<p>If you do need a car going out of town, there are zip cars on campus.</p>
<p>Thanks to all for the feedback about cars on campus. We just had this conversation last night so thanks again. Our son is NOT taking his car Freshman year, no need. We are all very excited for his new adventure in life at U Mich! GO BLUE!</p>
<p>@Blue85, Thanks for the useful info – I really appreciate your taking the time to contribute to the discussion! Thanks also for the car-related tips… My son definitely won’t have one freshman year, so that will be one less thing to worry about! </p>
<p>Wanted to let all of you who have been so helpful to me the past week or so know that we paid the $300 enrollment deposit today, so my son will be going blue after all!! Thanks again for all the great information that helped us make this important decision. :-)</p>
<p>^ Don’t forget to start working on the housing application soon. He will need some time to work on the essays if he is applying to any residential programs. PM me if you need some tips for housing application.
Let me know if you or your S need any help in town. A car is totally not necessary while living on campus and may cause more trouble than help.</p>
<p>If you’re not living on campus, a car is very important though. Freshman year he’ll probably live on campus, but after that he’ll probably move, in which case, depending on how close he is, he may want a car. </p>
<p>Hello everyone!
I am a NJ mom whose son is accepting admission into the Engineering Program…so excited after what has been quite a stressful and unpredictable process! His passion is aerospace and was sold even more after attending the NY accepted student day 2 weeks ago. We are excited and nervous at the same time, but the reason for my post is to find out how I can get into the closed facebook group for michigan parents. I have a lot of questions that hopefully have already been answered over there! </p>
<p>@NJengmom. The UMich Parents facebook page is a closed, private group. If you send me a private message here with your Facebook name and email address, I can have you added. Your facebook needs to demonstrate that you really are an adult/parent as we do not want any students in the group. The facebook group is AWESOME especially for parents who live far away. </p>
<p>Hi, @NJengmom! I am also a mom of an engineering student from NJ! My son was originally interested in aerospace as well, but is probably going to go the more generic route of mechanical initially… Sounds like our sons have a lot in common, though! 
Are you guys from North or South Jersey? We’re from down south (not far from Wilmington, DE). The process has been very stressful and unpredictable for us as well, so very happy to have made a decision finally!! Anyway, hope to connect with you over on the UM parents FB page… I’ve just sent a request to @AnonMom13 for access to it as well!</p>
<p>My friend’s son had interest in aerospace initially but ended up switched to ME. He got a job in the mid-west at a large company and got relocated overseas. He has been making good money.</p>
<p>@AnonMom13 I am so excited to join the group…as I said I have so many questions I would love to get answers for!!<br>
@shorner We are from North Jersey! I am just so relieved that the choice is made and we can now start moving forward. We were basically down to Purdue, Univ of Illinois, Boston U, and of course UMich. UMich was his top choice all along. As far as Aero/mech we have had many a debate on this topic. Ultimately decided from the advice of others, that if his passion is Aero, he should do Aero. We were thinking dual degree for a while but was told so many that the courses overlap. It’s funny, my husband had gone on an interview and somehow got to talking about colleges and mentioned my son. They asked where he was going and my husband replied…I think Michigan for aero/engineering. There eyes opened and said well if he graduates from UMICH tell him to give us a call…"they are involved with something aircraft related… He was excited to go home and tell my son that!</p>
<p>"@Blue85, Thanks for the useful info – I really appreciate your taking the time to contribute to the discussion!"</p>
<p>Sure thing, and good luck to your son at UM!</p>
<p>1) Yeah, there is no real need for a car freshman year. After that though I have found it very helpful, though not necessary. </p>
<p>2) Myself and others included would be happy to answer any questions you have about Michigan or the College of Engineering on here. Answering the questions can help pass time in lectures… (don’t worry, your kid will care a little bit more when he/she starts out haha)</p>
<p>3) Some of the very basic 200 level ME and AERO courses can be used to fulfill either degree requirements. So you could technically go into your engineering course load in the AERO path and then switch to ME a semester later without missing that much. How soon you start the engineering course work depends on the amount of credits you come in with but it is usually Soph year. </p>
<p>4) I think you can choose to not count AP credits if you want. So technically if you wanted to do Calc again you could. I thought that was the case but I’m not sure. Either way I’d take all the credits you could and start wherever you could. It helps a lot to have that extra flexibility when scheduling courses down the line. Hell, I should have had Calc 3 and Linear Algebra too but Michigan is sorta picky about taking credit for things during high school. I could have saved even more time.</p>
<p>Either way, thanks to my AP credits I was able to take a semester off to co-op and still graduate in 4 years, be part time one of the semesters my Sr year (which allowed me to dro ME 335 one semester and move it to the next without an issue) and generally just give me a lot of flexibility during my class scheduling so that I pretty much always got in to what I wanted.</p>
<p>Also having more credits will help you get better football tickets and register for classes sooner.</p>
<p>@ThisIsMichigan</p>
<p>ThisIsMichigan is right on the money. Use all of those AP credits (especially if you are in the College of Engineering).</p>
<p>I think you can re-take the course; you just lose the AP credit. Is that still true?</p>
<p>Correct me if I am wrong. I think the AP credit is equivalent to the course on the table. If you retake the course, you don’t get extra credit for that course but it will be included in GPA calculation.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that is correct. You don’t get extra credits or anything. You just take it again, and then by retaking the course it will go into your GPA.</p>
<p>Again though, I really wouldn’t recommend doing that. The bonus of taking a few extra courses where you might get a higher grade doesn’t outweigh the benefits IMO</p>
<p>Also, some of the courses you skip might be “weed out” courses, like Calc 1 or 2. I didn’t have to take these here but I heard the averages were very low and some of the questions I saw for Calc 2 were just stupid</p>
<p>-Also keep in mind, if you are going in to engineering, these early classes have not just engineers in them, but kids that eventually will find out they aren’t cut out for engineering, business students, liberal arts students, etc. The average will be lower but it doesn’t necessarily mean the course is harder. There just aren’t a ton of engineers in those classes. </p>
<p>My boy, currently a junior in computer engineering in the COE, came to Michigan with AP credit in Calculus BC that allowed him to option out of taking Calc 1 and 2. He chose, however, to take Calc 2 (Math 116) not to increase his GPA but to make sure he had sufficient background for Calc 3 and subsequent math related classes. His remaing AP credits eliminated his need to sit thru all those pesky liberal art elective courses and allowed him to concentrate more effort on his major as well as as taking more elective engineering courses.</p>
<p>. </p>
<p>I read through this thread with interest and I can offer some insights as a parent of a student in Michigan’s College of Engineering. My son is a sophomore and I agree with some of the negatives that were mentioned here, however, there are a lot of positives as well. No school is perfect.</p>
<p>I think everyone has covered the car situation well. Parking is really awful there. Freshmen have no need of a car, and my son didn’t have one his sophomore year either. He didn’t want one. The bus system is excellent and he preferred using that. He hasn’t decided for next year, as he’s going to be living close to Central Campus and close to public transportation again. We’ll see.</p>
<p>Housing was stressful. They were doing a lot of construction on dorms the year he started, so he ended up on North Campus which wasn’t ideal, especially because he wasn’t in a dorm but in an apartment. His two roommates were nice kids but had very different personalities so he didn’t really click with them. As a result it took him longer to find a group of friends. Thankfully that problem has long since passed and he’s living in a house with a bunch of friends next year.</p>
<p>I don’t know about prerequisite classes not being that good. I think it depends on which professor you get. He absolutely loved one of his math professors, wasn’t wild about his chemistry professor. He had a fair amount of AP credit and college classes from dual enrollment, so he was able to use those for some prerequisites. </p>
<p>I can’t say enough about opportunities that these kids have. It is all there for the taking, the student just has to go after it. My son had three offers of paid internships this summer, and the pay is pretty good for a 20-year-old kid. He actually turned down the one that paid the most because it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do. He’s a computer science major and he wanted to do coding, so he went for the internship that would give him that experience. I can’t speak to the opportunities for the other majors at the COE, but I do know that the Job Fair they have every Fall has something for everyone.</p>
<p>He really loves it there now, loves Ann Arbor, loves all the opportunities, loves his group of friends, loves the school. Going to college is a huge adjustment, especially one the size of Michigan. There are going to be ups and downs and it’s going to take a little time to find your place. </p>