Pros/cons on OOS Flagships: Michigan, Wisconsin, Vermont, and Oregon Honors College

College Search & Selection
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UW=M is Milwaukee. Madison is just UW.

You can’t beat having the state Capitol just up the State Street, and on the way she could pick up the best gyro in the world.

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Ah – Thanks for that correction.

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Couldn’t agree more with @brantly’s assessment of Michigan journalism. U-M is also very highly regarded for political science and English.

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I didn’t mean that the independence was a bad thing and my student is a managing editor at The Michigan Daily, so I am a huge fan of it and the work that they do. I apologize if I gave any impression to the contrary.

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This is demonstrably a false statement. Wisconsin (UW not UW-M) is the birthplace of The Onion. According to their own reporting, they are “America’s Finest News Source”.

FYI, UW has two independent student newspapers, The Daily Cardinal and The Badger Herald.

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46

I’m also in the Bay Area. I went to Macalester and my partner went to Michigan Residential College. Just want to say the while there are nice elements to Residential College, in the context of a flagship university, it is NOT AT ALL the equivalent to attending a liberal arts college. Sure, it can make a massive school more intimate. But, being part of a small liberal arts college community, where all resources are at your fingertips, where there is a prevailing culture of intellectualism and progressivism, where the professors and college President know you by name - those elements are irreplaceable.

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Thank you for saying that. I too went to a enormous public university and was pretty lost academically until I settled into my major. Looking back I very much wish I’d gone to a small liberal arts college and had a different experience. I’m trying not to put my own experience on my daughter too much—she is a very different student—but what you describe at Macalester seems so ideal.

Would you tell me more about what you and your partner liked or disliked about your experiences at your respective schools? And how you feel about them now, looking back?

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We both liked both of our experiences a lot.

Negative for Mac:

  • the instant name recognition that he experiences I am a little envious of.
  • at times, it was A LOT of work/a ton of writing.

Negative for Michigan:

  • he is jealous of the authentic bond that every Mac grad has with one another around our shared experience.
  • too much emphasis on football and sports - both as students and alumni. There’s a “■■■■■■-factor” to the experience of going to a big sporty school.

We both maintain relationships with profs 20+ years after graduating. He had to work much harder to establish them. He was a top student at Michigan and I was an average student at Mac.

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Thank you for sharing—it sounds like you both had great experiences!

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