<p>I live in Chicago and tomorrow am driving up (4.5 hours, ew) to visit UofM. We basically decided on a whim last weekend that we were going to visit, so we realized that we probably couldn't get any sort of tour on such late notice. I know campus is HUGE, but would it be manageable to give ourselves a decent tour? I went to U of I which is pretty big, and didn't have a tour and had no problems figuring things out.I really just want to get a feel for the campus. I'm interested in Architecture or maybe Engineering, which I believe are both located on North Campus? Is that really far from central campus? Any tips for looking/getting around or things I should be sure to check out? I'm actually only driving tomorrow, staying at a hotel so I have all day to look around friday, so I'm not worried about cramming a ton into a few hours or anything.</p>
<p>Well, art fair is going on right now, so you can check that out.</p>
<p>Yeah, the Ann Arbor Art Fair is going on right now, so over the course of 3-4 days there will be roughly half a million other people visiting Ann Arbor, and most of the major streets around campus and downtown are closed because that's where the artisans tents are. You should have no problem getting to/around North Campus, but if you want to see Central Campus/downtown, you'd probably have to park at a lot and pay to take an Art Fair shuttle.</p>
<p>you can check out the art fair + get a little tour of michigan! you can definitely give yourself a tour. Check out north campus to. Just find maps online, walk around a little, and yeah..</p>
<p>that doesn't sound too great. Is it going to be so congested that the art fair's going to totally impede everything?</p>
<p>pretty much. The streets are packed all day. It gets pretty annoying.</p>
<p>your going to walk around campus the whole day so you might as well check it out. the streets around the art fair arent too congested, and you can get descent parking too. the art fair won't impede against anything. if anything, it'll be an additional fun to your tour. if you didnt know, the art fair does not take place in the university itself but on main and liberty and just west of the true central campus. so you can still sight see, etc without too much commotion around.</p>
<p>Even if you're pretty sure you'd end up living and attending most classes on North Campus, be sure to check out the main campus as well. Students generally take shuttle buses between North campus and the main campus, which are far enough apart that they feel separate. Fraternities and Sororities, Stadium, Law School (really pretty, take a look inside at the quad), lots of student-type restaurants and shops are all on/near main campus.</p>
<p>Really, campus is not that big. I think that compared to a lot of schools I've visited campus is pretty compact. I don't include North Campus in that assessment, because North Campus is really its own beast.</p>
<p>Well, there's a little more campus-area commotion than you might have been led to believe. Art Fair runs right in front of the Union and they have a food court on the lawn there. BUT by and large it's not like campus buildings are blocked. It is a kind of neat time to see Ann Arbor, but it's not an accurate reflection of what it's usually like. </p>
<p>Don't forget your Art Fair Bingo card!
<a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ewolfsong/ArtFairBingo.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wolfsong/ArtFairBingo.pdf</a></p>
<p>Also, don't be put off by the cranes. U-M just likes building really big things.</p>
<p>SO--back from the visit. Overall I liked the campus a lot. We got lost a lot for the first hour or so, then got a general feel. I chanced upon running into a few staff members and was given a personal tour of the architecture building, which from the outside, is a dump (ironically), but inside was really nice. I really liked central campus (but that art fair made things miserable when trying to check out some of the main buildings), law school was obviously gorgeous, liked the fact that North campus is a little less city, so it's sorta the best of both worlds, although the buildings on North Campus are generally not outwardly impressive. </p>
<p>Really great school--still a top pick for me.</p>
<p>Thanks for everyone's input.</p>
<p>are you serious? The north campus was not outwardly impressive? Wow, first time i heard that. To me, North Campus is a total impressiveness in terms of architecture. I guess you had to be with a tour guide for this one though. A lot of the buildings in north are considered of modern architecture. As for the art fair, sorry about my recommendation. I though you might like art, but i guess not. I guess it might take away from the central view of the campus itself.</p>
<p>North Campus, as a whole, was nice. I liked that it was a little more spread out and tree-filled. I really, really prefer classical architecture, so I suppose that's why I was less impressed with the buildings. I like art, also, I just had a single day to see all of campus, so I didn't have time to be looking around, so it was more of a nuisance than anything. I mean, I really did like it, but the first campus I ever visited was Notre Dame, so basically anything after it is going to be slightly (aesthetically) less impressive. Again though, as a whole I liked campus.</p>
<p>The architecture school IS a dump, no doubt about it, and it's certainly ironic.</p>
<p>They've got a neat new Dean that everyone's pretty excited about. I think she's going to go forward with their longimte desire to make the building bigger. Hopefully they will succeed in making it more substantial architecturally.</p>
<p>Yes I was given a tour of the building by an architecture office staff member (not a professor) and she showed me the plans for the addition. Looked cool, but she said they're really just in the proposal stage. While the building is really, really unimpressive from the outside, on the inside I was at least impressed by it's functionality. Everything was there (though a little cramped). Hopefully if I go there by the time I'm working on architecture the addition will be in the works or done.</p>