<p>Just wanted to clarify some things about Michigan since it seems to be mentioned a lot. Yes, only about 10% of Michigan high school grads apply to U-M, however if you honestly analyse this number it really isn’t all that surprising. When you look at the University of Michigan’s average accepted stats, the median accepted ACT in 2012 was a 31, a score that corresponds to the 98th percentile for Michigan high school grads. The fact that U-M is able to get Michigan residents from the 90th percentile and even lower to apply is great news considering everyone knows of their very strict admissions standards. Students who are aware that they are well below the accepted average stats aren’t going to spend $65 while also wasting their time writing 3 relatively long essays if they know they really don’t have a reasonable chance at admittance. This is just par for the course, and completely unremarkable as it happens with every top university that has high standards and long applications. Michigan could easily increase the number of applicants they receive by reducing the essay count to just one like MSU, but they don’t believe that waiving their requirements would end up being beneficial in the long run.</p>
<p>With that said it’s also important to note how the University of Michigan’s non-resident population effects resident admission. In short, it doesn’t. Michigan has always enrolled about 16,000 resident freshmen and they continue to do so today. This trend dates back for many many years, and hasn’t changed a bit. Sure non-resident enrollment has increased in response to the state cutting a ton of aid to U-M (UofM only has 50% the funding it had 10 years ago in inflation adjusted money per student), but this hasn’t changed anything with regards to instate admission or enrollment. Believe it or not, the admissions advantage for Michigan residents is not only enormous, but it’s actually increasing. According to the 2011 stats, **instate students had a whopping 23 percentage point admission advantage over non residents<a href=“and%20%3E50%%20relative%20advantage”>/b</a> and that number is expected to be no less than 25 percentage points this year with a relative advantage of no less than 60%. </p>
<p>Considering that the University of Michigan has both the responsibility to provide a great education to Michigan’s top students, while also attracting top talent to from outside of the state to come to Michigan, I think they have done an absolutely excellent job.</p>
<p>GMT (and others) have provided over and over again, a real life “problem” that occurred at UofI due to the lack of transparency and accountability in public university admissions. Why do you not acknowledge it? You make the assumption that none of such problems exist, but there is no way you can know this under the current system.</p>
<p>Requiring maximum disclosure keeps government institutions honest and accountable. Having to provide each student their score ensures that each application was actually reviewed (not negligently overlooked), that the review was legitimate (general scores can be compared against what was submitted), and that those who scored highest are in fact the ones who got in (not “non-accepted” because it wasn’t “their day” or their app was reviewed last or they were being discriminated against).</p>
<p>Also, how do you see resources being “diverted” in any significant way, to accomplish this task? Are scores written/entered anywhere during the process? Or do they remain in the reviewers heads? I assume they must be recorded somewhere. How long would it take to email a score to the applicant? Probably less than 30 seconds. Worst case, the cost of an additional 30 seconds of reviewer time could be added to application fee, which would be how much?</p>
<p>^^still very subjective. Some kids may not be able to afford to volunteer or do “community service” outside of what they are able to do within the context of their school. This “trend” toward holistic emphasis on outside the classroom utilized for public school acceptances is disturbing to me on some level. It “feels” like another reason to choose high pay out of state kids and/or high pay in-state kids since those are typically the kids who have the most opportunity to indulge in extra curricular enrichment experiences and it feels awful similar to criteria used by private colleges to self select their classes.</p>
<p>And KronOmega you are almost making my point. They are admitting more out of state students because they can pay more. They can afford to be selective about stats because they don’t give much if any aid to those students which pushes up a comparison to in-state students and more out of state students are applying because of the common app. I’m not sure why you think this is an advantage to Michigan students as the total percent is decreasing at a rapid rate. Sure they can go to another nationally ranked Big Ten school in the same state, but that school does not meet need so a chunk of those rejected students in favor of OSS & International students could pay MORE for that priviledge. And you think this is fair? And you think Michigan students are advantaged by THEIR public institution. And again, it’s not just Michigan that is doing this to their state students.</p>
<p>It’s a wonderful institution, as is MSU, and believe me generations of my family have graduated from Michigan COE, but I feel for kids who get pushed out and have to pay for that privilege out of their and their parents pockets and think perhaps some more transparency is needed regarding those students who don’t make the invisible “cut” and who, Michigan has stated, drop out at lower rates than the out of state students. Michigan has also said, once enrolled there is no appreciable difference in the “quality” of the students. So all the chest pounding about the “quality” of OSS students is alittle misplaced. Alittle transparency might be illuminating…it generally is.</p>
<p>Michigan also has a very low percentage of Pell Grant recipients…at the bottom of the percentile list along with UVA which is somewhat telling about “who” Michigan chooses.</p>
<p>I understand the reason for the holistic aspect of admission. I am in favor of it, because I do not think a GPA/scores “arms race” is healthy for kids. However, the holistic factor can still be assigned a reasonably objective score that can be disclosed. The disclosure requirement prevents the holistic factor from becoming a proxy for discrimination or reviewer’s whim.</p>
<p>^^ in fact, ime, plenty of low SES kids are able to assume real leadership in their high schools (ie, responsibility and impact) and do some work in their communities. You have to realize there are some community efforts that are more broadly significant than others, but it’s an open category. It’s a big bucket of things looked for- and many kids do a good job filling it, despite other challenges. I often think a narrow view of what low SES kids “can’t afford” to do is too limiting. There are many great kids out there.</p>
<p>What would this disclosure look like – mediocre grades, weak EC’s, middling SAT. </p>
<p>Would this really tell 95% of the applicants anymore than what they can easily infer now. </p>
<p>What it would do though is create hard feelings for years – how dare they question Johnny’s participation in the 15 clubs listed on his resume; the college discriminated against my kid by identifying a mediocre SAT score even though 25% of the class was admitted with a lower score; or Ms. Blume, my daughter’s english treater gave a bad recommendation, let me talk to the principal about firing her. </p>
<p>This would be the next full employment act for lawyers.</p>
The reviewers know the SES from the zipcodes and the high school. They award personal achievement points to poor kids who have to work to support their family. The reviewers are very sympathetic that the poor kids do not have the opportunities rich kids have to spend summers in Antarctica to promote tolerance for alternatively gendered penguins.</p>
<p>If this were to in fact happen, it would confirm that the process being used is unlawful. Do you support denying people their rights in favor of making it easier on some government employees?</p>
<p>^^ I do know that. But without transparency who is to say that “don’t” admit the kid that has high financial need over the same kid with very little need. Is that the mission we want for our public institutions? Maybe they do this. Maybe they don’t. That’s the point that no one can say for sure without more transparency.</p>
<p>I don’t see any rights involved. The state university system is charged with providing educational opportunities that are in the best interest of the state. It has nothing to do with individual admissions.</p>
<p>But I think it would be great if the state could charge an additional $75 to the rejects to get a letter back. In my state, we charge for every records request, so I don’t think that would be out of line.</p>
<p>They don’t know your SES from the zip and hs. They know the community demographics. Parent occupation/education is on the CA, number of siblings. A GC may mention some situation. The activities the kid did participate in may include some cues. </p>
<p>GMT, none of this is as straight line as you seem to think. And, it’s not about sympathy. My favorite personal quote is: there is no sypathy vote. It’s about what you achieve in context. Being poor is not an asset. Being poor and managing to get ahead, in various respects, IS.</p>
<p>Bay, exposing corruption in Illinois’ higher education system is a good thing. Clearly the goal has been accomplished without the need to burden an already-strained system with another hoop to jump through. You are sadly mistaken if you think any bureaucratic task, no matter how seemingly simple, takes 30 seconds. If sniffing out cronyism or other unfair practices is the goal, random audits of a representative sample of the applications should reveal them. </p>
<p>And BTW, I am not sure what goes on in Illinois is indicative of problems in every other state. EVERY aspect of government in Illinois has been rife with corruption for decades. It is hardly the poster child for a failing public university admissions system.</p>
<p>^^muckdogs07 ,the point is if you are comfortable with public education entrance being subjective you won’t see the issue. It makes me a little uncomfortable and I think an auto-admit threshold is very fair. In some cases it could potentially be an extremely high bar at schools like Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan etc., it is inherently fair. I’m not totally comfortable with large public universities cherry picking who “they” want to attend simply to increase the number of full or almost full pay residents from outside the state. Perhaps some transparency would dispel my fears but I don’t think it’s asking too much for a more equitable and transparent process for public universities.</p>
<p>My zip and high school has everything from the projects to Red Wings in multimillion dollar homes. That’s what happens when you go to a high school with 7,000+ students. How exactly do you find the low SES kids from that?</p>
<p>And the reason that Michigan wants OOSers is because our higher education funding is abysmal and the price for OOSers is TWICE what it is for ISers. I don’t think a lot of Michigan residents really want the IS price to go up to the 50k price tag that OOSers face. Once again, I absolutely support bringing in those wealthy OOSers in order to keep costs as low as possible. We already have some of the highest price tags in the US.</p>
<p>I was told it passed the 7k mark last year. </p>
<p>From the website:
That is from the year 2009. I’m looking for an updated number. My high school was unique in how it was set up to say the least. It’s three high schools on one campus acting as one large high school. It is the largest campus in the country by enrollment. What high school you go in to is completely random and means nothing because you take classes at all three high schools. It acts as one high school with one SI and four buildings. </p>
<p>And if you’re going by the FAFSA, then it’s not need blind. Most public Us are need blind. And the FAFSA can’t even be filled out until AFTER the first of the year. Some places, like Michigan, start sending out decisions WELL before that. So try again.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what current enrollment is, but as of the 09-10 school year the school Romani is referring to had over 6,000 which imo is close enough, but that’s a minor point, right?</p>
<p>I agree with Romani’s point. I, along with a lot of other Michiganders, fall into the middle class black hole where there is no need based financial aid despite there being very low funds available for college. UofM is already cost prohibitive for just about everyone I knew growing up, except one friend who got some sort of a cultural scholarship. I only attended because I was too ignorant to know I couldn’t afford it. I’m all for them doing whatever they have to do to keep that sticker price lower so people like us can go, even if we have to compete more for the spots. I don’t know that that’s even a bad thing. </p>
<p>The problem that I have with this discussion is that even though I had the stats to go to U of M, I did not feel entitled to a spot. I don’t think the U of M owed me anything, I earned the stats, I tried my luck with an application, and thankfully I got in. Which was nice, since I was rejected from my first choice school when I applied as a HS student. We have a lot of state schools here and I could have gotten into most of them, even when my grades were not so great, I can’t say that since my parents tax dollars went into it I deserve a spot at ONE particular school just because I was qualified. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t think I deserve an explanation from any one school any more than I am owed an explanation from an employer who chooses another candidate. And the explanation really wouldn’t have done me any good anyway.</p>