Yeah, 4/20 used to be a really big deal in AA.
Southern Greek life varies from house to house and from university to university. Not every house is flashy, wealthy or preppy.
“We live in MI and our son didn’t even apply there.”
I never thought of Michigan having a distinct “Greek Row” area. Frats and Sororities seem to be scattered on the edges of the campus, not just in one area. Saying that, Michigan and Ann Arbor are obviouslyt not for everybody. Many instate kids don’t apply for many reasons; most typically because they know that there is little chance they will be accepted. In this case the OP did apply to Michigan and was accepted. She has made it clear that she is having difficulty deciding which school to attend, since she feels she will be happy at either school.
“Alabama greek life is more wealthy and flashy than anything Michigan has to offer. It’s a totally different culture, just know that.”
You sound like you’re rather familiar with Alabama. Have you spent much time on that campus Calicash?
In state applicants at UMich are self-selective. Only around 10,000 in state students applied each year because most would save the application fee if they know they have little chance from their GPA and test scores.
OP, I’m a UA grad who currently goes to grad school at Michigan, so I can give you some info on some of this stuff.
I guess the first thing to say is, like many other people in this thread, I think you want us to talk you into going to Alabama. That means something. You prefer Alabama, but you’re wondering if the career opportunities will be good enough.
Let me talk about the lifestyle stuff first. Alabama’s campus is very beautiful and modern. Michigan’s got some nice buildings, but they can be pretty eclectic, and some of them have this weird brutalist industrialist thing going on where you look at the smokestacks and wonder if they’ve got child laborers in there or something. The biggest difference between the two might be the weather. Michigan is extremely cold sometimes, and pretty cold most of the time. If you walk outside with wet hair it can freeze. Alabama was almost always sunny and warm, which I liked a lot, coming from California.
I did room with some really rich kids my first year here at UM. I’ll always remember two of my roommates arguing over whether someone with $10 million was rich or just well-off. But, as others have said, Michigan’s a big school, and you can find whatever groups you want. And, as people have said, Alabama Greek life may be similarly flashy–I really don’t know. I wasn’t involved in Greek stuff and I’ll bet the average wealth of students at Alabama has gone up significantly since I graduated in 2010.
Alabama’s the clear choice on lifestyle, which is probably why you’re leaning towards it. But, of course, what matters most is that you get a good educa—wait, that’s the idealist in me talking. What matters most is that you get a good job.
Let me be honest. When I started reading your post I thought “it’s gonna be easy to talk her into going to UA if she’ll save at least 50k doing it.” I picked Alabama over Michigan as an undergrad because it was a lot cheaper. I was surprised to see that you’re actually considering paying a little MORE to go to Alabama. As an alumnus, I felt a swell of pride when I saw that in the seven years since I’ve left Alabama has turned itself into the kind of place that makes top-notch students like you want to choose it over Michigan on even footing.
Alabama’s clearly on the rise. Believe me, in 2006, nobody talked about it remotely the way so many people on CC do these days. But Alabama and Michigan aren’t peer schools–maybe half a dozen schools are Michigan’s peers. Michigan is what Alabama hopes to be in forty years if it’s lucky.
None of that matters if you want to go to law school, so one thing this all comes down to is how sure you are you want to go to law school. I majored in philosophy, a hidden gem at Alabama that has an excellent pre-law program. I got good grades and a good LSAT score and was accepted to Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia (with full tuition) and NYU, and waitlisted at Michigan. I went to Yale.
Here’s something that may surprise all the prestige-obsessed people on CC. When Craig Janacek, YLS’s director of admissions, called me to give me the good news, he told me “We have a history of getting strong philosophy majors from the University of Alabama.” Prestige and reputation and all that stuff are just far more complicated than the US News-obsessed CC community believes. I see people here talking about differences in rankings when the truth is, many admissions officers probably don’t know or care about ranking gaps as large as 50. For law school, going to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or a couple other places for undergrad will give you a boost equivalent to maybe .1-.2 GPA points. All other undergrads are treated basically the same, whether it’s Brown or a CSU.
If you want to keep the option of working for Goldman Sachs open, go to Michigan. This prestige stuff is also sometimes relevant when applying to grad schools, but this’ll vary a lot by field. I’d say that the more connected the discipline is to the real world, the less the prestige stuff matters. Philosophy is very disconnected from the world, so it’s the best example of a discipline where going to Alabama will hold one back in grad school applications.
I’d wanted to get a PhD in philosophy, but decided to apply to law school after reading this blog post: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2011/10/sorry-cal-state-students-no-princeton.html
The short of it is, for a PhD in philosophy, if you want an elite grad school, you have to go to an elite undergrad. Pretty dumb. I went to Yale Law and then Michigan, ranked #4, liked me just fine. It’d be worth checking out whether grad schools in the disciplines you’re considering have the same bias philosophy does. I’d suspect they don’t, or have less of it.
One final piece of advice, and this one’s important: negotiate! Alabama knows it’s not Michigan’s peer and it doesn’t expect to compete with it on even footing. I’ll bet they’d really appreciate it if you told them about your situation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that caused them to up their offer somehow. Alabama wants people who want to be there. If you tell them that you’re considering paying more to go there over UM, I think they’ll pull out all the stops to get you to choose them.
@tomhobbes - Excellent post. If you want to do some research on the bias in placement of PhD’s, the following website tracks doctoral placement for history, business and computer science degrees and it confirms your statements.
@tomhobbes wow thank you! Your post was amazing. You’re right about wanting to be talked into Alabama–I really do love it and that’s what makes passing it up for Michigan so hard even though Michigan is clearly “better”. At the place I am in life, I’m obviously not 100% sure I want to go to law school, but that’s what I’m looking at, and I’ve seen on plenty incoming class profiles for law schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford that Alabama is always on that list–even when schools like my state flagship U of I are not. I’m still a little lost though because for everyone else Michigan still seems like the obvious choice.
@tomhobbes agree, great insight. @njk1999 please don’t live with regret. And I mean regret based on your true desire, your gut. Don’t base your life decisions because of societal pressure and what you think everyone else thinks you should do. I think CC for the most part is too hung up on prestige and name of school.
“Alabama’s the clear choice on lifestyle, which is probably why you’re leaning towards it.”
Tomhobbes, I am not sure I agree with that statement, since Michigan is considered one of the best places to go to college. I am sure Alabama is great too, but to suggest that it is the “clear choice on lifestyle” does not account for personal preference. The two campuses will have their own vibes, and while some will prefer Alabama, others will prefer Michigan. Same with Tuscaloosa vs Ann Arbor.
Otherwise, your post is excellent. 
@njk1999 this may be a situation that justifies following your heart. If you’re good, you can do pretty much whatever you want graduating from Alabama.
@Alexandre I think Alabama’s at least the clear choice on lifestyle for njk1999, based on what I know of both schools and what she’s said. There are some people who’d like UM better–for instance, anyone who likes snow and cold weather probably would. UM’s a lot more liberal, so very liberal people might favor it (Alabama’s not conservative–it’s a good mix of the whole political spectrum).
But I’m actually pretty comfortable saying that I’ll bet most people who have spent years in both places would give Alabama the edge. Tuscaloosa’s kind of a hidden paradise, like some Elvish city in Lord of the Rings that’s grown around a forest, complete with its own idyllic river next to campus. They didn’t have a lake on campus so they built one next to the honors dorms. I spent many nights grabbing a patty melt at 2 AM and eating it on the pier, pondering some crazy thing my professor told me about Leibniz while watching the lights from the lamps ringing the lake reflect off the water. I even saw people fishing there, so I guess the school stocks it. They pay attention to detail.
It does come down to personal preference. I think most who have a personal preference for nature or warm weather will favor Alabama. For me, the nature part is big. You live in an area that has 130-150k people so it’s a real city but it’s also right in the middle of a forest.
When I went to college at Alabama I felt like I was surrounded by beauty everywhere, and I liked that a lot. That’s one reason why you always hear these strange conversion stories after people visit UA for the first time. It feels almost like a resort.
@tomhobbes Ann Arbor has a population of around 120k, what is your definition of “real city”? Ann Arbor has been ranked among best college cities and best cities to live. It also has a reason to be called “Arbor”.
It is definitely up to personal preferences, but there are also objective data available when you talk about “most people”.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2017/04/ann_arbor_named_best_city_to_l.html
http://www.annarborusa.org/live-here/facts-rankings
“But I’m actually pretty comfortable saying that I’ll bet most people who have spent years in both places would give Alabama the edge.”
Meanwhile in the real world:
http://www.bestcollegereviews.org/50-best-college-towns-america/
Tuscaloosa #48
Ann Arbor #2
Tuscaloosa does beat East Lansing.
MSU #49.
Whoa all those people lived in both places? Sorry I departed from the “best places” rankings, guys. And I certainly didn’t mean that Ann Arbor isn’t a real city when I said that Tuscaloosa is one.
Honestly though, I really don’t want to die on this hill, so let me state clearly that Ann Arbor’s a cool place, and plenty of people like it. And it’s an elite, top-ranked city. I can’t prove that most people who have spent four years in both places would share my preference for Alabama. I do stand by the claim that I think the creator of this thread would like Tuscaloosa better.
I honestly can’t imagine that many people would spend years in Ann Arbor and then move to Tuscaloosa.
I would. I spent a couple years working in AA. I remember how surprised I was at the time, when as I visited a store in another state and held the door open to hear a “thank you.” That just wasn’t done in SE MI at the time.
I still have friends in the area, and have a couple opportunities to move back for more money, but no. Just no. We have talked about moving to Alabama a couple times, oddly enough.
Other people like it, and I’m happy for them. The grime and seemingly unending self congratulations were not to my taste.
I just wanted to comment on this briefly (no offense meant to tomhobbes who has summed things up very well) but top students like OP are recruited from UA by Goldman Sachs. The overall number of students recruited to Wall Street may be higher from Michigan, but OP wouldn’t be closing the door to a career in this area if she chose UA. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/benleake
A video clip made by this young man makes it clear that he has no regrets in choosing UA.
https://vimeo.com/213955580
Thanks for the clarification, AlbionGirl. I guess all I can say for sure is that if the OP wants a PhD in philosophy going to Alabama will hold her back, unless she does law school first. It may be that firms like Goldman do recruit from both places but still give a small boost to Michigan grads. But that’s complete speculation on my part.
I told UA that I needed my financial aid to be updated to compete with Michigan, and they said they would send me an award tomorrow! However, I didn’t give them any numbers. If they don’t really pull through and it’s not what I thought, should I still show them Michigan price or not pursue it any longer?
@njk1999 yes for sure share it with Alabama if their award doesn’t match Michigan’s offer. You have nothing to lose. This is an invaluable skill…learning how to negotiate. All the best to you