@sushiritto . . . The schools at which UMich does well in California are good to elite private high schools and excellent public ones. It isn’t typically going to get the really top-notch student from these schools – your daughter undoubtedly notwithstanding, especially from the former. With that said, UMich is a great university and it has high standards overall, but probably not from its CA cohort.
I wasn’t accusing UMich of having gamed the system with respect to student-faculty ratio. I doubt if it does. That’s usually something middle-upper-tier private universities would do related to the metrics of college rankings, so they can try to ascend them. It’s evident that UMich, as well as UCB, UCLA, UCSD, don’t care to engage in this.