I don’t think it went away permanently. It went away for those accepted long enough for Michigan to update so that an accepted applicant couldn’t withdraw during the update.
In 2020, the EA portal “tell” had to do with a checklist and grades. I think the checklist asked first end-of-year grades only if the applicant was about to be accepted.
I might be misstating the specifics, but the portal conspiracy theorists get it right sometimes, especially at UM.
Will Michigan announce release date of EA decisions?
Apparently one of the admissions officers visited someone’s school and also said that they would come out today… still feels crazy since previous years released late Jan but hopefully we will hear back today!
What do you mean by “years”. Previous years was around Dec 18th…only last year was late January.
Late Jan, only last year. In years prior they released before Christmas.
But then last year they had also extended the EA deadline by 15 days if I recall correctly.
So today (although probably unlikely) isn’t impossible.
Thanks for the clarification!
do you know the school they visited? or did you hear from another forum or discussion?
Hi all! Thanks for all your insights on admissions (so scary that it might come out today!). Quick question: if I get deferred, how do I update the office on my new extracurriculars? I think I have some pretty cool new things to share that might help boost my chances. Thanks!
There were very limited schools this year during ED cycle where there was no change to the enrollment connect landing page before the results were released. Is UM following in their path? Last year the landing page displayed “EA decisions are being processed” for quiet sometime before the results were released.
Having gone through the 2020 cycle, I can verify that, yes, this is exactly how it happened. There was a checklist and those who had the red x for final transcript were accepted.
Under what tab would the final transcript be listed?
if it’s today I’m actually so nervous…
it’s complicated to explain, but there was a link to another portal. At some point admissions was alerted to it and the link became dead. It always amazes me how smart these applicants and parents are to find these things! But, I was able to access it in time to see that my applicant did not have the red x and was not admitted.
for what it’s worth, this is the third year in a row I have a student applying and I’m not seeing anything that’s indicating a release today. That being said, I’m not into coding etc-but, I’m not seeing anything “glitchy” that I’ve seen in the past. The past two years - when they are loading it - the portal kind of blanks out while it’s processing. At least that’s been my experience. Again, I’m not seeing anything that’s making me think it’s today. Hope this info helps…
A user posted about it on Reddit’s Early Action Page for UMich
Good luck to everyone who applied.
-Allen
Don’t recall seeing an actual checklist on the portal. Just a “checklist complete” message.
This hypothesis makes me smile every year. The one where Michigan isn’t able to review ALL apps by the time decisions are released. This theory is floated literally every year.
If this were true, then Michigan hasn’t been able to sift through all the EA apps for at least the past 10 years. And somehow UCLA (and the other UC’s and CSU’s like SDSU) manages to review their 100,000+ apps in order to release their scholarship decisions early every year. 
You’re right. Over the years, there have been several “tells” that were ultimately proven to be right with Michigan. The “transcript red X,” one year there was some line of code of some kind and in the old days of Wolverine Access, there was the disappearing tab. There may have others.
Nothing so far this year though. I assume Michigan attempts to fix them.
It IS hard to explain. Essentially, a member figured out an active link to a backdoor webpage that was most likely only for admissions - but it was live. They found it by taking the website and changing the ending to something reasonable like
…/decision or
…/next steps
thus showing us a checklist that as the theory goes, they would not be asking for final grades from someone that was declined admission… only those that were accepted had the “final grades” row