Really? You don’t think the attitude which Michigan presents to prospective students/families has resulted in many highly qualified accepted students putting Michigan on the bottom of their list? I have watched this happen with countless numbers of students. And not with a huge sense of disappointment on my part! So yes, U of M is having difficulty attracting many highly qualified students who interpret Michigan’s attitudes during the admission process as reflective of what the next 4 years will be like, and then head for the door!
How is U of M different from the UC schools regarding OOS? Most people seem to know and accept that if you are OOS for UCLA, Berkeley etc you are full pay. Michigan isn’t approaching it any differently.
“So yes, U of M is having difficulty attracting many highly qualified students”
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applications have gone up every year for the last 10 years and show no sign of abating in this cycle;
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student credentials go up in every entering class while yield has been rock steady;
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from memory, the interquartile ACT is 30-33 (versus 30-34, on average, for the Ivy league);
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at this juncture, 67% of the students (slightly more than 2/3 of all entering students) enter with a 30 or greater on the ACT, which is above the Ivy 25th percentile…doubtless there are a few below that figure that still have an ACT score that would, on a stand alone basis, put them into the Ivy League range as to their board score.
Given the foregoing, what are you using as support for your statement? UM has a large absolute endowment but the relative endowment is around $225,000/student. That is not bad, but probably only around 80th. Common sense would tell you that UM would award aid if it had the dollars to do so. As the endowment climbs, aid climbs. In the 2nd prior year, aid was $160MM/year, and last year $180MM/year. To suggest that low aid has something to do with institutional indifference or animus is kind of silly.
“during the admission process as reflective of what the next 4 years will be like, and then head for the door!”
Michigan’s freshman retention rate is one of the highest in the country…somewhere around 96%-97%, or roughly Ivy level and there is no available data to support pre-self-selection so there is no support for your statement but support for the counter proposition. Students also graduate at a good clip when reviewing the 4, 5 and 6 year cohorts. Those levels would probably be higher with greater student wealth. While Michigan does well along that metric, I don’t much care for the idea that it factors into Michigan’s 29th rating in the country…it essentially penalizes the school for family wealth, an input, rather than student quality or success after graduation or outputs.
Well, that last bit was a bit of a digression, but your statement smacks of bald assertion rather than empirical fact.
blue85, I do not think student wealth is an issue. Michigan students tend to be wealthy. As a student body, one of the wealthiest in the country. Part of Michigan’s relatively low 4-year graduation rate is its large and very demanding Engineering program. Michigan’s four year graduation rate (76%) is not much different from Caltech’s (82%), MIT’s (84%), Rice’s (78%) or Stanford’s (76%).
I do have some empathy for OOS students and their families but Michigan is first and foremost a state school dedicated to in-state students. Whether or not Michigan should go private is another story entirely but as of now it is a state school.
I think it’s funny that people complain about professors’ salaries. As someone said upthread, the amount of money they bring in via grants is truly staggering. Not to mention private funding brought in by other faculty members (such as through the new MCUBED projects). You can also look at grad students- the value of my PhD financial package is over 300k for 6 years of funding (includes stipend, tuition, health/dental insurance, etc). However, I’ve also brought in money already to the university via grants and whatnot- and this is before even starting my PhD program.
OTOH, why is there no mention of the thousands of computers and printers on campus? These are certainly not cheap and were clearly not around a decade ago. Things like subscriptions to digital archives, technology sharing, etc are not cheap.
ETA: I say all this as someone who turned down Michigan for undergrad partially because of my dislike for the people (undergrad students primarily) and how they treated low-income students. But I try not to let that cloud my views of the university overall 