Michigan c/o '25 Acceptance Rate @ Historic Low; Apps exceed 80,000

If you can get yourself a tenure job at Hopkins one of the perks is that they will pay half of anywhere your kids go.

They could also go to Hopkins for free, but Hopkins undergrad is a weird, weird place.

Yeah but out-of-state tuition (which is insane) more than makes up for the local tax and in-state kids have a huge admission advantage.

However, I do agree with your general sentiment that UM should behave more like a flagship state school than an elite private university for northeast elites. There's a balance that should be struck, but I fear we've skewed too much towards the latter in recent years.

This would be more true if state tax dollars actually contributed much of anything to Michigan and it wasn't out of state tuition keeping the university functioning.

Also, a lot of the funding for Michigan comes from federal government research grants.  In fact, next to Johns Hopkins, Michigan is #2 in federal funding.  

I wouldn't fret the in-state thing as much.  Kids from Michigan have a much higher admit rate than OOS kids, despite OOS kids paying a boatload more and frankly being the reputation carriers of the university that give the school cache everywhere.

Still, I think there is a middle way where we can accommodate more aspiring Wolverines while maintaining selectivity without falling into the trap of elitism.  Last year proved out the viability of online as a substitute for in-person.  While I would not deem it as sufficient for the full 4 years, it certainly could be used for the first 1-2 years to lower cost and when most students outside of engineering don't really need physical resources and are still just exploring what they want to major in.

Eh, only 13% of the budget comes from the state.  As a former out-of-state student, I greatly appreciated the fact that the school had students from all over and a diversity of backgrounds. And that’s how you get “brain gain”—I met a lovely girl from MI while I was there and settled down here.  I suppose you could argue whether I qualify as “brain gain,” though… :)

Same here, OOS as well in Wisconsin

My middle daughter is thinking of applying there for engineering, but I also am wondering about the ROI.  She has a 35 ACT, 2nd in class, lots of extracurricular activiteis, volunteering, NHS, and in a top ten high school in the state. Some of her friends with similiar stats applied last year and none of them received any merit based awards, so I think it would probably be the same for her.  

Too bad they didn't have a reciprocity agreement with our state like U-W and Minnesota does.

Your application to Ross pre-admit doesn't impact your chance of getting in overall, its two separate decisions so its no harm. You also aren't really in Ross as a freshman pre-admit anyways, you still have to take the Econ's and get a minimum grade and overall GPA to maintain your pre-admit status and start Ross with everyone else Sophmore year, at which point it becomes almost impossible to fail because they grade the averages to a B+ like the ivies to make the grads more competitive. So there is no harm in his applying to be pre-admit to Ross.

I will say however I would generally push back against being an undergrad business student. There are some benefits, especially around recruiting, but you can get a job at a big consulting firm or similar type situation with an LS&A degree, and if he's serious about business he will have to go back for an MBA anyways which just means taking all the same classes as an undergrad business degree like accounting. So its a much more diverse educational pathway to do something else undergrad, get a job, go back to get the MBA, than to do business undergrad, job, MBA. 

Marcus, it is already that time for a lot of institutions.  I told my son to cross Princeton off his list. Princeton's 2025 incoming class is only 14% white male (and I am told by a friend on the faculty there that you can count on one hand the number who were not either on athletic scholarship or a legacy).  

Agreed wholeheartedly!  At some point the majority of people will not want to support public funding of institutions that distribute private benefits.  Who can blame them.  Even the private universities have this issue as none of them are truly completely privately funded when federal and state grants are taken into account along with student loan subsidies and guarantees. 

After the past year proved out the viability of online teaching, there is no reason why any university cannot support offering online undergrad degree programs.  Except that they don't want to because of their concern over harming their prestige brands.

Purposely restricting supply is a form of price-fixing that should attract anti-trust action or a review of the non-profit status of universities.  Either public universities should hew to their stated missions of accessibility or face enhanced regulatory scrutiny and accountability.

It is always the people talking the most about inclusiveness and equity that are the biggest elitists when it comes to protecting their own status.

That is most people a.k.a. the soon to be extinct middle class.

Its still a pretty big drop to ivy league levels and we'd need a much higher yield rate to get there. Its also mostly driven by out of state students who aren't looking to go to MSU.

I'm just glad I applied before the common app, 50k applications was bad enough.

Absolutely. The Common App(lication) was a game changer.

The common app had been around a long time though, which I don’t think really explains the huge increase in the past few years alone. 

So would 2013 be 1 AD (After Denard)?

Random contrasting anecdote: I was there for the last four years of Carr and knew of multiple people in my HS English class alone who got merit aid, and met more in Ann Arbor. (And don't get the wrong idea, this was a public high school in the Kalamazoo area. Nothing fancy.) I remember two classes of award, there may have been others:

- Regents': $1,500 "good job!" award

- Dean's: full ride tuition

The folks who got Dean's awards were not necessarily more academically "qualified" than the Regents' award folks but had the kind of wide-ranging interests and specific, elevated life goals that make folks take notice. They not only had the grades and score, they also knew why they were there and where they were planning to go next. I think the award decisions must have been primarily an outcome of the essay portions of the application process.

"Should Sally submit her test score if it's a 1250?"  Answer:  "We look at and review everything a student submits.  It's a holistic process." 

Honest question: Why would you expect a different answer?

It seems you are operating under the assumption that it is not a holistic process where everything is considered and there are black and white cut-offs. That's not the case, as we all know. I can see in the past a particular admissions rep might have said "well, X and you're in good shape." But even in the past 8 years things have changed so much. GPA is worthless and SAT/ACT we know to be inequitable measurements that are going to be phased out.

Probably not.

I definitely would not get in.  It's crazy how much grade/test score inflation there is.