Is Michigan weak in any way?

Does anyone think Michigan would have plans to decrease tuition sometime in the near future? Even for in-state, prices are still pretty steep…

Universities do not usually (ever as far as I know) lower tuition. Some universities lock tuition for current students, but in most cases, universities increase tuition annually.

That being said, for in-state students, you aren’t going to find many significantly cheaper universities than Michigan. Penn State, UIUC and MSU all cost roughly as much (give or take $2,000/year).

Instead of lower the tuition, they may offer more grant to students in need. There is no reason to cut the in state tuition.

I agree billcsho. Michigan is improving on that front anyway. It should try to increase grant-based FA as much as possible to all US citizens, regardless of state of residence.

Currently, UVA and UNC are the only public universities that give full FA even to OOS students. It would be awesome if Michigan could be the third…

goldenbear, while it is true that UVa and UNC give full FA to OOS students, their process is not need blind. Very few OOS students who need FA are admitted. UVa and Michigan are moving in the right direction financially, and should be able to meet OOS FA needs sometime down the line.

UVA is need blind. I have zero access to information submitted to the financial aid office.

Thanks for your input Dean J. I was thrown off because according to the UVa CDS, only 33% (roughly 5,000 out of 15,000) of undergraduate students are determined to have FA need. Most need-blind universities provide FA to roughly 50% of their students. At Michigan, which is admittedly not need blind when it comes to OOS applicants, only 38% of students are determined to beed FA, and that is already low, but UVa’s 33% is really quite low and suggested that some attention is given to socioeconomics. Perhaps UVa does not determine FA need as generously as other universities.

UNC is need blind for all students.

OOS admitted student here, I got my official financial aid stuff and yikes, not good. Worst part is that their cost for me would still be more than 3/5ths of my family’s annual income. Is it possible to kind of “negotiate” into more aid lol?

The only weakness in my opinion is that is not really known worldwide.
Don’t get me wrong, UMich is a super top school in the US, but in the country I came from (in Europe) nobody, and when I say nobody I really mean nobody, know
Umich.
Still, I applied anyway because I know how good of a school Umich is, and I really hope to get in!!! But if you go overseas no one will know it (apart of people that work in the accademic).

That’s the only weakness that I can think of, apart from this, I really cannot think of anything bad for this amazing college

inb4 Alexandre comes in with “@grimx98, all employers and anybody who’s anybody in Europe and otherwise knows Michigan ;)”

I agree that the university doesn’t market itself enough (as a powerhouse research university like Berkeley, Stanford, etc., rather than its football team of course).

I’m still personally pretty upset that I never heard about the school during high school (I’m from Florida), though I knew of and aspired to places like Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Georgetown, etc. However, despite being accepted to Vanderbilt as a transfer (and not applying to any of the others since they weren’t highly ranked for my majors), I ended up choosing Michigan because of what I read online about faculty strength, resources, endowment, and even some rankings online. This place truly is awesome. I seriously consider it underrated, because I never even knew it existed before looking schools up as a prospective transfer student (and it came up because I was looking up the best schools!).

@eyo777 i 100% agree with you. Michigan is definetly underrated, but the rankigs after all speak very clear (almost top 20 / top 15 in every field WORLDWIDE) !!!

I really hope to get in and join this amazing place.

grimx98, Michigan’s reputation abroad is actually very strong. I should start by stressing that other than Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley, very few US universities will have household names. Schools like Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan, Northwestern, Rice, even Princeton and Yale etc…are virtually unheard off beyond the social, corporate and intellectual elites. Forget about LACs. Schools like Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Williams, Swarthmore etc…are a mere afterthought. But when you dig deep and focus on the highly educated, most of those colleges and universities will have strong reputations across the globe. It depends where you come from obviously, but in general, Michigan is highly regarded. Amongst European countries, that is certainly the case in Germany, Switzerland and the UK, but not so much in France, Italy and Spain. Michigan also has a very strong reputation in the Middle East and Asia.

Maybe among high school students. Michigan is well known at the corporate and professional circles as Michigan has a rather sizable alumni base in Florida.

And yet Michigan is ranked very high in most global university rankings. Michigan is ranked #19 in the latest THE World Reputation Ranking, ahead of Cornell, Penn, and Duke.

Now that my child is almost done with freshman year, I can weigh in on a big weakness: communication. They obfuscate to, in my opinion, not invite bad press. Two examples:

  1. There was recently a student suicide on campus. Not only did the university not communicate to the student body about it, they actively hid it. There was no university-wide email decrying the tragedy, no student vigil, no memorial, no confronting the tragedy head-on. Nothing in the Michigan Daily. Campus entities that did communicate about it, were very cryptic. For example, Greek organizations sent an email to their constituents saying something like, "Due to the recent incident, additional counseling hours are being offered on campus." My daughter had no idea what that meant. She didn't know anything about an "incident." She only knew after I asked her about it (it was on the parents' facebook page).
  2. Norovirus. It was handled just as badly as it could have possibly been handled. Terrible communication -- and misleading communication. The whole thing from start to finish was handled terribly.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on this- I love Michigan in just about every way, but I guess I’m scared about having a very impersonal experience (I understand that it’s obviously a very large school and I’m going to have plenty of large classes, which is fine) but I want to feel like I can still gain a good relationship with professors and have open discussions in class. I’m planning on majoring in political science- is this program still going to be good for undergrads, or taught by many TA’s?? Are there still going to be many small classes? Can anyone answer this or give some insight? I’m debating between Michigan and a smaller school which also has a very good political science/international relations program, and is just geared towards undergrads. I would still love a great, engaging education, but with everything else Michigan has to offer- I guess I’m scared that it would all be big lectures with professors who were just geared towards research and graduates. I would greatly appreciate any insight into this.

As far as #1 goes @brantly , the university also has to wait for official police and medical inquiries to be complete. It’s also very possible that the student’s family requested privacy and did not want any further information disclosed or any type of public service or announcement to take place. If they honor that request from the family, it puts them in a spot of appearing to ignore it or sweep it under the rug.

@danloeb Understood. Family wishes are important. But the student’s name or demographic details do not need to be disclosed in order for the university to communicate effectively with the campus community. It was just bizarre, the cryptic messages. The messages were so mysterious.

Students need an outlet when something like this happens. Even if they just say that a freshman student died – they do no have to say it was a suicide – and allow people to grieve. There has to be a better way.

@grimx98 You can say that about 99% of British and European universities in the US. The US “public” has really only heard of Oxbridge and LSE. Mention Warwick, Durham etc., all they will look at you blankly. They haven’t heard of a single Euroipean universities, except for Sorbonne. As for Michigan, it is very well known by British and European universities.

If you are going for “name brand”, going to a foreign university is a bad idea.