<p>People have said Michigan accepts so many students because of the caliber of the applicant pool. Um, by that logic, Harvard should accept at least 70% of their applicants. It's a crapshoot there. It's because Harvard limits class size to around 1,000 and because they're private. They can take whoever they want. Michigan can comfortably admit 5,000 students and they have to take kids from the state of Michigan.</p>
<p>You know, I have to disagree with people on this board about Chicago. I'd say that their student body is just as good as our top 40% of students at Michigan. We just tend to berate ourselves by comparing ourselves to OSU and MSU while they nurse their Ivy-rejection wounds by comparing themselves to their "peers" at Yale and Columbia. It's not that they're smart so much as they use their insecurity to great advantage.</p>