UM student taking any questions you have

<p>Hi guys,
I'll be a sophomore this year, so if you have any questions about Ann Arbor, classes, the honors program, or whatever, I'll try my best to help you.</p>

<p>ooo...awesome--just have one really quick q about housing: what floors in south quad are assigned to honors?</p>

<p>Third and fourth floors...Hunt and Taylor Houses.</p>

<p>I've heard its hard to get straight A's at umich, just how hard is it. How many hours do you put in per day</p>

<p>depends on which classes you want to take... A 4.0 can run the gamut from hard to "not possible" depending on your course load. For example, the med meters are brutally curved (upper level chem survey, o chem, upper level physics and bio). Engineering ranks right up there with them, as well.</p>

<p>some of the majors typically thought of as light (philosophy, history) can actually be just as hard (think C+ curve with as many E's as A's) - you really have to know your stuff. Lots of reading (250-500 pages a week if you load up on these type of classes) and you'd better understand every damn word of it (and be able to synthesize your coherent own ideas about it (some have formal papers due as often as weekly) if you want an A. Basically, they aren't like history, philosophy, or polisci classes in HS.</p>

<p>The only place I've had any luck in finding an easy A was a sociology course, but I've only taken one and I don't know if it was indicitive of the department.</p>

<p>Top 3% at Michigan is 3.83+ if that tells you anything about the difficulty of a 4.0.</p>

<p>Like M&B said, it depends a lot on class load. I managed to keep a 4.0 my first year doing premed stuff. It was a lot more work than I expected. I actually had the most difficulty keeping my grades up in my social sciences classes, because I expected them to be more blow-off classes. I learned that doing the reading is pretty important.</p>

<p>I'd say I studied about 2 hours a day.</p>

<p>Also, if you're in the honors program, Great Books can be a REAL pain in the a** if you get a bad GSI. If you get a good one though, it can be a real breeze.</p>

<p>Anyone who's taking GB who wants advice about GSIs, let me know...I can tell you who's easy/hard.</p>

<p>yeah magna cum laude (and dean's list) is 3.5-most of my classes were curved to b-/c+'s. I put in alot of work, and I mean alot, and I got a 3.73 last semester (taking hard courses-calc 3, orgo, etc), and I talked to the pre-med advisor, and she said that usually above a 3.7 at michigan is good for top med schools (harvard, hopkins, etc) Anyway,this was my typical day:
Wake up at 5:30 to go weightlift
breakfast
class 8-12
lunch
more class depending on the day
study study study
run 6-10 miles
study/dinner
study
study
study (this was somehwat obstructed during march madness)
in bed 10-11
If you want to do well-it's basically work hard play hard-yes my weekends were crazy.</p>

<p>I must just be really smarte :confused:</p>

<p><a href="http://members.aol.com/shell420420/smart.jpeg%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://members.aol.com/shell420420/smart.jpeg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I study around 2-3 hours a night and try to do as little as humanly possible from the last class on Friday until Sunday night.</p>

<p>For those high school students: forget right now about graduating from Michigan with a 4.0.</p>

<p>I've long wondered about how my grades compare percentage-wise to the rest of UM. Where did you find that the top 3% at Michigan is 3.83+? I heard in a separate post from someone that the average engineering GPA is 2.85.</p>

<p>Nice job, btw, on the 3.917. I guess being in engineering (and taking 17 hours) could be one of the reasons my GPA isn't that high. =&lt;/p>

<p>Yeah man a 3.9 at Michigan is siiiiiick. Good job. With all my extra activities/working out (I do competitive triathlons-so in addition to running I could have been swimming or cycling which would take up more time) and stuff I probably also managed a total of 3 hours of studying/day...i just never did it all at once, and ncaa/nba/other sports often distracted from it, but i still did work hard, but on the weekends unless I had a test or a paper due I rarely did homework. Engineers/science majors typically have lower grades, but it's all relative. The average engineering gpa is somewhere below 3, as is the case with majors like econ and chem. It is possible to graduate with a 4.0 from Michigan (I know someone who did), but don't count on it.</p>

<p>Would any of you who've been in the dorms for more than 1 yr comment on the impact of last yr's 6000+ class? I assume you lost some lounges & there were more "economy triples", but how about the impact on other facilities, e.g. bathrooms, cafeterias, computer labs, fitness centers, etc.? Do you see things much worse with another extra 500 this yr, plus maybe 200 of last yr's surplus remaining in the dorms?</p>

<p>Although I have only spent the past year in the dorms, there were no problems 99% of the time with bathrooms or the cafeteria. It was annoying there weren't lounges, but people learn to make do with what they have. Whenever I went to the CCRB (probably most popular rec sports place), it wasn't bad.</p>

<p>I was one of three guys on my floor with an economy triple (it was a coed floor, and so at least two girls rooms I knew of were triples). You may lose some space and privacy due to lack of neatness or an extra roommate, but the same problem could happen in a double. It ended up my third roommate moved out after a few months so it was two people with about 100 square feet more than my neighbors, paying only the slightly-boosted "triple" rate (rather than economy triple).</p>

<p>How does UIR and UROP change how much time you have for doing other stuff? I'm going to be in the michigan marching band and am going to be an engineering major. I know that 1/3 of the marching band are engineering major but I was wondering if it is possible to also be in a MLC. I'm hoping that UIR can count for my work-study but am not sure. I haven't been accepted into it yet but I should know within the month I'm guessing.</p>

<p>UROP takes up a lot of time. I think it's three hours a week of lab work per credit, a minimum of two credits, PLUS these annoying and stupid Wednesday night classes you have to go to. Expect to do a ton of work at the end of the year getting your project ready for the symposium. Other than that, you'll probably spend your time doing b@#$% work. My roommate, all my UROP friends, and I all did that. It's still a really valuable experience though, as you get to work so closely with a professor.</p>

<p>bianchi,
I never, ever noticed crowding in the bathrooms or cafeteria. The only places I noticed overcrowding was in the IRC in SQuad during finals/midterms weeks or when there was a virus outbreak on the network. At times like that you can expect to wait a few hours for a computer. However, that might be typical in years when the classes weren't so large. CCRB was never overcrowded. I was always able to get right in and use whatever machines I wanted. Once or twice I had to wait awhile for a racquetball court or tennis court, but that's no big deal and due to the fact they have so few courts.</p>

<p>I was in UIR (which is being renamed next year to MRC, "Michigan Research Community: A Division of UROP"). It was great being on the UIR floor and I'm returning there again for this upcoming year. However, the UROP project itself just doesn't seem worth it if you're only doing it for credit--I was doing a 2-credit workload (6 hours a week), and I picked a project super far away (Space Research Building, the far northeast corner of North Campus), and then there were journals, biweekly meetings, monthly meetings with your peer advisor, and the symposium. People seemed to like it a bit more when they were making money rather than free elective credit (which I had already had finished due to AP). It's a good thing to experience at least once, but I want to focus on other things for the rest of my time at UM.</p>

<p>Yeah I did UROP last year, and I already had previous research experience in the project I was doing, so my experience was great, and I am returning to work in the same lab this year. UROP the program, however, I thought, sucked. The wednesday meetings are inconvenient and the journals which accompany them are a pain the the a$$. you go to pointless seminars which can sometimes seem completely irrelevant. As far as overcrowding, the only place I really notice it is in the dumbell room at the ccrb, which is connected to the main weight room, but there is still plenty of equipment, but the space is so small and cramped, and people don't rack their weights, so it feel congested. The IM building has a much better layout; however, ccrb has more and better equipment.</p>

<p>so you can do UIR as a work-study?</p>

<p>UIR (or now MRC) is just a learning community for people in UROP. You can do UROP as work-study if that was approved in your financial aid (if you weren't already approved for work-study then you would have to do it for credit).</p>

<p>this is probably a dumb question- but does u michigan only take ACT scores? or does it take SAT scores as well? because in US NEWS, the 25th-75th% ACT scores are listed (instead of 25-75% SAT scores)</p>

<p>thanks</p>