Applying to Umich as a Business Major?

88jm19
Sun, 03 May 2015 19:30:39 +0000

Hi @cowycam7! My son applied EA to U Mich and was accepted into Engineering, but not into pre-admit Ross. In hindsight I wonder if applying to Engineering was possibly a mistake.

We are OOS and therefore, we had a pre-conceived idea about what “we” (actually my husband and I) would consider justification for the huge OOS tuition differential with our own strong, in-state flagship…either acceptance into Ross and/or some merit dollars. Even then we would have had to discuss and re-visit the school, since an extra ~$80K is a sizable sum…and note: we feel this way even though we can afford it without loans.

So understanding from where we were coming, I’ll address why I think engineering may have been a slight disadvantage. First, at the Ross portion of the Campus Day we attended, (out of all of those in attendance) my son and only 1 other, indicated they had been accepted into engineering…everyone else was LSA. (fyi - my son figured if he didn’t get Ross he would go into IOE.) Later, when speaking to the Ross representative, he mentioned that engineers can/do apply to Ross, but be sure to take the correct writing class freshman year…it’s different from the one that is required for engineers. He also assured us that the GPA from engineering is viewed differently from LSA.

The next reason I think engineering may put a student who wants to get into Ross at a disadvantage has more to do with the feeling I got from reading about merit $s on these boards. Yes, I was aware of U Mich lack of OOS merit aid, however remember I was seeking a “sign” from the school. It may sound silly, but I felt that if the school offered $s to my son (maybe $5-$10K at least) it would show that they wanted him and that it was a good fit from their end. And this is where I think engineering may have been a disadvantage to him. I could be wrong, but it appeared to me that a lot of the merit $s went to LSA students.

We’ll never know if going ‘LSA’ would have made a difference, but at times I do wonder. He is a strong student [4.0 UW GPA, NMF, 2 sports for 4 years each, strong academic and service ECs, 2 leadership positions, 35 ACT, lots of APs…AP Gov, APUSH, AP Calc BC, AP Macro/micro, AP Lang, AP Chem, AP Physics, AP CS, AP Stats] who is very happy with his final decision - UIUC business as a James Scholar and Campus Honors.

I do believe things happen for a reason and I’m really happy the way things worked out. Good luck to you!