<p>Your parents obviously don’t know much about Michigan…or good public universities in general. Classes are seldom taught at by TAs (or GSIs as they are referred to at Michigan) at Michigan. Only 3% of all classes at Michigan are taught by GSIs. Most GSIs only assist faculty with discussion groups and research labs. The only courses taught by GSIs are introductory Mathematics, English and Foreign Language courses. </p>
<p>[Information</a> About Graduate Student Instructors at the University of Michigan](<a href=“http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/gsi-sa/teach.html]Information”>http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/gsi-sa/teach.html)</p>
<p>Also, classes at Michigan are not larger than they are at Emory. Emory may offer more niche seminars than Michigan and may partition lectures into several sections taught by the same professor, but in the end, students at Emory will not receive a significantly more presonalized education. </p>
<p>Finally, as gman pointed out, of Michigan’s $5 billion+ budget, only $300 million (less than 6%) comes from state funding. The rest is raised by the university through tuition, private/alumni domations, research funding, revenues generated by the university, endowment returns etc…</p>
<p>Financially, Michigan is one of only 10 or so universities to receive the highest credit rating by Moody’s and S&P. Its endowment of $6.6 billion is the 6th largest university endowment in the US, larger than all but Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale.</p>
<p>If you think you would be happier at Michigan…and assuming it is not more expensive than Emory, I would say go for it!</p>