| Eastern Michigan is not a joke. You meet a bunch of people there who aren't living off of mom and dad's money, who work their way through college. You get great diversity there that you don't find at other schools. It's very focused on undergraduate education, and not research like many other schools.
Ypsilanti is a great town that gets a bad rep from snobs in Ann Arbor who are afraid of black people. Many area employers I have talked to prefer to recruit at EMU as opposed to UM because of how UM students feel they are overqualified and always looking to become high management in the company.
I would look at department specific rankings, personally I know nothing about design, housing & merchandising but look at rankings and placement statistics, you can find this on Google, on the program websites, etc. | 
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