<p>A couple of years ago, I thought getting admitted into Michigan was like one4 of the most prestigious accomplishments ever. Then, when I entered high school I realized its guidelines are actually very lax. In fact, UM almost takes 60-70 kids each year from my instate school alone. It seems like if you're from a large and reputable public in MI, all you need is like a 3.6 UW GPA and a 26 ACT to get in. In fact, some students in my school take literaly all blowoff classes and attain a 4.9, which allows them to score even less on the ACT(about 23-24) and stilll get admitted.</p>
<p>The weird thing is, if you ask someone what school/s are more academically reputable than Michigan, the first words you hear uttered are "Ivy League". Well, lets just say that getting into an Ivy school is a <em>TAD</em> bit more difficult. I have heard stories of perfect SAT/grades/EC's type applicants from my school getting rejected from even the lower Ivies like Brown and Penn, with Cornell being the exception of course.</p>
<p>My ultimate question is not merely why Michigan has such relaxed admissions standards, but rather how is it able to provide such a world-class undergraduate experience and a comparable education as places like Columbia and Penn, when the credentials of its applicants in retrospect, seem so much more<em>inferior</em>.</p>
<p>What is Michigan's secret??? I would appreciate it if Alexandre or another alum ansers this question but any valuable insight coming from any other informed poster will also be welcomed. Thank you!!!</p>
<p>My guess would be that the sheer number of spots available puts a downward pressure on the stats required to admit students. If U of M had admissions standards like Brown, Cornell et al, there'd be a lot fewer people here...and SOMBODY has to pay all that tuition! lol.</p>
<p>The existance of a "World-class undergaduate experience" is questionable, but I'm not gonna open up that can of worms. I will however say that the lower quality of students here does have an effect on class room experience. For example, in my religion 201 review last night, I was blown away when one student asked Ralph effing Williams what the Reformation was. Another good one was when a kid asked the AA for the course to explain the difference b/t Shiite and Sunni Muslims. <em>sigh</em> Anecdotes don't prove anything...so take them for what they're worth. </p>
<p>Back to your original question; I personally believe that UM's presitge comes from its research, graduate, and professional programs. These programs are all over the top 5 lists in almost every field. The undergraduate program, while under the same UM banner, is quite differant.</p>
<p>I think kb is largely correct although I might not put it so pessimistically.</p>
<p>Michigan is a large school, which means it had to admit a lot of people. Michigan is also a public school, which means it has a mission to educate the children of its citizens. Michigan cannot, in good faith, start turning away the top graduates from Michigan high schools * even if some of those high schools don't offer the best college preparatory education.*</p>
<p>I was just going over some old transcripts of some faculty focus groups discussing the undergrad experience. At one point they were talking about how rewarding it was to take a bright kid with potential (but who wasn't already an academic superstar) and watch him or her really wake up to the joy of intellectual rigor and curiosity. Where's the fun in being a place where high achievers can show off how achieving they are? Sure, there are plenty of those students at Michigan, and god bless 'em. However, there's nothing wrong with being a place where a good solid (but non-flashy) student becomes a questioning, challenging, curious scholar. Michigan offers the peers, faculty, resources, and environment to make that possible. Faculty love when that happens.</p>
<p>"how rewarding it was to take a bright kid with potential (but who wasn't already an academic superstar) and watch him or her really wake up to the joy of intellectual rigor and curiosity." </p>
<p>how do I become that kid that they take? hahaha. I think simply that it is a large public school makes it pretty easy to get into as a Michigan resident. However, getting in out of state is quite a feat as I'm learning.</p>
<p>it's really easy to get admitted to when you have these 99th percentile-esque stats like most CCers have, but when you're more like the "average intelligent" student, it is a much bigger deal to get into U of M. everyone on here has so much higher standards academically, that it's in no way an indicator of the majority of U of M applicants and what they think about how hard or easy it was to get into U of M.</p>
<p>i would still say that the general perception is that u of m is both prestigious and hard to get into, at least amongst the normal people, such as myself.</p>
<p>I kind of agree with the first post. To my school, Michigan isn't that big a deal. They take 20-30 kids a year, I think, and those are just the ones who end up attending. I swear everyone applies to Michigan, whether you think you're gonna go there or not. It's just the norm, that you will apply, since it's instate and a heck of a better choice than MSU. (not to get into the rivalry, even though it's pretty obvious which one I prefer.)</p>
<p>I think, since you're instate and you hear so much about it, it doesn't seem as prestigious as if you heard of it from oos, but that's just due to our pov.</p>
<p>And also, I think as a state public school, michigan's required to have a certain number or percentage of instate students, isn't it? (might be totally offbase here)</p>
<p>No, Michigan doesn't have quotas for in-state students, or any special admissions for in-state students, like other top publics Texas and UNC have. Texas has a rule where they will admit any in-state student who is in the top 10%. UNC has quotas where they have to admit 82% of the in-state applicants, at least.</p>
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And also, I think as a state public school, michigan's required to have a certain number or percentage of instate students, isn't it? (might be totally offbase here)
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<p>Nope. We have sort of a "gentleman's agreement" about this with the legislature, but there are no requirements (currently). We tend to keep it around a 2/3-1/3 split with undergrads, but it varies--some years more, some years less.</p>
<p>As state funding drops (and the state reneges on certain funding agreements) U-M gets a little less committed to the 2/3 goal. It's not just that tuition revenue is higher with nonresidents--the pool is deeper and the quality is a little better. So you can move to a higher nonresident percentage and improve the overall academic quality of the student body. U-M would not take more nonresidents for revenue alone--the quality has to be there.</p>
<p>With term limits, it's a whole new ball game every few years (new legislators) but our government relations people work hard to keep residency percentage requirements out of the appropriations bill.</p>
<p>Hoedown, since state funding basically sucks compared to what it has been or what it could be, why not just forget that 2/3 benchmark and evaluate students on quality alone? A whole new Aff Action if you will.</p>
<p>State funding is at a problematically low level, but it's still $320 million. Michigan is not going to raise $320 million in tuition revenue by admitting more nonresidents.</p>
<p>To answer to original question: Yes, it is too easy.</p>
<p>As un-PC as it is to comment, many of the minority and athletic students are painfully underqualified.</p>
<p>....like to the point of my lab partner not knowing basic 8th grade algebra in college chemistry.</p>
<p>The school can't hold 6.5k classes. Everything suffers. Popular classes fill up seconds after the earliest people register. Freshman must now sit out of the student section in the football stadium.</p>
<p>We need to be an elite institution or stop pretending like it. The bottom of the class was already pretty academically shaky before we started having 6 and a half thousand per class. </p>
<p>Now the bottom 1/5th simply does not belong.</p>
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As un-PC as it is to comment, many of the minority and athletic students are painfully underqualified
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<p>I'm really skeptical about statements like this--not because of the "PC" thing you mentioned, but because I don't know how you arrived at this judgement. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "many?" and by "painfully underqualified?" What's your source of data; how many athetes and minority students have you assessed? What was yoir criteria?</p>
<p>If you want to say that IN YOUR EXPERIENCE the ones you've met haven't been adequately prepared, or that IN YOUR OPINION you feel this way, I wouldn't challenge you. That's your perception. </p>
<p>But the statement as it stands needs significantly more explanation to be credible.</p>
<p>i can back up lawschoolbound's comments. Many black students in engineering have very poor math skills. Sometimes I help out fellow students who are black and basically explain everything in steps and at the end, they can't even do the math, simple integration. I don't have the time to "prove" to "you" that many black students are unqualified, but URM's acceptance rate at umich is about 85% for URMs with at least 3.0 GPA and 1000 SAT.
I'm all for providing URMs with opportunities at elite colleges, if they are pretty close to being qualified. But, many of these black students here at umich come from pretty well-to-do families, but somehow they felt they were discriminated against because they were black, and they somehow feel they have some excuse. I came from a public high school too and my parents make less than 50k a year, there are plenty of international students who face more adversity here than me, and they are doing well. To put it simply, too many URMs are unprepared for college at umich and many end up transferring out.</p>
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I don't have the time to "prove" to "you"
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<p>"I" (not sure why we are using quotes here) am not asking for proof. </p>
<p>I just happen to believe quite strongly that unqualified statements like LawSchoolBound2s are unhelpful at best and misleading at worst.</p>
<p>As for your statements, can you tell us more about students feeling they are discriminated against/needing excuses? Is that from what you've heard them say? I ask because on CC I've seen some people incorrectly assign institutional actions to the actions of applicants. There is no "opt out" for affirmative action. Students who get consideration for their SES or ethnicity are not (necessarily) making a personal request for it. And some of them (apparently none of the ones you and LSB2 have run across, unfortunately) wouldn't need such consideration to still be qualified for admissions, at least as far as the faculty, admissions office, and admissions readers have traditionally determined "qualified" to mean.</p>
<p>What you and LSB2 are describing is a very serious problem, and one that goes against what Michigan claims to be doing. Michigan maintains that it is giving preferential treatment to some students of certain ethnicities, from certain geographic regions, or of a particular gender, etc. from among a larger pool of qualified students. There is a surplus of qualified students, so Michigan has the luxury of picking and choosing among them to fulfill certain institutional priorities. If U-M is, in fact, admitting students who are not qualified, than it's a terribly serious problem. Hence my interest in this and the true scope of it. If Michigan's admissions criteria for math preparation, etc. is incorrect, it's a much bigger problem than an affirmative action issue.</p>
<p>Our campus is very divided, racial interaction is not looked down upon, but if u walked into any cafeteria, u will see that black students sit together, white students sit together, asian-american students sit together, and then international students are in their own group. This is not their fault, black students can relate to each other more, there is more to talk about. you don't choose your friends based on their skin color. U don't just go, oh i need 3 white friends, 1 black friend and an asian friend. This is the problem with Michigan's AA policy. Michigan achieves affirmative action through numbers, but this is not true diversity. The purpose of having a selective admissions criteria is to pick out the best students period, and NOT picking the best students out of each race, but this is exactly what the University is doing. The University needs to focus on finding the right mix of bright open-minded students and not just admit students based on race. This is not a salad bowl, there is more to a student than the color of his skin.</p>
<p>On a rare occasion, I agree with Jeffl. Unfortunately, most universities approach diversity like Michigan. Some schools do it the right way though, and Jeffl is definitely on to something. A school must carefuly look at each applicant to make sure the overall fit is a good one.</p>
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from among a larger pool of qualified students
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<p>If they were selecting from equally qualified applicants they wouldn't be predicting an 75-85% drop in minority enrollment if Michigan residents ban affirmative action next year </p>
<p>You can't have your cake and eat it too. </p>
<p>Either they are letting in far less qualified people, or there would not be such a major drop w/out race based admissions </p>
<p>I've gone to school here for years, trust me -- it's the former.</p>
<p>(and this goes for all AA schools - Read Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Duke's amicus briefs in Grutter/Gratz when AA was in danger nationwide -- they said their minority enrollment would drop catastrophically while somehow maintaining that they only prefer among equally qualified applicants)</p>