<p>UM has one of the top medical schools and an excellent medical school placement rate. </p>
<p>With that being said, provided you have a good GPA and MCAT (33+) you will have make it to med school at MSU as well.</p>
<p>Obviously this is like five years later, so not much relevance, but what Hattrickty9 is saying is not completely true, I don’t think, and I want to make sure that everyone else who views this from now on knows it.
I live in Michigan, I could most likely get into either school if I wanted to, and I know several people from both of them, so that is how I am qualified to say anything, if that is or is not good enough a reason.
When the poster says UMich is harder, I think he’s thinking that he can use the fact that UMich is more selective as a measure of course difficulty. If you are studying to become pre-med, it most likely doesn’t matter what school you go to, by the time you graduate your proffessors should have taught you what you need to know. Scientific fact doesn’t just change when you step over some invisible line between spartan and wolverine territory.
Michigan State lets more people in, and some people aren’t that great of students. UMich has decided to ONLY allow good students into the program, but that doesn’t mean good students don’t go to MSU. You can’t compare the two colleges, because the range of students is not equivilent. And also, since when did being more selective mean it was actually better? Because that sounds just stupid to me.</p>
<p>CVG013,</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you dredged up this old thread, but since you did, let’s be clear about a couple of things. Michigan State is a better-than-average public university; Michigan is an outstanding one. There’s no question Michigan has the better students overall. The most telling stat: at Michigan, 92% of enrolled freshmen were in the top 10% of their HS class; at MSU only 29% were. Median test scores (Michigan 27-31 middle 50% ACT, MSU 23-28) and average HS GPAs (Mich 3.8, MSU 3.6) are consistent with that, meaning that it’s still the same today as it was back in my day: in the state of Michigan, most of the A students go to Michigan, while mostly B+/A- students go to MSU. Michigan also has stronger faculties in almost every imaginable discipline, with almost all its programs ranked in the top 25 nationally in their field, and many in the top 5 or 10. Michigan’s got a better student/faculty ratio, more small classes, and fewer large classes. A stunning 11.8% of the classes at MSU have 100+ students, versus 6.8% at Michigan; at the other end of the scale, Michigan has 1,740 classes with fewer than 20 students, while MSU, with roughly 50% more undergraduates, has only 611 classes in that size range. Michigan’s got a higher freshman retention rate (96%, v. 91% at MSU) and a higher 6-year graduation rate (90%, v. 77% at MSU). On reputational surveys, it’s no contest. In short, Michigan is by far the stronger school overall.</p>
<p>That said, it’s not crazy for someone–especially a Michigan resident–to choose MSU over Michigan if they have the choice. One reason might be family ties; there tend to be MSU families and Michigan families, and some mixed, but if you’re from an MSU family you might choose Sparty for sentimental reasons, and that’s fine, I’m all for school (and family) loyalty. Another is the type of reason advanced earlier in this thread: some students get into the Honors College at MSU but not the Honors Program at Michigan. The Honors College at MSU is pretty good, the students who enroll there are impressive, there are more small classes and you get more personalized attention than in the general university; the same is true at Michigan, but if you get into one and not the other (and it’s more likely that if you get into only one it’s at MSU), that might be reason enough to choose it. Another reason is financial: Michigan is more expensive even for in-state students, and sometimes net of FA, MSU may be significantly less expensive. If you combine those–Honors College at MSU with a sweet FA package v. general LS&A at Michigan at a higher cost–the Honors College at MSU might well be a sensible choice. I have to say, though, that back in my day I was accepted to Honors at both and chose Michigan despite a more generous FA package from MSU, and I’ve never regretted it. On the other hand, I know some people who chose MSU Honors and the money, and they don’t seem to have any great regrets, either.</p>