<p>I’m having a hard time believing there are large numbers of Michigan residents who clearly meet the University of Michigan’s admission standards but are not admitted. Everything I’ve seen says the admissions staff bends over backwards to get qualified in-state students into the entering class. Comments made by the director of admissions in newspaper interviews seem to indicate that Michigan’s admit rate for state residents is somewhere around 50%, compared to 20-25% for OOS applicants. </p>
<p>And there just aren’t that many students at Michigan State who could get into Michigan. According to MSU’s 2012-13 Common Data Set, only 14.0% of MSU’s freshmen in 2012 had ACT scores of 30 or higher, and only 27.3% were in the top 10% of their HS class. Most (58.4%) Michigan freshmen have ACT scores of 30 or higher, and roughly 90% were in the top 10% of their HS class. True, Michigan does admit some applicants with ACT scores below 30, but to be blunt about it, if you’re in that range you’re a marginal applicant these days; it’s far from certain that you’ll be deemed “qualified,” except perhaps by yourself.</p>
<p>And by no means is it the case that all the top-stats kids at MSU were “forced” to go there as a consequence of not being admitted at Michigan. Many elect to go there, either out of family loyalties, personal preference, or because MSU offers them generous merit scholarships. Heck, I had to make that choice, way back in the dark ages when I went to college. MSU would have given me a full-tuition scholarship, while Michigan offered a mere pittance. I chose Michigan, but I knew plenty of people who made the opposite choice. Even today, Michigan’s yield on state residents offered admission is somewhere in the mid-60s, meaning it loses roughly one in 3 cross-admits to other schools–no doubt many of them to MSU.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I have a hard time believing you’re talking about more than a relatively small handful of applicants who thought they were qualified, but for whom the university saw things differently. Happens all the time at selective institutions, public or private. OOS students make a convenient target for the disappointed applicant’s ire, but based on the figures I and others have presented here, I think that anger is misplaced. Michigan continues to make as many places available to state residents as it ever has, but its admission standards are higher than they’re ever been. That’s bound to disappoint some people. But it’s not because OOS students are taking places away from state residents. It’s because the state residents who are applying and being admitted are better qualified than they ever have been.</p>
<p>Sure, momofthreeboys, MSU should meet need. But, again, how are they going to pay for it? </p>
<p>MSU accepts more instate students because they charge higher tuition and don’t meet need. If it were to meet need like UM they would have to find money to compensate for the losses either through more taxpayer money, higher tuition, or like UM a larger number of full pay out of state and international students.</p>
<p>If you want UM to accept more instate student with need, or MSU to meet need for instate student (both lofty goals) you have to pay for it somehow.</p>
<p>Nothing, NOTHING, that UM does should ever be because of MSU. Especially something that would hurt the nationwide academic reputation of the school.</p>
<p>And please, momofthree, once and for all lay out what you consider to be a qualified student. I really don’t believe there are many Michigan residents out there that were forced out of UM because of OOS students. The absolute number of IS students at Michigan has stayed relatively constant despite fewer in-state high school graduates.</p>
<p>Reducing expenses is just a euphemism for cutting quality. In my opinion, Michigan doesn’t need just another average state university, we have plenty of those. </p>
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<p>To me it seems like your real complaint is that MSU needs to do better financially to meet full need for instate students. If this is actually your complaint, I totally agree. MSU is drastically underfunded (even more so than U-M) when considering state allocations. The fact that the legislature can somehow justify the ridiculously low appropriations that MSU receives just shows their utter incompetence in my opinion.</p>
<p>If Michigan State University was able to meet full need for all resident students, Michigan would have a solution that results in a affordable cost, high quality education for all of the strong students who reside in Michigan.</p>
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I don’t agree with you here. If they are qualified to get into U-M, they will get in. If not, they won’t. The fact of the matter is that UofM is a very competitive university that only accepts the cream of the crop. You are simply advocating that we should lower the bar to what constitutes qualified, which I most certainly don’t support. The top students in Michigan will be accepted to U-M, the rest of the good students will be accepted at MSU. As long as we are able to meet full need for both groups (MSU still needs to do a bit better), I think that we would be perfectly fine.</p>
<p>There is absolutely far too much randomness in freshman admissions to say that everyone who is “qualified” will get in and no one who is not “qualified” will get in. Do you really think that no admitted student (and for ease let’s say without some sort of “hook”) has lower stats than any rejected student? </p>
<p>I can tell you that, at least among the people I’ve met, the instate students tend to be better students than the out of state students. I have an extremely hard time believing, despite the fact that the university continues to claim such, that being full pay and out of state doesn’t give you a better shot of admission than being an instate student. Though I guess my opinion of it is, it’s better to be financially solvent than to have perfect “fairness.”</p>
Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Some MI residents might prefer to have a school with more in-state students even if it means cutting somewhere. I don’t pay taxes to MI or tuition to UMich, so it doesn’t matter to me.</p>
<p>Like meet need for their instate students maybe? It’s a tough pill for a top student to go to MSU and pay MORE even if they love MSU too and more people than I have already said that happens. It’s even tougher for the kids (and their parents) that want a major Michigan doesn’t offer and THEN have to pay more to go to MSU. The COA is awfully close between the 2 schools. No one suffers if they go to UofM OR MSU as they are both nationally and internationally known universities and in certain majors that cross -over recruited by the same companies…except perhaps it hurts in their wallet and having just discovered this in the past year when it came up in a social conversation, I’m indignant. And I don’t think this is something that is common knowledge.</p>
<p>Personally speaking, Oakland University here in MI gave me a full ride, and though I didn’t apply to either UM or MSU, I doubt they’d have offered me the same merit and financial aid packages. I have classmates who got into both UM and MSU with similar stats, and they certainly didn’t get full rides. </p>
<p>In fact, I think the problem in MI is that all of us are flocking to the universities that give us the most money because our state is in such a turmoil at the moment. Our parents are losing their jobs, getting their hours cut, having their insurance plans changed; a lot of costs are adding up, and college certainly creates a harder strain. UM is by far the best in MI and one of the best in the country/world, but if you’re strapped for money, it’s easier to just go to the regional university that meets most if not all of your need. For me, it was really the only sensible option, and I know others can relate. </p>
<p>That being said, the kids who did go the U of M route are inevitably paying more out of pocket/loans, so I’m glad that they get a break with lower tuition increases this year.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys,You say the cost of attendance is close between the two schools and they are both nationally and internationally recognized. I am not grasping what you are so “indignant” about. I am in Virginia and each public college has their own tuition and fees. It is not uniform. Anytime you have a product that is desirable, you will have disappointed people if they don’t get access to it. Most top students that want to go to Michigan probably do get in. Same in Virginia. But an holistic process does mean that some kids don’t get accepted to their first choice. That happens with private school admissions all the time.</p>
<p>I think that it is unfortunate that kids get their need met at a school that is increasing their OSS enrollment to the point that kids end up at another state public that is also a great school, but their need is not met. The uniformity is that one school meets need and the other does not. And the compression on in-state kids is happening at the school that meets need which has zip zero zilch to do with holistic admissions process although people keep bringing that up and has absolutely nothing to do with private schools. Nothing. Private schools are private. Public schools are not Private.</p>
<p>But even public schools have a right to set their own fees and their own admissions criteria. The good thing about public systems is that kids have multiple options if their first choice does not pan out. Staying instate automatically gives you some break on tuition.</p>
<p>So it sounds like your main gripe is with MSU at this point and them not meeting full need. But the kicker is that money doesn’t just appear out of thin air. In order for them to meet full need they would either have to significantly increase tuition (seems counterintuitive if they’re trying to save students’ money) or increase OOS enrollment, and I don’t think MSU has the out of state draw to bring in enough full pay OOS students to make that kind of a difference. It is what it is at this point, and the main thing I think most people agree with is not sacrificing the quality of the schools. For a state like Michigan to come back from the dead, the educational quality of its top Universities needs to be protected.</p>
<p>@tom1944 Well, both. If either one of them were partially removed, there is a strong possiblility that Michigan would no longer be able to meet full need for residents.</p>
<p>Your gripe is that if a student is not accepted to UofM, they go to MSU where need isn’t met. I don’t see the problem. Had the student been accepted to UofM and chose MSU instead, then it would be a legitimate gripe, but you can’t say the two schools are equal. Chances are also very good, that had the student been accepted to UofM, they would have received merit aid at MSU, but not at UofM. Is that also unfair?</p>
<p>I know several kids who couldn’t make it with what MSU was going to give them so they ended up at Western, Eastern or Central Michigan with a lot of merit money to make them more affordable. These were kids who were waitlisted at Michigan.</p>
<p>All of these are questions of fact. The financial statements are online, subject to our ability to understand them. Michigan gets just over 300M in state support, and MSU got about 250M. Michigan’s donations exceeded MSU’s by about 190 million or so, IIRC.</p>
<p>They both show significant discounts from the posted tuition in their financials, but I didn’t do the percentages…plus its not broken out in a way that is useful regarding athletics, schools, graduate programs, etc.</p>