I’m an incoming freshman who attended a small high school in Michigan, 50-60 kids. I do understand that my perspective is limited and anecdotal but I know that in my school pretty much only the kids with 3.8 UW and 28+ apply. Anything below that and kids apply elsewhere. There are generally 10-15 kids who get in every year.
I thin it’s been awhile since a 3.2 21 act had a shot at msu. That is more central or western range. I tend also to believe there is some sels selectivity especially in the res colleges
Michigan’s middle 50% range is 28-32. MSU’s is 23-28. According to the 2014 ACT state report only about 8%/9600 of students scored 28 or greater. 26%/31,200 scored 23 or better. That pretty much matches the application numbers, so it seems that it is self-selection. We’d probably get a lot more in-state applicants if we had better public schools.
When loooking at the Naviance profile for my son’s school (a private prep school in Michigan), it seems that MSU has a floor of around 2-9-3.0 GPA. I saw acceptances in that GPA range with ACT’s from 19-30.
Michigan admitted most everyone with a GPA of 3.6 or above and ACT of 26+. Above 3.8, 100% admission. Below that GPA, say at 3.3, you needed to have an ACT of 29 or above. Below 3.2 , only one admittance. (One interesting quirk was that 71% were accepted early, and 63% were accepted regular, much higher for regular that I would have expected. Yield was 38%, about average for Michigan).
The Naviance data seems to indicate that both MSU and Michigan use GPA first, and test scores have less significant impact.
@tooOld4School Your UMich mid 50 numbers are from enrolled freshmen, not admitted students. The ACT mid 50 was 30-33 last year. Naviance data is school specific and often include past data. It is not very helpful for people not from that school. UMich does consider GPA as most important though. They say that explicitly in CDS.
TooOld, your numbers seem to be very much an outlier from most of MSU’s accepted students. From MSU’s common data set 14-15, 15.9% of students scored above a 30 on the ACT. Less than 5% of admitted students had a GPA below 3.0 and nearly half (44.7%) had a GPA of 3.75 or higher. http://opb.msu.edu/institution/documents/CDS_2014-2015.pdf
Will I argue that the stats of admitted MSU students are as high as Michigan’s? Of course not. But your school’s Navient is definitely not representative.
momofthreeboys, I did not mean to say that a 3.2 student with a 21 on the ACT has a good chance of being admitted into MSU, but statistically, such a student has a shot. Similarly, a 3.6 student with a 27 on the ACT does not have a good chance of getting into Michigan, but statistically, such a student has a shot.
billcsho, tooOld4School’s mid 50 number is neither for enrolled, nor admitted, students. It is the enrolled figure for previous years, but not for last year. The figure for enrolled students last year was 29-33, not 28-32.
The mid 50% range for the ACT and SAT of the most recent freshman classes atMichigan and MSU do not intersect:
Mid 50% ACT:
Michigan 29-33
MSU 23-28
Mid 50% SAT
Michigan 1280-1480
MSU 970-1270
The gap is very significant. A 1-2 point difference on the ACT or 30-50 point difference per section on the SAT is insignificant. A 5.5 point difference on the ACT or a 100-150 point difference per section on the SAT is significant. And the gap is growing, not shrinking.
http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/cds_2014-2015_umaa.pdf (Section C9)
http://opb.msu.edu/institution/documents/CDS_2014-2015.pdf (Section C9)
If it is a published data, it should be enrolled freshmen number from previous years, or from old admission data before 2012. The admission mid 50 ACT was 29-33 for 2012 and 2013.
Alexandre is correct that the gap between Michigan and Michigan State in median ACT-SAT scores is large and growing. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that MSU continues to reel in very substantial numbers of the state’s top students. According to MSU’s latest CDS, 15.9% of enrolled freshmen scored 30-36 on the ACT, scores that, other things equal, would make them highly competitive for admission to Michigan. Assuming that 15.9% ratio holds for in-state as well as OOS and applies across all 4 years, that means there are approximately 4500 instate undergrads at MSU with ACT scores of 30 or higher. At Michigan 67% of enrolled freshmen scored 30 or higher on the ACT. Making the same assumptions, that means there are a little over 11,000 instate undergrads at Michigan with ACT scores of 30 or higher. A decisive advantage for Michigan, to be sure, but it’s not as if Michigan captures all the top instate students and the rest go to MSU. Some choose MSU because of family ties, financial reasons (MSU is sometimes quite generous with merit aid, Michigan less so), interest in particular programs (I wouldn’t underestimate the pull of MSU’s business school which is quite good and enrolls much larger number of students than the small and extremely selective Ross, so if you want to attend B-school and you’re not a Ross pre-admit, you might well elect to enroll at MSU rather than risk being unable to transfer into Ross from LSA), or personal preference.
I beg to differ. There are definite differences between Michigan and Michigan State in the composition of their in-state undergraduate student body, going to more than GPAs and test scores. Fortunately, both schools provide us with breakdowns of the county residency of in-state undergrads. Not surprisingly, both draw the bulk of their in-state students from the 3-county (Wayne, Oakland, Macomb) Detroit metro area—Michigan at 52.3% with MSU not far behind at 48.2% (all figures for fall 2014). But the composition of those metro-area students differs. Michigan draws 30.4% of its in-state undergrads from Oakland County (northwest suburbs), the most affluent county in the state (median family income $84,783 per U.S. census data, nearly $25K above the statewide median). MSU draws 25.4% of its in-state students from Oakland County, a healthy fraction but a decidedly smaller share. UM also draws a higher percentage from Wayne County (Detroit, the Grosse Pointes, western and downriver suburbs), 16.7% v. 14.6% for MSU, but MSU draws more from Macomb County (8.2% v. 5.2%), generally a more blue-collar suburban area than neighboring Oakland (Macomb median family income $67,423).
Perhaps the most striking difference is that UM draws a hefty 13.1% of its in-state students from affluent Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor, median family income $82,184), so that fully 65.4% --roughly two-thirds–of its in-state students come from just 4 contiguous southeast Michigan counties, including 2 of the highest-income counties in the state (Oakland and Washtenaw). (The only other county anywhere close in family income is Livingston which tilts MSU but is much smaller). In contrast, MSU draws just 51.9% from those 4 southeast Michigan counties. In part this is just home-field advantage; you’d expect more Washtenaw County residents to attend UM. MSU has a similar home-field advantage in its home county, Ingham (7.4% v. 2.5% for UM) and in surrounding counties like Clinton (2.1% MSU, 0.4% UM), Eaton (1.9% MSU, 0.5% UM), Ionia (0.5% MSU, 0.2% UM), Livingston (3.6% MSU, 1.9% UM), and Jackson (2.4% MSU, 0.9% UM). But MSU’s home turf is notably less affluent than Washtenaw County as measured by median family income (e.g., Ingham $61,680; Clinton $69,611; Eaton $66,788; Jackson $56,314; the outlier is Livingston at $82,637, but again that smallish county contributes just 3.6% of MSU’s in-state students).
More broadly, you could draw a wide arc across the state, beginning in St. Clair (Port Huron) and Macomb Counties in the east, extending west through Lapeer, Genesee (Flint), Saginaw, Bay (Bay City), Midland, Ingham (Lansing), Kent (Grand Rapids), Muskegon, and back down through Calhoun (Battle Creek) and Jackson Counties, and MSU draws a larger percentage of its in-state undergrads from each of those places—including most of the state’s secondary cities after Detroit–than does UM. Median family incomes are generally lower in these places than in UM’s southeast Michigan stronghold (e.g., Kent $61,097; Genesee $54,072; St. Clair $59,969; Bay $53,824; Calhoun $52,533; Saginaw $53,171). UM does slightly better in parts of southwest Michigan (Kalamazoo, Berrien, Allegan, and Ottawa Counties) and in the Traverse City area, though the numbers are small (2.3% Kalamazoo, 2.1% Ottawa, 1.3% Berrien, 0.5% Allegan, 1.3% Grand Traverse).
Without question there’s overlap in the in-state student bodies of the two schools, but there are also differences. There’s no question that Michigan’s in-state students skew more affluent and more southeast Michigan, especially Oakland-Wayne-Washtenaw Counties. Consistent with that, a few years ago the Michigan Daily published a list of UM’s top 20 feeder high schools; 17 of the 20 were in Oakland and Washtenaw Counties, 2 were in Wayne County (Grosse Pointe South and Detroit Renaissance, a magnet school in the Detroit public school system), and only one was elsewhere in the state—Okemos High, in an affluent suburb of Lansing.
I think we’re incredibly fortunate in Michigan (like California, Texas and Virginia) to have more than one choice for high performing high school kids. But the bottom line is I know more than a handful of 3.8 uw 29 ACT kids that were deferred and then waitlisted at UofM in the past two enrollment cycles. a few who had older siblings attend and graduate with the same stats in years prior, so GCs are leery for those top kids. I was just at a party a week or so ago and one of the high school GCs was talking about this as we both have post-college-graduation kids, now. It is a true crap-shoot if they will be admitted to UofM or not. Several took off for Michigan Tech and are transferring now (as juniors), several went to K and several are happily spending their 4 years at MSU. I know one that just transferred from UofM to MSU junior year and I know one or two that are keeping their noses above water at UofM and a couple that have been very successful there. There may not be a statistical overlap on paper, but there is overlap in other ways. Kids don’t like rejection, so I imagine that until something changes there may be emotional “defections” and self selectivity. I sometimes joke to my (UofM) siblings that MSU is the UofM of “old”. The “new” UofM is a different animal for better or worse depending on your perspective. Probably worse if you are a freshman standing on North Campus waiting for a bus in the dead of winter or watching your football team lose 
“The “new” UofM is a different animal for better or worse depending on your perspective. Probably worse if you are a freshman standing on North Campus waiting for a bus in the dead of winter or watching your football team lose”
There is no transformation of Michigan. It is simply one of America’s very greatest universities. It has been and it is now even better than years ago.
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