Adelphia

mnozzi,

You're correct; Michigan doesn't have the same intellectual density (no pun intended) as U of Chicago or the Claremont colleges.

What you have at Michigan is an Ivy College-level coterie of students (say, 30% of the U-M student body) subsumed in a Big Ten U. That's a fairly unique chemistry, and that's what makes Michigan Michigan, not Ohio State, not Princeton either.

I'd guess that in-state Michigan students, by and large, are attracted by a quality education at a good price. And reasonably good chances of getting in. The in-state students are not, generally, party to the can-i-get-into-harvard hunt. Maybe a handful, mostly from the wealthier Metro Detroit suburbs.

At Michigan, there are plenty students who don't know Penn from Penn State, and don't care. On the other hand, there are muchos UM intellectuals who know Tufts is a college and not a facial tissue.

Talk about student-body diversity. (Paging UM Pres. Coleman)

Mnozzi, your understanding of the UM and its admissions scene is perceptive.

dilksy

Michigan as a back-up ftw

I guess I shouldn't be too disappointed since Michigan has a top 10 math grad department. Still would've been nice to go actually move away from home to a more presitigious school that fits me better. Porque, Caltech , MIT, y Princeton, porque!!!

amwitkowski

I was surprised and curious about the comments on TA's. I asked my nephews about their UM experience. One graduated in 2002 with a degree in Aeronautical engineering. He responded -- –first couple of years that's mostly what i had (TA’s) ........profs don't get involved until you get into the upper level stuff

The second majored in economics and graduated in 2004. He told me that he had almost all TA’s his first two years, mostly from Russia and China.

It appears there is a wide variation. Could be dependent on your major or the classes you take.

Shinigami

I really wouldn't say that.....

I grew up in ann arbor and I go to the U of M. There are plenty of attractive girls there.

Shinigami

mnozzi,

I get the feeling that you don't like Michigan just because it's Michigan.

I am from Ann Arbor. I wanted to go to Bryn Mawr. I got in. But it was too expensive. I didn't want to go to U of M and so you know what I did? I transferred out. I gave lots of reasons for leaving, all sorts of reasons like class size, TA's, too many people, it was overrated, and other things like what you said....and I left.

And do you know what I learned?

I learned that U of M is a ridiculously good school and that just cause I'm a townie and, sure, lots of in-state kids get in, it doesn't mean that it's not a good school. It doesn't mean that it doesn't compare to those other top schools.

I'll be going back to U of M after just a semester away. I've learned a lot about what it means to be a student at U of M after being a student elsewhere.

And the comment about being a physical therapist rather than a doctor is a bit silly. There are plenty, plenty of people who go to U of M and become very successful, well-paid doctors and the fact that he isn't a doctor isn't because of U of M. In the end, YOU are the only one responsible for your own education.

Please don't think badly of Michigan just because it's the fall back school and not the one of your dreams. My counselor once told me, when I was upset about the possibility of going to U of M just cause I could not afford another school, "Think of it this way, at the very least you'll be getting an education from one of the best schools in the country."

And it's true. Don't close your mind to it. It's a very good school and I cannot wait to go back.

I also agree with Alexandre.

You can't just look at admissions, but you have to see where the people go when they graduate. U of M may have lower standards of admission but they get the same amount of people into top graduate schools as those other schools you stated as being better than U of M. In my mind, that makes U of M *better* than those other schools because they start out with less and yet they can still come out with an equally good product.

What I'm saying is that I was once like those friends of yours you talked about, but now I realize how wrong I was to think that way. I think people get so caught up in the big out-of-state names when they are from Michigan that they can't see what's right in front of them.

I'm happy I figured it out and I know that U of M is the right place for me. I hope you find the right place for you, wherever that may be.

Alexandre

amwitkowski, your nephews were referring to discussion groups, not lectures. Very few lectures at Michigan are led by TAs. 97% of Michigan lectures are taught by professors.

GoBlue81

Either that or his nephews were skipping all the lectures and attended only the discussion sessions.

reeses414

Actually, some professors do get involved in the lower level classes. One of my professors of one of my 200-level history classes personally graded the first of our two papers for the class. He teaches the lecture, and the GSI teaches the discussion. He could have had her grade both, but he graded one of them. The paper that the professor graded didn't only have a letter grade on it but also contained footnotes, etc. that a fully edited paper would have. I could tell that he spent lots of time grading those essays as he did such a thorough job grading and giving advice on one of them. His comments were also extremely helpful.

amwitkowski

GOBLUE81

Here's a response one sent me regarding Alexandre's comment

In the big "weed out" classes you usually have 200-300 students in a lecture hall, and that is taught by a Prof with TAs leading the corresponding discussion groups. With a lot of my math classes though (Calc 1-3, etc.) the classes were smaller (40-50 students) and they were taught by TAs, usually non-American. I can only talk on the math and science stuff though. 97% seems extremely high.

Maybe there have been changes since you were in school or perhaps this is unique to the engineering school. I should have asked him to quantify what he thought was the number -- oh well, does it really matter?

GoBlue81

No one is disputing that, but that's not what you said. You said that:
And I was wondering what courses your nephew took in his first two years in college.
Your nephew has faulty memory...either that or he just chose to remember the bad experiences. Calc 1 and 2 are indeed taught by GSIs, and some unfortunately do not speak good English. Calc 3 (Math 215), Diff Equations (Math 216), Linear Algebra (Math 217) and all upper leveal courses are taught by professors. You can look it up in the Winter 2007 time schedule (http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_resul...40&iPageNum=4). All the sections are taught by professors.

May be your nephews can be more specific than saying just "math and science stuff"? Which of his engineering courses were taught by TA's?

I went back to the department during homecoming in 2004. All the Chem Engineering courses are still taught by professors.

Btw, many of the CC'ers in engineering can place out of Calc 1 and 2, thus avoiding non-English TA's if necessary. That's what changed since my time. In the good old days, all my calculus classes were taught by professors, so I could just skip to another section if I didn't like my TA.

Alexandre

GoBlue is correct. Math 115 and 116 (Calc I and II) are the only math classes I know of that are taught by GSIs. Math 215 (Calc III) is almost always taught by a professor. Other classes sometimes taught by GSIs are English 125 (intro college writing) and some 100 level foreign languages. Those are the 3% of the classes that are taught by GSIs. And I did not make up the number. It is a fact published by the university. Maybe Hoedown can find it, I personally haven't had much success finding it.

At any rate, very few classes are taught by GSIs. I personally skipped out of intro foreign language and Math classes, so I never had a GSI teaching me. All my contact with GSIs were as discussion group leaders, never as lecturers. Not that I would have minded. Most of the GSIs I had were awesome. 2 of the 7 I had got their PhDs months after leading the discussion group and immediately joined major faculties at Columbia and WUSTL.

FlyLikeAPenguin

I live in Ann Arbor and couldn't even begin to count the number of U of M students, professers, and alums I know. Michigan's greatest weakness is that the school cares significantly more about their graduate students than undergraduate. There are WAY too many undergraduate classes taught by grad students, and the quality of teaching is not consistantly very good for undergrads.

Another personal thing that I have is that the campus is HUGE. It is completely mixed in with Ann Arbor, like, there U of M buildings next to Ann Arbor buildings and this causes for no real central part of campus, and everything to be extremely spread out.

Just as some people have said before, everyone at Michigan loves themselves, although I think you will find this at almost all Universities. It is a good school, but from a girl that has been surrounded by the University of Michigan her entire life, I wouldn't go there if you paid me.

Alexandre

FlyLikeAPenguin, your observations are mostly spot on. But they aren't unusual. You just described the essense of any major urban research university. That includes Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Penn. They are large, the bulk of their resources and faculty attention goes to graduate students and they are often mixed in with the city around them.

And one more thing, graduate students very rarely teach classes at Michigan...no more than they do at any other elite private research university. Like at most major research universities with major graduate programs, including Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Stanford etc..., graduate students lead discussion groups but they do not teach very often, and th classes they do teach are typically very basic, where the content can easily be taught. In this respect, Michigan is no different and no worse than the majority of those schools mentioned above.

mastert tang

I'm curious, does anyone know the in-state acceptance rate versus the out of state rate?

Alexandre

Unfortunately, Michigan does not publish that information.