All of these answers are so helpful to our situation and application considerations; thanks everyone!
No disagreement on in-state yield. It is very high for Michigan. However OOS yield is NOT.
Looks like your daughter was admitted to Michigan few years ago. Things have changed since then. UCLA has now become a top priority public school for many people, in fact, Californians prefer UCLA even above Berkeley because of its beautiful campus. Most CA students have ton of APās and theyāre able to finish their college in 3 years, at any school, including UCs.
Michigan knows this, and therefore they defer and waitlist most OOS applicants from CA, and admit them later after they submit LOCI. They know their OOS yield rate is below par and they do this with the primary objective of boosting OOS yield rates.
Additionally UCLA takes ~75% in-state, and despite that itās more competitive because of the highly competitive student pool in California. CA students are in-demand throughout the US and they have lots of choices. Michigan takes 50% in-state, their in-state acceptance rate is 40% (which is quite high!), and those in-state students donāt have too many choices, and hence their in-state yield is high.
1 Like
Iām not saying Michiganās OOS yield is high or low, but what I am saying that is that it is comparable to UCLAās OOS yield.
For the Fall of 2022, UCLA admitted 3,084 OOS students and 1,028 enrolled, which is a OOS yield of 33%, which is EXACTLY what Michigan OOS yield is. And Michigan admits and enrolls many more OOS students each year. So, the OOS yield at Michigan and UCLA is COMPARABLE.
For my D, Michigan was more liberal with their AP credit policy, when we checked things out in 2017-2018. And we know several people who attended UCLA from my Dās HS, similar departments, and it took them 4 years to get through UCLA.
And that was with attending some summer school too. They had problems getting the classes they needed and I remember a recent thread here that backed up their experience.
Not sure what your point is here, but yes, CA has a much bigger student population than Michigan does. Thatās obvious. Just as a note, the in-state acceptance rate at Michigan was 40% for the Fall 2021. Overall applications have increased from approximately 80,000 to 88,000 since. So, in-state apps have increased since 2021.
Michigan received 55,000-60,000 +/- EA apps for roughly 50% of the 14,000-15,000 admittance spots or about 7,500-8,000 EA admittances. So, yes, most EA apps are deferred. Thatās part and parcel of limiting EA acceptances.
Whether OOS or in-state are deferred more or less as a % of apps is NOT known. Those stats arenāt available, unless someone can dig those up.
https://record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-sees-steady-increase-in-2023-first-year-transfer-applicants/
1 Like
1- I donāt think ability to graduate in 3 years is something unique to Michigan. It depends on the student, what courses they have taken prior to college, and how much load they take in college - itās okay for students to study at the pace theyāre comfortable with.
I know many students who have completed their college in 3 years at top tier institutions, e.g. MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, Georgia Tech, UIUC, etc, so itās not a differentiating factor for Michigan.
2- Growth in applications is also not unique to Michigan. The number of applications has grown across all college campuses in last 3-4 years.
In fact, UCLA received a record 169,800 applications for Fall '23, which is double the number of apps received at Michigan.
All I can say is that for us, it was a differentiator between various UCās and Michigan. And one of Dās best friends had the SAME major at UCLA, but took 4 years with summer school, because she couldnāt get all her classes when she wanted them. YMMV.
Never said that the growth in applications was unique to Michigan. My point was that the admittance rates and yields you were quoting for Michigan were old. Dated.
Yep, and as I mentioned above, the population of CA is about 40,000,000 and Michiganās population is about 10,000,000.
Graduating HS seniors for 2022-2023:
California 431,000
Michigan 94,000
So, CA has over 4x the amount of graduating seniors and only 2x as many applicants. My original point was Michigan must defer many applicants due to EA space limitations. And their admittance and yield rates have come down from the #'s you quoted. Your info was dated. I was trying to give current #'s.
I should point out that the OP, @dongshiming has not posted to this thread since April. 
ETA: Iām out of here, you know ToS and all!
Sure, it may have been the case for your daughter/her best friend, but lot of factors go in it, many students like to enjoy school vs rush through the degree.
All Iām saying is that students who take many APs are able to graduate in 3 years, across top tier institutions, including MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, GT, UIUC.
Your stat about graduating HS seniors vs number of applications seems to have a flaw. There are 9 UCās in California for 431k graduating seniors in CA, of which UCLA alone received 170k applications. It is huge by all means!
UCLAās reputation has risen over the last couple of years because of many factors, and while Michigan is no doubt a good school, itās not in same tier as UCLA and Berkeley.
All I can say is that I strongly disagree. But we all can have an opinion.
1 Like
UCLA and Berkeley are tied for 20th in the latest USNWR; Michigan is 25th. Other rankings usually show them as similarly clustered. Those donāt seem like different tiers.
2 Likes
Overall rankings donāt mean much. Look at rankings by major.
Computer Science: Berkeley is ranked #1 and Michigan is not even in top 10.
This is a silly game to play with these large schools. You parsed out one program, CS, to justify a broad statement. Michigan is in the top 10 for engineering; UCLA is not. That data point would not cause me to declare Michigan to be the superior school overall.
I am not arguing that any one of these is better than the other, only that there is little basis to say they are on different tiers. I think your assessment is more of a West Coast bias than based on anything specific to the schools.
1 Like
Iām just saying that overall rankings donāt matter at all, people should look at the rankings for the majors theyāre interested in. For someone interested in liberal arts, Caltech may not be top ranked school, and similarly for someone interested in engineering or technology, Ivies may not be top ranked schools.
Iām interested in CS, hereāre CS rankings from USNews:
- CMU
- MIT
- Stanford
- Berkeley
- Cornell
- Georgia Tech
- Princeton
- UIUC
- Caltech
- U Washington
So their ranked 11 thā¦ Lol not a big difference and many schools are dropping out of USNews. Anyway Michigan has something like 45 majors in the top 10. Your getting similar jobs at similar companies with MIT being the outlier
For the USNWR Michiganās CS ranking is #11. 
CSRanking.com has Cal and Michigan tied for CS. Whatever that ranking means.
The one ranking that actually means something, Michigan is ranked #2. And Cal and UCLA arenāt even sniffing the top 25. And that is college football. 
3 Likes
yeah no denying that Michigan is top school in football, just like Berkeley and MIT are top schools in computer science and academics.
I cannot wait for the first time UCLA plays a BIG10 game against UMich in the Big House on a cold Saturday evening in November. Nothing in SoCal preps you for that. Iāll be betting the kidsā 529 plans on UMich to cover.
1 Like
I donāt know which is worse, a āMaize Outā with 110,000+ in A2 or āWhite Outā at Beaver Stadium in Happy Valley.
Can we agree that both the UCs and Michigan and countless other schools are great schools with great experiences for the kids?
And get to the question at hand - is it worth applying EA for OOS?
I donāt see why the answer wouldnāt be yes. If you get deferred, so you get deferred and youāll find out later. Itās not like UMich is the only school deferring kids.
But what if you get in or rejected and this is happening too. You wouldnāt have found out early if you didnāt apply EA.
1 Like
I agree that OOS applicants should take advantage of EA. However, you must manage your expectations accordingly. You cannot apply EA and assume you will received a decision in January. In fact, I think OOS applicants need to manage their expectations by assuming they probably will not receive a decision from UMich in January.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have one child who was admitted to UMich EA, and another who was deferred EA and then admitted off the waitlist.
1 Like
Fundamentally though thereās no impact on oneās college application strategy whether the decision comes at the end of January or March. Either way they have to complete the full complement of RD apps.