UNC-CH vs Michigan?

@rjkofnovi I haven’t, that’s why I asked. What’s there to do in Michigan? It has no cool cities, and some pretty bad ones like Flint and Detroit. I guess it has the lake, but I’d take the ocean PLUS mountains any day over a lake. And NC has better weather…

Also like… can you even get a good job in Michigan after you graduate? NC has Charlotte, which is the second biggest banking capital after NYC and the Triangle has all kinds of health sciences and tech. I know a lot of UMich grads are very in demand and go work elsewhere, but it’s worth mentioning.

ceillingroofgoat, Michigan is home to 19 Fortune 500 companies (North Carolina is home to 12).

As for Charlotte being the second biggest banking “capital” after NYC, you are overstating matters somewhat. NYC is in a league of its own. Beyond NYC, you have four major banking centers in the US (San Francisco, Chicago, DC and Charlotte), and they are roughy equal in significance. But I don’t see how this is relevant here. Michigan students, particularly Ross students, are heavily recruited by financial firms…more so than UNC students.

As for biotech and medical devices firms, I do not think the Research Triangle offers a special advantage. Most biotech firms are located in California and New England, while most medical devices firms (Medtronic, Baxter, Stryker) are located in the Midwest.

Ann Arbor has more going for it than Chapel Hill, and since college students spend most of their time on and around campus, it is safe to say that Michigan students have at least as much to do when they are not studying as UNC students. I visited Chapel Hill, and it is a very pleasant and quaint college town, but Ann Arbor, while just as charming and pleasant, offers more on a daily basis. As others have pointed out, for those seeking urban escapes, getting to Chicago or Toronto from Ann Arbor is very easy.

That being said, while Detroit has earned a negative reputation, it has improved a great deal in recent years, and its suburbs offer first rate amenities, from world class museums, a very well connected international airport, excellent restaurants and a vibrant music scene.

UNC and Michigan are both excellent. It cannot be denied that Michigan costs roughly $15k/year more than UNC, which makes the latter a significantly better value. However, the OP requires significant aid from both in order to make them affordable, and it is hard to tell which of those two universities will be more generous.

@Alexandre I am not interested in arguing with you about whether UNC or Michigan is better.

For the OP’s information, everything she said about Chapel Hill and NC is completely false.

The OP needs to use the NPC and see which, if either, is affordable.

As far as BME goes, I have a family member who graduated from UNC a few years ago with this degree and he was offered a job in October of senior year. This family member is still with this company and is very happy. He is thinking about grad school and still keeps in touch with his professors who are helping him think through the process.

If your EFC is ~$20K, and if your parents are able and willing to cover approximately that amount, then (in addition to UNC and Michigan) you may also want to consider some private schools on the following list:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2016-09-19/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need

Many of these are small LACs (which may not appeal to you if you like Michigan and UNC). For some of the research universities on that list (as well as Ohio State and Miami Ohio), below are the net price estimates I get for an Ohio family with $80K/y income, 1 child, $40K in cash savings, and $40,000 in home equity:

$16,165 Johns Hopkins
$16,743 Notre Dame
$17,480 Northwestern
$18,536 Cornell
$19,820 TOSU (Columbus)
$20,244 Boston College
$23,493 Miami-Ohio (Oxford)
$23,947 UNC-CH
$36,781 Michigan (Ann Arbor)

Your Mileage May Vary. For different inputs, the order and price spread among these schools might change. I don’t know why Michigan is so much higher than the others if it claims to cover full need even for OOS students; if I change residency to Michigan, the estimate I get is $17,423.

Also, it is not the best to compare opportunities in the respective states. I know for a fact many Michigan grads leave the state post-graduation anyway.

“I am not interested in arguing with you about whether UNC or Michigan is better.”

No, you’re just interested in commenting about an area and state you have never been to and have little clue about.

^ exactly - you insult the area, say no offense, and then you don’t want to hear any support for the area. I guess you wish to remain ignorant and think you know which is the better university and area. Geez.

I do want to hear support for the area. The only support I have heard so far is that Michigan has 19 Fortune 500 companies headquartered there. The big city in Michigan is Detroit. I mean jesus, Detroit has the second highest murder rate in the US. It is also one of the poorest cities in the US.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/09/16/census-us-uninsured-drops-income-stagnates/32499231/

ceilingroofgoat, one does not have to live in downtown Detroit, where the crime occurs. I worked for Ford and lived in Ann Arbor. It was a 40 minute commute, but I loved it. You have many great communities in the Detroit area, including Troy, Rochester, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Royal Oak, Grosse Pointe, Novi etc…

This decision should boil down to cost of attendance. If cost is the same, then I would go for fit.

As I said, no one care about going to Detroit or Flint anyway. I don’t see how they have anything to do with Ann Arbor as there are plenty of place to go and things to do. It is not like Columbia, JHU, or UCB that there are some really bad area in walking distance. It is just as ignorant as someone asking if Ann Arbor’s water is affected by the Flint problem. LOL.
Michigan is still the automobile capital and the engineering job market is pretty strong right now.

Ann Arbor has been rated the best city to live and the best college town in recent years.

@ceilingroofgoat , crime is very low in the entertainment and business districts where people go in Detroit, just like crime is low in the loop or along the gold coast in Chicago despite the windy city’s appalling murder rate. Crime in Detroit is on the way down, not up, unlike other major cities. Ann Arbor is a huge research center with lots of medical related startups and a thriving tech community. It is not hard for an engineer to get a job in Michigan.

People go to Detroit to watch the sports teams or for an evening out. A student will rarely, if ever, go to Detroit unless it is for a class project, there is far too much to do in AA.

NC State is the main engineering university, not UNC, and UNC only has about 30 engineering faculty vs 475 at Michigan. I really don’t see why someone interested in engineering would go to UNC.