People who are not familiar with U of Michigan, stereotype it as big and impersonal. U of Michigan has residential communities called Michigan Learning Communities within the university which combine the personal attention of a small college environment with the resources of a large university http://lsa.umich.edu/mlc/.
MLC’s are self-selected residential groups of students and faculty, drawn together by shared goals and common intellectual interests.
Here is a video of the liberal arts Residential College MLC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9hCnWC4G1g.
You can make a big school small, but you can’t make a small school big.