Pros and Cons of Michigan state!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Michigan State University
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<p>I know there is probably a thread about this, but i was hoping some students could contribute to making a new one! I am seriously considering MSU next year, and was just hoping to get some insight about everything!</p>

<p>Some information about me: Out of state, Washington, going there i won't know anyone!
I plan on majoring in Athletic Training-any info?
I'm not a big parties but like to do it sometimes ( Mainly due to consequences from high school sports and clubs)- Best dorm for me?
I LOVE sports, and really want a school where i can have strong teams!</p>

<p>Any pros and cons about the school? Dorms/classes/ clubs, activities/ school spirit/ anything at all that you can tell me about Michigan state, im really trying to decide if this could be the school for me next year!</p>

<p>Thanks for your help!!</p>

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<p>Is it really cold during winter? (like super super cold?)</p>

3

<p>Hello! Just fyi, I’m also an out-of-state student (from Alaska) and a 3rd year student at MSU. I knew absolutely no one in the state of Michigan before applying…lol. Obviously I love it here and wouldn’t be answering questions like this if I didn’t like MSU (so I am definitely biased). That being said, here are some of the pros and cons of MSU (some of them are from my initial observations as an incoming freshman, others are from college experiences from my friends and I).</p>

<p>Pros:
-Div I sports (football, basketball, and hockey to a lesser extent among other sports)
-School spirit (most people love their sports here…Izzone anyone? Even our once-mediocre football team has gained a rather large following)<br>
-Tons of student orgs/opportunities for student participation (lots of IM sports teams, club sports, volunteer orgs etc)
-Residential Colleges/special programs (if you are in one)
-Curriculum and school is undergrad-focused (not grad focused like some major research universities)
-Lots of on-campus (and off-campus) jobs for students
-Lots of stuff to do for students in general…sports, orgs, movies on campus (held every week - free for students in the dorms), campus events held all the time, concerts, contests etc.
-Pretty campus - Red Cedar River running through it, lots of beautiful trees and plants and decent looking buildings
-Grand River Ave - lots of small shops/boutiques, restaurants, and bars all catered to students
-I honestly haven’t had a bad professor yet in my experience (some are boring, but never a bad one that didn’t care about their students or try to help them achieve success)</p>

<p>Cons:
-Many gen ed requirement or lower level classes (with the exception of certain programs) are huge (150 students to even more than 500 students in a class)
-Annoying, heavily accented foreign TAs (mostly in math and statistics classes…not all of them are bad though)
-Parking on campus is terrible (freshman can’t have cars on campus anyways)
-School is huge in terms of population…can be a little overwhelming at times (but being involved in student orgs, residential colleges/special programs etc. can help it feel a lot more small and community based)
-Huge campus (could be a pro or con…). 45 mins from one end of campus to the other…transportation could be an issue, but our bus system isn’t too bad
-Cold-ish weather. Sometimes gets windy, lots of cloudiness, occasionally rainy. Gloomy spring semester, pretty nice fall semester. (weather is definitely better than AK though! lol. And in comparison to other states in the Midwest, it is not as cold as Wisconsin, northern Illinois, Minnesota etc)
-East Lansing a bit boring. It is a pretty decent college town but beyond that, not too much is going on in terms of “city life” (nearby Lansing - capitol and Okemos - family suburb with a decent mall are close if you feel like getting off campus to explore). </p>

<p>In answer to your other questions - sorry I don’t know much about athletic training as a major. But MSU being a major sports school, there are several opportunities for students getting involved in the athletics department. I’d say the best dorm for you is pretty clear - you love sports, so south complex area dorms are by far the best for that (Case, Wonders, and Wilson house the most athletes, while holden has the most freshmen). South complex dorms are closest to the Breslin Center (for basketball games) and Spartan Stadium (for football games) as well as IM West really close by, the largest intramural sports facility with indoor & outdoor pools (wonders also has wonderbodies, a smaller gym in the basement). South complex as a whole definitely parties (it is not as rowdy as brody or hubbard, where most of the freshmen are housed…I would argue a good in-between). Hope this helps!</p>

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<p>thanks fa-la-la-lena! that was very helpful! I think michigan state might be the school for me next year! Another question though, it looks like a majority of the students are from instate, do most people come in with their group of friends, and hangout with the same people? I mean i know that it is a huge school, but how difficult is it to make friends with people if I am out of state and there is such a mass amount of students being in state?</p>

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<p>OOS tuition is very expensive.</p>

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<p>Forthewin, when I came in (fall 2008) I think the statistics for MSU students were 8% or less out-of-state…that number has been widened to I think more than 15% out-of-state now (more revenue for the school, leading to greater initiatives to recruit out-of-state students). Most people in-state do know anywhere from a few students to a bunch of MSU students already. But it really is not restricting for out-of-state students, especially as even most in-state students are looking for a new group of friends in college, widening their horizons. In my experience, very few college students just stick to the same old high school friends. (All of my friends except 3 of them are from Michigan…only 2 pairs of them went to the same high school). I had a really easy time making friends - granted, this is not everyone’s experience but it is definitely a possibility for you as well. (I was not very social in high school, but in college I really made the effort to be friendly with everyone I met and made a ton of friends by leaving my dorm door open, talking to random people, eating lunch with people I didn’t know, participating in different floor and hall events etc.) If anything, being from out-of-state made for an easy conversation starter to meet people.</p>

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<p>Thanks fa-la-la-lena your posts are a lot of help!! How was out of state financial aid for you? </p>

<p>Does anyone else have any information? Specifically about the Athletic training program?</p>

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<p>^my parents make too much money so I didn’t receive any need-based financial aid…but I did get quite a few scholarships through the honors college that have made it cost less than in-state tuition which has helped me a lot.</p>

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<p>Fa-la-la-Lena:
I’m considering being in msu honors college, what has your experience been like? Why did you choose hc over other schools?</p>

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<p>Okay I heard back from my last school today so now i need to start making my decisions. MSU is the top choice on my list for where i want to go, the only problem is money. They gave me about 6,000 a year in grants, and then the rest is loans. A parent loan for 16,000 a quarter so almost 32,000 a year. And then they gave me some loans for like 5,000 or so a year. My question is, is MSU worth all these loans?</p>

<p>My other question is, is that they gave me like 42,000 a year, where total cost was only like 37,000 a year. Could i not accept the last few loans, and then split the parent loan that they gave me into like an 8,000 student loan and 8,000 parent loan? Sorry if that was a incredibly dumb question but i don’t really understand the whole financial aid process lol</p>

<p>I am applying for other local scholarships, but none of them are major to make any big dents in that 32,000 dollars i need to come up with. Is there anything else i can do?</p>

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<p>Yes, you can accept as little as you want. </p>

<p>At this rate, you’d be graduating with well over 100k in student loans. I love MSU but NO school is worth that. Go to an instate or cheaper school and you could always transfer to MSU in a few years.</p>

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<p>@snapebotherer: Here’s what I wrote on another thread a while back “why MSU.”
-they kept on sending me emails/prospective student info, making me look into a school i would never have initially considered
-I found out about James Madison College (residential college for public/international affairs) which fit perfectly with what I wanted to get out of an academic program
-Honors college/scholarships/research opportunities: they gave me enough money to make going to MSU a plausible option
-When I visited for ADS weekend I loved it. Big school, tons of cool buildings, and most importantly tons of interesting, fun people
Other (more minor reasons)
-our awesome basketball program (and just the Div. I sports scene in general). I love following sports so this was really important to me
-the school spirit (rahhh rahhh MSU!)- lots of school pride
-Some of the best study abroad options/programs in the country
-MSU is relatively close to Chicago, where the bulk of my relatives live (so even going 3000 miles away from home, I still had family close-by to visit for Thanksgiving etc.) </p>

<p>More specifically about the Honors college, not only did I get scholarships that equated my rates down to in-state tuition, I got an additional 2K/year scholarship as well as a Professorial assistantship with a $2.5K/year stipend as well as a 5K study abroad scholarship. With the HC i get priority enrollment for class registration (after freshman year). This is super helpful. Then I also get to waive some lame university gen ed. requirements (instead of taking integrative studies courses, I can take an upper level history or zoology class for my arts/humanities or science requirements). It also looks a little bit more impressive when you are applying to jobs, grad schools and internships (on more than one occasion, my interviewers have pointed it out as a plus). I like taking Honors option classes because I get to know the professors and students in my classes better as the class size is significantly smaller. Compared to other schools, MSU was just the natural choice. I applied to 8 other schools - MSU was the cheapest one with the program I liked the most. The other schools were either cheap but didn’t have as specialized programs, or had the specialized program but would’ve cost 20K more. </p>

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<p>@FortheWin: I echo Romani in saying, no school is worth that much money (as much as I love MSU, please don’t pay that much for school.) Go to a cheaper college…if you really still feel that MSU is the place for you, transfer into MSU after freshman or sophomore year. You will be much better off having saved a substantial amount of money.</p>

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<p>Is there anything else that i can apply for through MSU? Any scholarships or anything? Or can i appeal for more financial aid. I know that sounds really desperate, but MSU is now my top school, and going out of state was one of my goals for college.</p>

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<p>ForTheWin - I can definitely relate…I refused to go to school in-state on principle. But bottom line, if you don’t get enough funding you probably should stay in-state, unless you want to be miserably drowning in 80K+ in loans. There are other limited sources of funding - there are departmental scholarships that you can apply for (ie the specific ones you can apply to in your college or within your major). Check your college’s website for info - some scholarships are for incoming freshmen, other scholarships are for current students. If you submitted your app before nov 1, you will be fully considered for all other scholarships (you can always hold out hope - I heard back in July about an additional 2K/year scholarship). You can definitely petition financial aid, but definitely don’t count on it. If you still have your heart set on MSU, make sure to apply for any and all outside scholarships you can get your hands on. Even the little $100 or $500 ones can really add up. Good luck</p>

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<p>can you tell me more about the ADS weekend? i was invited and i think I’m going to attend. i live in california and right now, before needbased aid, msu is my top pick so far</p>

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<p>You’re going to want to make a new thread. Go back to the last page and click “New Thread”.</p>

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<p>Great school. Great education. Lots to do. </p>

<p>I transferred to MSU (graduated long ago- LOL) and met a great group of girls and guys and we are all still friends. Michiganders are very friendly and happy to meet OOSers.</p>

<p>Cold winter weather but very bearable. Not so windy. Only remember one horrible day in my undergrad and grad school years. </p>

<p>Most of all: Go Green. Proud to be a Spartan!</p>

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<p>I’ve been accepted to MSU and am wondering:how safe is it? Michigan has a bad rep for being unsafe, at least the detroit area, and I’m international so I don’t know how EL would be. Any opinions? Thanks</p>

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<p>Michigan doesn’t have a rep for being unsafe- only Detroit and Flint. We’re over an hour away from both of them by car. EL is very safe. What crime does happen here is usually to people with unlocked doors (petty dorm theft) and people walking alone at night. Both of these are pretty rare though.</p>

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<p>Michigan state has many pros and I can’t think of one con. They sure have pride in their school and I hope I get it, its my dream school :)</p>