<p>Just read from today's newspaper, that the in-state admission rate for UM dropped to 53%. That's a lot lower than I thought. I thought it's at 60% in recent years.</p>
<p>The newspaper said it's because the lower state funding and fewer qualified students due to the population drop. It appears the school is trying to maintain the quality of the its students even if it means fewer in-state students.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t fewer in-state students more likely result in a higher admit rate?</p>
<p>Factor 1: Fewer and fewer wealthy families in Michigan. Wealthy families produce the most strong matches.
Factor 2: About ten of the state’s largest largest school districts are completely failing, top to bottom.</p>
<p>Fix the schools and you’ll have more than enough in-state applicants qualified to attend. If they fix the schools you’d see a reversal of the trend to bring in more out of state students, at least I’d hope.</p>
<p>^ Show data to support your argument. I don’t believe wealthy families make the most strong matches at all. Otherwise, the percentage of student with need should be much lower.</p>
<p>^ Really? How can you spend any amount of time on campus and not come to that conclusion?</p>
<p>billcsho, you’re making a false conclusion. Don’t care what % “need,” anyone who’s spent 5 minutes of campus can tell most of the students are well off.</p>
<p>And further, read any number of books on the subject and you’d know parents with degrees = $$$ = good schools = prepping kids for (elite) college = kids exponentially more likely to attend and graduate.</p>
<p>Here’s a source, billcsho:
</p>
<p>Michigan is a public school for wealthy kids. Everyone knows that.</p>
<p>Most kids walking around campus, besides Ross students, look like they just rolled out of bed and fell into gym clothes or sweats. How do you make such an overarching assumption and simultaneously accuse someone else of having a false conclusion? </p>
<p>Ryan, what’s your endgame here? Besides having some ridiculous chip on your shoulder about Michigan admissions, a school which you don’t appear to have even applied to yet…</p>
<p>I’m just participating in a discussion on a forum. Just because you don’t agree with my, e130478’s or the Detroit News’ take I’m some rabble-rouser? I’m not even sure why the “rich public” thing would bother you guys. It is a fact there aren’t many lower-middle or poor kids on campus. It’s discouraging to me, because I am aware of why that is so. I didn’t claim the University is prohibiting poor kids from getting in. The standards to get in have risen, and the public schools in a lot of Michigan cities are horrible, so the poor keep getting squeezed out of the party. The odds are SUPREMELY against a first-generation, inner-city, low-income student getting a 3.8 and a 32 ACT score. Sure it happens, but rarely.</p>
<p>This is my theory. I’d guess it’s entirely possible there are plenty of in-state applicants with the 3.8 and a 32 ACT score but Michigan is giving those spots to out of staters for the extra tuition money. But I’d say the crappier in-state high schools and the wealthy leaving the state is more likely.</p>
<p>Well, as much as I’m really starting to dislike this Ryan kid, I will admit that I do agree with him on this point. Michigan has always attracted the more wealthy students. There was a survey done a couple years ago by U-M that actually indicated that there were more Michigan students with parents making over $200k than there were at or below the national median (of around $53k at the time).</p>
<p>It’s not too surprising when you actually look at it. There was a study done recently that showed that students from low income families were less likely to apply to many colleges, and significantly less likely to apply to the more prestigious/selective colleges. It’s also worth noting that out of Michigan’s strongest highschool/equivelant schools come from very high income areas. When you look out of state, Michigan really only can attract the wealthy because we don’t offer anywhere near enough aid to OOS to support the 40k tuition.</p>
<p>I thought Michigan has an in state quota. Has to have a certain % instaters and they’ve been right on the edge ever since I can remember. Went over one year and had to pay penalities.</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse The University of Michigan is unique in that it actually has something called constitutional autonomy (along with MSU and Wayne). Pretty much it means that the only way to implement a rule like that is through an amendment to the Michigan Constitution, which given recent trends, would be very hard to do.</p>
<p>It also wouldn’t make sense. The state legislature was fully understanding of what would happen when they cut allocations to all universities by greater than 50% over just a couple of years. The University of Michigan can only be as good as it is with a strong budget, and the legislature knew full well that the Regents of U-M would do what they needed to do to protect the institution. In this case the Regents chose to lessen the instate advantage just a little bit to increase revenue, effectively canceling out the revenue that was lost from the cuts. U-M isn’t alone in this either. Pretty much every public college in Michigan has a record number of international and OOS students in their most recent classes.</p>
<p>Kron is right. We don’t have any kind of quota for our schools (which, IMO, is wrong but that’s for another thread). </p>
<p>I will also agree that Michigan has attracted higher SES kids (not necessarily wealthy). The Pell rates are pretty abysmal for Michigan but not Pell eligible =/= wealthy. I almost lost Pell eligibility when they lowered auto-0 because student income protections for the EFC are laughably low despite the fact that my parents make less than 30k/year. </p>
<p>No, it’s not surprising that the average income at Michigan is high. I’d expect it’s similar for many high-ranked state flagships (not necessarily quite as high but with a student body that comes from significantly higher SES than the average person). In addition to what Kron said, higher SES students have access to better schools, tutoring, better ECs, etc.</p>
<p>And even though I’ll probably get ripped apart for this, many low SES students that get into Michigan feel uncomfortable there. Their outreach to low income kids is pretty sad… which is REALLY surprising given its meets-need policy and its very large endowment. I’ve seen some positive changes in this though since I made my college decision ~5 years ago. I’m hopeful.</p>
<p>
California and Texas are outlier states with 4% and 10% rules respectively. To be fair, Bursch should compare Michigan to other public and private peers. The data will show that Michigan fares reasonably well among its peers.</p>
<p>%Students receiving Pell Grants:
Michigan – 15%
UVa – 13%
UNC – 20%
W&M – 10%
Georgia Tech – 17%
Penn State – 16%
UIUC – 21%
Wisconsin – 15%</p>
<p>The Ivies range from 11%(Princeton) to 18%(Harvard)
Northwestern – 15%
Stanford – 16%
Chicago – 15%
Duke – 13%
MIT – 19%
Johns Hopkins – 12%
Notre Dame – 12%
WUSTL – 6%
Rice – 16%
Vandy – 13%
Carenegie Mellon – 13%</p>
<p>The other Michigan publics with lower admission standards have more Pell Grants students: Michigan State(26%), Wayne(58%), Western(35%) and Central(34%).</p>
<p>
Just curious. Which top 50 universities have eliminated alumni preference as a factor for admissions?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, not true. Never been true; you must be thinking of some other university (Wisconsin? Virginia?) The University of Michigan is a public institution created by the state constitution and governed by a popularly elected Board of Regents, which has exclusive responsibility for setting the university’s policies and priorities, including admissions policies. The state legislature has absolutely nothing to say about it; as a legal matter, the legislature couldn’t set a quota on in-state students at the University of Michigan even if it wanted to. As a public institution, the university has always regarded its mission to be to serve in-state students first, but it has never had self-imposed quotas, either. For many years, OOS students made up about 35% of the student body, but recent entering classes have been 40+% OOS, and that number seems to be increasing as the university is more popular than ever with OOS students, who now make up roughly 75-80% of applicants.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what ryanc00per’s agenda is, but what he’s saying is bunk. What’s happening here is simple demographics. Michigan’s population is numerically stable, but aging. That means fewer young people in the pipeline. The number of students graduating from high school in Michigan peaked at just under 125,000 in 2008-09, and then went into a sharp decline. Michigan high schools now graduate about 100,000 students a year, down about 20% from the peak, and that number is expected to continue to fall. To some extent this just mirrors national trends, insofar as the biggest and fastest drop is among white students. But Michigan has a lower rate of immigration to offset the changing demographics of its white population, and a smaller population of recent immigrants and Latinos–groups that are generally younger and have higher reproduction rates–than many other states. Consequently, the national trends are sharply magnified in Michigan.</p>
<p>Fewer HS graduates means a declining pool of in-state applicants. The university is to some extent forced to choose: it can maintain its historic rate of in-state enrollment and accept that probably means declining in-state student stats, or it can maintain its admission standards and accept that probably means declining in-state enrollment. In saying that, however, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with romani’s assessment that the university could do much more to recruit and retain high-quality, low-income, in-state applicants. My perception would be that its efforts in that regard have never been particularly strong; instead, it’s tended to sit back and assume the best in-state students will come to it. That clearly doesn’t cut it anymore. The university needs to go out and aggressively compete for the best in-state students, including low-income students and URMs who don’t necessarily feel welcomed at present.</p>
<p>A lot of interesting topics covered in this thread. The declining rate of IS students is due to three simple factors:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Michigan’s state population has actually declined in the last decade, from over 10 million in 2004 to under 10 million today. The population of under 18s has also declined a little. </p></li>
<li><p>State appropriations have declined at an alarming rate. At this time, it is the University, not the state, that is subsidizing IS students.</p></li>
<li><p>The number of OOS and international students, relative to IS students, has grown significantly. When I applied to Michigan, 20 years ago, IS applicants made up two thirds of the applicant pool. Today, they make up less than one third of the applicant pool.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Given the fact that there is no quota, that the state is reducing funding to the University, and that the number of OOS and international applicants far outnumber the number of IS applicants, it is not surprising that only 53% of this year’s freshman class is IS. I would expect this to continue to drop. I said several years ago that IS students should not make up more than 40% of the undergraduate student population, and I would not be surprised if that were the case in the near future.</p>
<p>Also, as much as it pains me to say so, I agree with ryanc00per, kids from families with highly educated and wealthy parents will usually have access to better high schools, more test prepping, additional tutoring when needed, better college-related advising from parents, more resources for ECs, less need for part time work to help support the family etc…The result; better grades and higher test scores…on average. This is obviously not an absolute, but it is a fact nonetheless. </p>
<p>Also, as the OOS and international rates increase, it is likely that Michigan will have trouble meeting the Financial Aid needs of those students, so paying attention to their socio-economics may play a factor in admissions. Michigan would rather admit an OOS or international student that has shown the ability, and desire, to pay full tuition.</p>
<p>Although in an ideal world, I would love to see Michigan provide opportunities to gifted students from lower income families, at this time, I do not think the University can do so financially. I can see it happening in the near future though. Perhaps once the upcoming fund-raising campaign is finished and new financial aid and scholarship funds are properly allocated, the university will be able to meet the needs of all students, regardless of their socio-economic situation. </p>
<p>One thing I do not tolerate is the call for the University to lower its standards for the sake of supporting any demographic, be it wealthy students who can pay full tuition, in-state students for the sake of maintaining a higher rate of IS students, URMs in order to bolster the percentage of minorities on campus, students from low income etc…That does not mean that the University should ignore personal circumstances and cultural norms, but I do not think it is in the best interest of the universities, its students or the alumni for the University to admit students who are not academically worthy just to boost a particular democraphic.</p>
<p>Actually Alexandre - as noted in the attached, and posted in an earlier thread, (assuming correct) and below, the IS Freshman enrollment % increased this year to nearly 59%; which I find interesting.</p>
<p>[5</a> things to know about University of Michigan’s record enrollment this fall | MLive.com](<a href=“http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2013/10/university_of_michigan_enrolls.html]5”>5 things to know about University of Michigan's record enrollment this fall - mlive.com)</p>
<p>5) U-M continues to enroll a high percentage of students from outside Michigan</p>
<p>"According to U-M figures, 45.7 percent of U-M’s student body does not hail from Michigan. International students make up 13.7 percent of the student body, including 7 percent of undergraduates and 26.2 percent of graduate students. </p>
<p>This year 41.2 percent of the freshman class is from outside of Michigan, compared to 42.6 percent in fall 2012."</p>
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</p>
<p>Oh I highly disagree with this. The university most definitely has the financial resources to reach out to lower income students. They just, for whatever reason, have chosen not to do so yet.</p>
<p>
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<p>Look at the 4-year grad rates and most popular majors for URMs and you’ll get your answer to that. No surprise the grad rates improved when the number of URMs on campus decreased. Not enough lower income IS students are prepared for Michigan (ESPECIALLY not for a STEM area of study); and I’m not really sure what the University can do about what a student does from 9th grade to Welcome Week.</p>
<p>53%? Lucky in state kids</p>