<p>UMichigan left thousands of applicants' files NEVER EVER touched for 6 months and simply offered them a mass message "DEFERRED"......the most creative thing. With the May 1 national acceptance deadline approaching, these EA students are still waiting!? (actually most of them do not care any more about a decision). Juniors, if you do not want to be just a number, or do not want to just make UM appear more "selective," forget UMichigan.</p>
<p>…calm down…</p>
<p>How2PayCollege, I can understand your disapointment. Michigan really needs to review its admissions process. Their system worked fine with 20,000 applicants, but proved to be ineffective with 30,000 applicants. I can scarcely imagine how it will function with 38,000 or 45,000 applicants. Michigan should do away with its deferral philosophy and with its rolling admissions. It should have an ED option and a RD option and that is all. Through ED, Michigan should accept 35%-45% of the desired class in order to better predict the size of the overall Freshman class and defer no more than 10%-15% of ED applicants to the RD cycle. All RD applicants should be notified in April 1 with not more than 300-400 waitlisted students.</p>
<p>Hopefully, Michigan will reform its admissions process soon.</p>
<p>Luckily, the rest of the University functions perfectly well. Once admitted, Michigan is actually very efficient given its size.</p>
<p>^^ I also agree with this.</p>
<p>Several deferred applicants (including myself, in-state, and others that I know, out-of-state) have heard back already. I think you’re exaggerating the situation quite a bit. The switch to the Common App + pressure of reducing the freshman class obviously is stretching out the time that it’s taking to reply back to all the applicants.</p>
<p>I agree that once the admission process is over, Michigan is remarkably organized, communicative and helpful. Campus Day ran very smoothly and provided a great deal of helpful info. The Honors Department is great. The Housing Department responded to questions within just a few hours. Wolverine Access is very user friendly. I’m impressed! It’s way better than the communication and systems for my other S’s university, which is about the same size.</p>
<p>Alexandre: finally, someone with a great idea…</p>
<p>when Umich originally announced the ED option for this year, everyone breathed a sigh of relief in the admissions community…then they renegged that idea (any reason why?)…then they said that they were no longer rolling for EA (big deal); they still deferred a ridiculous #…</p>
<p>I don’t attribute the increase in apps to this issue; the same thing happened in 2008 and 2009 cycles with EA deferrals being left on some pile somewhere until mid-April…</p>
<p>For those of you who have been aware of all of this for the past 5 years, it brings the mind the mid-admissions turnaround in October of a couple of years ago; all of a sudden, UMich decides to count freshman year and no longer creates a UMICh gpa…right in the middle of an admissions cycle…I, personally, had at least 10 kids scramble to apply after that because it drastically increased their chances for admissions…and this is announced within days of the EA deadline…</p>
<p>Or the removal of an “unnamed” state admissions officer in the middle of the reading of EA applications, leaving a ton of kids from this state deferred on Dec 23rd…with extremely high stats…</p>
<p>For such a well respected school, their admissions department has time and time again proved that it is the weakest link in an otherwise strong chain…</p>
<p>Rodney, </p>
<pre><code>Thank you for your post. It’s good to have some historical perspective on this. For most of us this is our first time dealing with UM, either because we are applying or our children are. My assumption had always been that this mess was the result of the school going to the Common App. this year and then being overwhelmed with the number of applications it received. Now it sounds like this is not the case.
Have similar problems occured in prior years? If so, can you give us some more info. on exactly what happened? Did the school notify everyone of their status by April 15th, so at least applicants could send their deposits in, arrange for housing, etc. before the May 1 deadline that so many schools use? Or were people strung along until May 2nd, and placed in the position of having to forefeit their deposits at another school if UM eventually got back to them with a favorable determination?
As others have said, I have not been very impressed with how the school is handling this, and will be even less impressed if it has been a re-occuring problem for the last several years.
</code></pre>
<p>Rodney, from my discussions with admissions, I understand that Michigan decided not to go for down the ED route because none of its public peers did so. But I did some research of my own and found that there are several high-profile publics that do, include CalPoly San Luis Obispo, Cornell’s statutory colleges (Agriculture, Human Ecology and Industrial and Labor Relations), Miami of Ohio, several SUNY’s, Virginia Tech and William & Mary.</p>
<p>Got this thread from a UW link. Many applying to UW frustrated by delays- increased applications there, too. Michigan’s Big Ten peers don’t do ED, more influential than the above named schools.</p>
<p>I agree wis. Unfortunately, other Big 10 schools do not receive 40,000 applicants. By instisting on obeying greedy state rules and mimicking other Big 10 schools, the University of Michigan is not doing what is best for its students and itself. For a few years, I wish Michigan acted very selfishly, looking out only for itself.</p>
<p>I don’t think Michigan should go with an ED. It would drive down apps and shoot the acceptance rate back up. I don’t think the ED crowd is very receptive towards public schools.</p>
<p>eziamm, the purpose of ED for Michigan would not be to lower acceptance rate but to better predicte the size of the Freshman class. But I am not sure I agree that ED would drive apps down. Perhaps fewer students would apply early and decide to apply RD instead, but the overall application pool will remain the same. However, if Michigan accepted 40% of its freshman class through ED, it would raise the overall yield from 40% to 50% or higher, which would drop the acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I don’t think there would be an equal increase in RD apps to go along with a decrease in early apps if they went to ED. If they were to take 40% of the class ED, the ED acceptance rate would be ridiculously high. I believe Northwestern gets ~2100 ED apps a year so maybe Michigan could expect 3000. If they accepted 40% of a 5k class it would be 2k. That’s ~67% ED acceptance rate. Not a good option.</p>
<p>This was their first year on the Common App too so get over it.</p>
<p>Wow, all these complainers.</p>
<p>You realize you aren’t special anymore right? It’s not like high school. There are thousands of you’s.</p>
<p>Instead of an Early Decision program why don’t to something similar to the UC system?
Everyone must apply by December 1st. The extra month or two will give the University of Michigan an ample amount of time to make their decisions. If you apply earlier than December 1st, kudos, but it doesn’t mean squat in terms of your decision. Then University of Michigan releases ALL of it’s decisions sometime in mid-March, late-March, or early-April.</p>
<p>“Have similar problems occured in prior years? If so, can you give us some more info. on exactly what happened? Did the school notify everyone of their status by April 15th, so at least applicants could send their deposits in, arrange for housing, etc. before the May 1 deadline that so many schools use? Or were people strung along until May 2nd, and placed in the position of having to forefeit their deposits at another school if UM eventually got back to them with a favorable determination?”</p>
<p>q1: HAve similar problems occured in previous years? </p>
<p>I don’t think UMich sees this situation as “problems”; (nor do I for that matter); this is the way they want to do things and have done it this way for awhile…I think that if applicants are aware of this when they are deferred in the fall, it doesn’t really become a problem…I advise my students of this ahead of time…and they decide if they want to continue waiting at different times during the process; most move on (because in MANY cases, at least from my perspective, these are very high stats kids that, honestly, are being admitted to as highly academic programs as UMich)…I have had alot of kids put in EDII applications to some top schools after being deferred so they drop out of the process if they are admitted to those schools as well…</p>
<p>q2: The students I know that were deferred in the fall did not hear until at least April 1st; in the past, they were then waitlisted…a ton of them had already withdrawn their apps by this point (as they were accepted to other schools) but Umich process for withdrawing an app doesn’t do much; not sure why, but I have had kids waitlisted in April after withdrawing their apps in Jan and Feb</p>
<p>q3: We live in NJ; I do not know of anyone in my experience who was accepted after being deferred in the EA round; doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, I have just never heard of it except here on CC…so there has never been an issue of being accepted late and having to deal with housing etc…</p>
<p>q4: For those that have been waitlisted in April and stuck with the waitlist: I only know of one student who stayed on it until August but never actually was released from that waitlist until they called up in August and asked…</p>
<p>i hope this answers your questions…I really feel that if applicants to Umich know ahead of time “the deal” it makes it much easier to go through this process…as MLWoody says, there are thousands of people going through this…</p>
<p>The unique situation of the admissions officer leaving in the middle of the EA reading season was a one time/one year event…in case you were curious…</p>
<p>I think the most disappointing aspect from UM of this applications year is the complete lack of communication. ALL of the other schools my daughter applied to, seemed to WANT HER. They e-mailed, many times; they kept us abreast of what they were doing and of where she stood in the process. She has received NOTHING from UM since her deferral in December. They don’t seem to care one way or another where the kids are or acknowledge that there might be some apprehension as to admittance. It’s a crummy way to treat people who are happy and excited about a school. </p>
<p>From the very first moment of our campus tour, the UM attitude was: “You’re probably not good enough to get in here.” It was, frankly, a turn off. And the way the admissions mess has sorted itself out only reinforces this impression. UM is like a bad boyfriend. They aren’t quite sure you’re pretty/smart/cool enough for them, but they will string you along JUST IN CASE a date with that better girl doesn’t work out.</p>
<p>Again, just crummy treatment of these kids all around. Rejection is kinder than being on the receiving end of this endless wondering what the heck they are doing in AA. Even if a kid has decided to go elsewhere, as my daughter has, they still want that decision.</p>
<p>^Just for the record, my experience was completely opposite than that. Michigan was always very receptive and welcoming to me and very helpful throughout the application process. The first time I came on campus last summer for a tour they said “Welcome to Michigan” and made me feel welcome. I’m excited for four great years in A2.</p>