<p>No one down here really thinks it's a big deal, just another state school. And everyone associates it with american pie. Is Michigan really just a another giant party school with too big of classes or is it really somewhere prestigious grad schools look highly upon?</p>
<p>It is both jackdaniels. That’s the beauty of Michigan. To the masses, it is a large public university with great athletic tradition and loyal alums. To professionals, it is a great training and hunting ground for young talent, so corporate recruiters plunder the campus. To graduate school adcoms and in academic circles, it is an elite university. To the highly educated and cultivated, Michigan is definitely recognized as an elite university.</p>
<p>Michigan is very similar to UT-Austin, but only a little bit more prestigious.</p>
<p>i figured you’d be the first to respond to this. i’m still willing to pay a lot of money for michigan but now i’m starting to think it’s not even all i thought it was. college decisions are so difficult.</p>
<p>do you think visiting would be beneficial? Or would that just be a biased viewpoint</p>
<p>If you are going to chose Michigan over Texas at a significantly higher cost, you definitely should visit. But I still stand by my original recommendation; Michigan and Texas are peer institutions, so paying a lot more for Michigan is not a great investment, especially since your family is not ridiculously wealthy.</p>
<p>That’s funny. I was on an airplane last summer, sitting next to this girl from U Maryland who was going to a chem presentation/competition. I pulled out my laptop and started to work on writing up my lab research. We started talking, and when I told her I went to Michigan, she said “I could tell it was something like that by the crazy chem stuff you were doing…” Among my friends, networks, and random people I meet at the airport, Michigan seems to enjoy a very respectable reputation (even among H, Y, S, Penn, UChicago… especially in NY and Connecticut though). It’s funny that you bring this up, though, because the notable exceptions (in my experience) are several students from Texas and WUSTL. I don’t know if it’s a southern thing or what…</p>
<p>Anyways, as for grad school placement, you shouldn’t be concerned. I was looking at the placement for undergraduate Econ majors (the ones that decide to get a PhD in econ instead of going right into industry), and Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Berkeley, UChicago, and all the usual suspects are present. Although you may not be an econ major, I think that generally speaking, Michigan will allow you to get into the top grad school programs around. If anything holds you back, it will be you yourself.</p>
<p>The average Econ major at UM is not good enough to get into good grad Econ programs. UM Econ just doesn’t require the math necessary to succeed. Most Econ majors here only take Calc I, and take Stats 350 (easyyy) to fulfill the one-course stats requirement. If you want to get into a good grad school program, you need to take (and do well in) calc II, III, linear algebra, differential equations, and real analysis.</p>