not for families who are need based…Michigan isnt as generous as most Ivies when it comes to need based aid…
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Agree with you, wish that was the case.
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Sorry to keep pushing on this, but I still don’t think you’ve supported your original assertion: “Releasing after the Ivies do, means they are going to lose alot of accepted, qualified applicants.”
Imagine Student X really wants to go to HYP and has applied there, as well as to UM. If X gets an acceptance letter from UM on 3/5, they’ll wait until Ivy Day to make a decision either way. If they then get into HYP later, they’ll choose that. If X gets an acceptance letter from UM after they’ve received their Ivy acceptance, they’ll also choose the Ivy in that scenario. So, what difference does it make when Mich’s decisions come out to this student?
Now imagine Student Y, who really hasn’t solidified their preference, but they think they might want to go to PennDartNell as well as UM. Clearly, Student Y will wait until they receive all responses and then weigh their options.
Student Z, who has UM top of their list but still has some interest in Brownlumbia, is similarly either going to immediately accept their Michigan spot if it comes earlier than Ivy decisions, or wait to hear from Michigan if it comes after them.
As CCName1 and JeffreyR have noted, there’s some risk of fatigue setting in, and losing a student’s interest/loyalty the longer UM waits. Other schools can roll out the red carpet and start wooing accepted students in the meantime. But that’s a separate phenomenon than what you were positing, I think.
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No skin in this Michigan game, but I too see no difference in timing here. Duke is now going after Ivy Day. maybe more should! Maybe ivies should be like MIT and get it out there mid-march so kids who are not accepted can still have options coming, like LACs Michigan NYU Rice Northwestern, GTown…etc…still very highly competitive but not all at once, and are varied enough to present a slightly more reasonable balance of options. The end on Ivies and then Stanford concludes the season on such a grumpy note for many many highly qualified applicants. Flipping the timing around for all schools could even help at schools who tend to practice yield protection (don’t want to call them out–we all know who they are).
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The only advantage I can see in going post-Ivy day is if they really do mean “early April” to be something like Friday 4/7, and would allow sufficeint for time to adjust their own acceptances to remove some Ivy-accepted students who will withdrawl their applications from UM, thereby increasing their perceived yeild rate.
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For what it’s worth tons of kids apply to Michigan AND the Ivy’s. It’s more of a “I can” since they would have the stats. And many accepted to both still end up at Michigan. Even though they are different fit /feels.
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Its okay, its a geuniunely interesting conversaton. I see the points you are making, and Im not saying you are wrong. There are some cases where I am sure you are right. In our HS 1/3 of the kids applied to Michigan this year. According to Naviance, 6 were accepted early (2 committed) and the rest were either deferred to RD or rejected. I can tell you that the longer the kids have to wait, they increasingly become disillusioned. Its always been expected that Ivy Day/Stanford was the end of the long and stressful wait for decisions. Most kids want to be done with the process already, and who can blame them? Last year Michigan announced acceptances almost a full week earlier than Ivy Day. More time to “love the school that loves you back,” right? More time to sit with a financial award letter and figure things out, more time to register for accepted students day, and if you are in-state, maybe to walk the campus one more time. More time to fill out scholarhip applications, deposits for priority housing. To sit a week or two with a UMich acceptance, even before Ivy Day could only work in UMich’s favor.
The only real way we will know if it truly will have any bearing is when the common data set comes out next year. Last year 45% of admitted students actually enrolled. I guess Michigan will be able to tell next year when they have actual numbers, if their actual enrollment percentages change.
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Many times that decision for Michigan is pretty easy when instate. For my child we couldn’t rationalize the extra cost when Ross will get him to where he wants to go…plus the big college experience of clubs, sports, all the student activities, and campus in a highly rated city.
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It’s one of the best values out there for just about any instate school. But it’s funny to me that Michigan kids don’t realize how great this school is fine till they talk to kids out of state that it’s their number 1 choice…lol.
In general the state of Michigan has some great schools
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You’ve said this a few times and I have a different perspective – our local kids over on the west side of the state see Michigan as an exceptional school, even the ultimate school, so much so that they often sell themselves short and don’t apply because they think they won’t get in. On the other side of the state, your statement may be more accurate - one often doesn’t appreciate what is right in front of them. Plus who wants to go to school just down the road from your high school (and your parents)
I just don’t want to leave the impression that our kids in general don’t appreciate Michigan, because that is just not true.
I agree Michigan has a great system of state schools that goes beyond Michigan and Michigan State.
Thanks for the post. Kind of amazing that they offer 17,805 kids a waitlist spot and then accept 68 of them?? Feels like they could shrink the list by, say, 17,500!
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True. 5 years ago you could count on at least one of your school’s wait list moving. Today it’s just not the case.
1/3 of your kid’s class applied to UMich?! Good lord! How big is the high school?
I know of NYC private schools where over half of the senior class applies to Michigan. These schools have graduating classes of about 150, so around 75 high-achieving applicants from well-resourced, rigorous schools.
This is a big part of the reason I think Michigan needs to offer ED.
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My son goes to a NY (LI) public school with about 550 kids in the grade and about 170 applied to Michigan. Every year the number of applicants goes up!
That also shocked me. giving 17,000 kids a glimpse of hope. Why bother if you are only going to take 68??
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There’s a running joke our guidance office says about Michigan…that its “50% in-state, 50% out of state and 50% Westchester/Long Island” 
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we have a class of about 500
I’m amazed that the perception of one Midwestern state school is so high in NYC and its suburbs. We’re closer to Ann Arbor geographically, and it’s certainly the most sought-after B1G school for high achievers around here other than Northwestern, but less than 15% of our D’s school applies there.
But also, that’s insane and part of the problem with the system right now. One would think there’d be more self-selection/self-awareness on the part of some of the students. I mean, aim high and all, but if a third or half of a class is all applying to the same school, that means a substantial number of students below the 40th percentile are putting their hat in the ring, for a university where probably 90%+ of out of state students finished in the top 10% of their high school class. Considering they’re also likely to have standardized test scores below the 25-75 range for Michigan, and going to be compared to the majority of the kids at the top of their own high school class, they have no chance. One look at Naviance should indicate as much, unless one sees the athletes in the scatterplot and mistakes them for non-athletes. Replicated over hundreds of high schools, it means there are thousands and thousands of applications going to Michigan every year that really shouldn’t be. It bogs down the whole system.
Schools are partly to blame in all this. I know the holistic admissions world isn’t entirely disappearing anytime soon (even with the looming Supreme Court decisions this summer), but I do think we’d do kids a favor by modifying our system a bit with some features of the English or Canadian systems. If the Ivies and other uber-selective schools would just say “Yes, we consider the whole person, but if you are not in the top quartile of your class/don’t have a 1350 SAT/31 ACT/are not a recruited athlete, your application will go in the rejection pile without further consideration” we could eliminate a lot of the false hope and unnecessary applications being launched out there.
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SMI kids are not eligible to purchase football tickets until they are taking classes. My daughter lived in AA during the fall (in a rented apartment), worked and purchased tickets from other students who were selling at a premium. She purchased student tickets last week for Fall 2023. Every SMI student that I know that wanted to move to a dorm, got one on Central Campus. They say it is not guaranteed and there is a lot of stress about getting a good dorm but it appears that everyone got a good dorm (many in South Quad, some East Quad and West Quad). If a January admit wants to live off campus, there are tons to choose from because there are subleases available from students going abroad in January. SMI kids are not allowed to take college courses in their gap semester.
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