – so I will not argue that the stats tell the whole story.</p>
<p>None of this is to say that there are not folks at MI who perhaps would do better elsewhere. You can find them anywhere. That club is not unique to the state of Michigan.</p>
<p>^ welcome to the thread…glad to have you back…to be continued</p>