<p>Hmm..I must disagree....my personal experience suggests that your excitement about a particular university has little to do. Quite conversley, it is the University's excitement about the credentials that you bring to the incoming class that motivates them to give money. Those intangible factors that are oft-emphasized don't matter much..ESPECIALLY at a numbers-based admissions office like UM's.</p>
<p>I completely agree that the abilities of your student body have a HUGE impact on your experience is at a University. I'm in LSA honors at Michigan, and I'm in honors sections of some classes and regular sections of others. My honors sections are engaging, fun, challenging and well worth the extra dificulty. My regualar sections make me want to jump off a cliff. So I don't blame him for looking at the qualifications of his potential student body at UF, and I don't think its pretentious or sinister for him to demand an academically engaging student body from his potential university. I will say that the original attitude needed to be toned down a little bit...but you know what...he's worked hard to achieve what he has, just like I did, so I don't blame him for expecting the best.</p>
<p>kb - its not excitement per se - but a focus on what you want to do. For example, if one is interested in electrical engineering, in addition to the obvious credentials that it takes to get in and qualify for honors or aid, an application that bespeaks to the type of focus and the intended way one would reach goals in that field will beat a similar application that merely relies on top credentials, every time. And while I don't blame anyone for wanting to go to school with lots of smart people (I did it myself), let's not kid ourselves that there are not lots of smart people at a place like University of Florida. The issue is that one has to work a bit harder to find that experience - but that's not the end of the world.</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong. On my app, I certainly put on a facade of being super interested, focused and what not. The UF decision were just released Friday for ED, and everybody that I know got in, some of whom I would certainly not want to spend another four years with.<br>
Getting in to the LSA Honors College is pretty important to me. It really intrigues me. Does anybody know how competitive it is? How many people are actually in it?
And mam, I do understand that there will be supersmart people at UF or UM, and plenty of them. But KB really hits it when he/she mentioned being in regular classes, which I will have to invariably take.</p>
<p>I was part of the honors college and I took "regular" classes. Overall, I found the students in regular classes to be as engaged and capable as students in honor classes and I found the grading equally challenging. In short, if you aren't mega-smart and very driven, you aren't going to do well at Michigan. With over 25% of your classmates having scored over a 1400 on the SAT and having graduated with a 4.0 unweighed GPA and in the top 1% of their class, you can be sure that competing for the few As (usually less than 20% of students get As at Michigan) is going to be a challenge.</p>
<p>I know one girl who has already been nominated for a Shipman Scholarship, which is 36,800 per year OOS. She went to TASP, and is all around a great applicant, good test scores, amazing writing, yahta yahta yahta...They nominate 40 people per year and I think like 10 people get it.</p>
<p>How do you get nominated? How good is she? A lot better than me? And is there a way that I can submit new recs/essays because they have both gotten better?</p>
<p>You get considered for nomination by sending in your application for admission to U-M. No additional apps required.</p>
<p>I don't know if she's a lot better than you or not, I don't know her test scores, but I spent the summer with her and she's incredibly intelligent and I'm sure she had brilliant recommendations and essays.</p>
<p>And, I don't know if you can re-submit stuff. It seems like a big state U wouldn't bother with re-submissions of recs and essays, but you'll have to ask yourself.</p>
<p>Is she OOS? OOS is very hard at UF, but In state is extremely easy. Here are the SAT scores of some of my friends who just got in (they're sitting next to me): 1310, 1220, 1270, 1320, 1110, 1240, 1070. One person was rejected with a 1050.</p>
<p>The quality of honors students here at UM is pretty high. Basically all my friends are honors and I can say they're pretty smart people. I think the middle two quartiles for scores are 32-35 ACT and 1380-1510 SAT (old one obviously). I know that ACT figure is correct cuz it's easy to remember, but the SAT one might be ten points or so off. We were all like top 2% in our HS classes (except the URM stduents). I wouldn't know what average classes are like, but honors ones are pretty sweet. They're pretty easy to get an A in and pretty informative, but the best part is that you're less likely to be getting the highest grades like you did in HS, and that's motivating for me. Knowing I was going to get the best grade on a test in HS made me not want to try too hard, but at umich, if you want to get the highest grade in an honors course, you should probably study a little bit.</p>
<p>maguo, I don't know if this is applicable to the other acceptees, but my D was accepted 11/23, got her letter to submit an essay to the Honors Program 12/7, and got her scholarship offer yesterday. Her stats are better than yours, actually quite a bit, and she is in-state. Got a whopping $1500 non-renewable "Regents Scholarship". Unless she doesn't get in anywhere else on her list, it's not compelling enough to go to U of M.</p>
<p>quiltguru, just out of curiosity, where else did your daughter apply? Most universities of Michigan's stature (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, Cal etc...) are not known for giving much merit aid. I am not so sure you will get the option of sending your D to any top 10-15 universities at much less than $30,000/year.</p>
<p>I agree, Alexandre. There are certainly very few colleges that offer the value for the price that UM offers. But there are some (my D has applied to a few of these) of equal quality that offer a great deal more merit money. My point is that UM is well aware that these much smaller scholarships don't even make a dent in the cost to attend and wouldn't be of the range that would be persuasive to a student who doesn't qualify for financial aid, but couldn't afford the >$30K/year price tag for OOS UM (e.g., children of junior faculty). They are what they say they are...recognition for high stat students, and nothing more.</p>
<p>quiltguru, don't forget that you don't need to rely only on UM for aid. Last year, I only received a small amount from the university as need based aid. However, I also received several outside scholarships (as well as the Michigan competitive scholarship and the MEAP money), which really knocked down the price tag on Michigan when they were all added together.</p>
<p>After reading the thread "Stats of admitted students", I do see the strength of UM.<br>
I have several new questions about finaid. Reeses, where did you find all these s-ships? I'm using fastweb and scholarhips.com, but it's turning up mostly s-ships that I don't qualify for. And where do you find the time to write all those essays? Did you get a lot of little ones, or a few big ones? Are there any you recommend?
I also got a letter from UM about the award of excellence. It says that I was invited to apply for it because of my academics. Is pretty much everybody invited to apply? What constitutes financial need? How much did you get?
Thanks</p>
<p>Maguo1, check around your high school, local community, and local community foundation. Mine had a set of about seventy scholarships available, and we only haad to fill out one application by checking boxes for the scholarships for which we qualified and wanted to apply, and then we wrote one set of essays for all of them. Through my community foundation, I received a $2000 scholarship (basically an "all around" scholarship), which is renewable for four years if I keep my grades above a certain point. I also received the Rotary Rosebud Award for $500 for community service from the the local Rotary Club and a $1000 scholarship through my high school for someone with a disability who has potential to succeed in college. i even received a $500 scholarship from a high school that I never attended but qualified for because my mom has been working there for a long time. The MEAP money adds to $2500 given over two years, and I believe that my Michigan competitive sscholarship was $3000, which I believe is (again) renewable if I keep my grades above their threshold. I did fill out quite a few essays, but i tried focusing my time on the scholarships, which i believed I had the most change of getting.</p>
<p>From what I know... The Michigan competitive scholarship is a scholarship given to Michigan residents by the state who firstly qualify for it academically. After that first hurdle is overcome, the candidate has to demonstrate need in order to receive it, and the amount of need that is demonstrated will determine the size of the scholarship.</p>