<p>Here’s the 25% HIGH SCHOOL graduation rate info for the city of Detroit:
[CARPE</a> DIEM: 25% High School Graduation Rate in Detroit, Although State Dept of Education Says 67%](<a href=“http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/04/25-hs-graduation-rate-in-detroit.html]CARPE”>CARPE DIEM: 25% High School Graduation Rate in Detroit, Although State Dept of Education Says 67%)</p>
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<p>This is the most true statement I’ve ever seen on this website. As I posted elsewhere, I’m desperately trying to get into Michigan… I could probably very easily get into some of the lower tiered state schools, though. Trying to explain to people in the midwest why Grand Valley State isn’t good enough is like trying to explain colors to a blind person. I used to think it was just adults… people who lived in a world where any college was good enough because so few went. But then my friends with 3.5 GPA’s started applying to Central, Oakland U and Toledo and I realized that prestige is a meaningless concept here.</p>
<p>And it goes into HR here, too. I was told by an HR person at an Ohio law firm that he considers a 4.0 from Wayne State the same as a 3.0 from Michigan. In that world, I guess, what’s the point of prestige over comfort?</p>
<p>^ I only partially agree with this characterization. I haven’t lived in Michigan for many years, but I still have family and friends there. I think it’s still pretty similar to how it was when I went to college. True, a lot of people there don’t give a hoot about academic prestige, or even academic quality (the two are not the same). But many do care about these things—more about quality than prestige, in my opinion, but when you care about one it becomes hard to separate it from the other. But for Michigan HS students, there’s a kind of informal statewide tracking system. If you’re not in the top 10% of your class, you get the message that the University of Michigan is probably not for you. If you are in the top 10%, there’s nothing wrong with Michigan State—an excellent public university in its own right—or one of the many other inexpensive and perfectly functional-to-very-good public universities in the state. So not every val, sal, or top 10% student is gonig to apply to the University of Michigan, but most of its in-state applicants will be drawn from that pool. Consequently, the University of Michigan’s in-state applicant pool is pretty self-selecting, which results in a higher acceptance rate—though it does draw a pretty strong student body.</p>
<p>Bottom line: don’t be misled by acceptance rates alone. They may not tell you the whole story.</p>