Hey! I am not looking to offend anybody or undermine the school in any way, as UMich has been one of my first choices since junior year. I know that many of you are going to say “It’s worth the wait” and that “If you really loved UMich, you would not mind waiting” but I honestly think this treatment is completely unfair and unprofessional. I think the admissions office is ill-equipped and incapable of handling such a large volume of applications. Granted, the number of applications to UMich did increase, but so did that to many other schools, UCLA being the case in point. UCLA had the largest applicant pool in the nation and yet managed to release all decisions at once, with no unnecessary stress being caused from the perspective of the students. Many students in UMich were deferred during EA, including myself, and the theory has been that many applications were not even read. The sporadic release of decisions did indeed favor a select few who got accepted, but the rest are left in the dark, worrying and speculating to extremes (194 pages are not few). Nobody knows when decisions will be out, whether to accept rejections or acceptances and whether being left in the dark means rejection. Although I do understand that college admissions is an intricate and highly complex process, most schools (both public and private) seem to somewhat have it together. I regret to say that I will be withdrawing my application from the school today, as it does not seem to agree with my belief system and disciplines. I really don’t know where I am going with this, I am just disappointed and kind of angry and had to get these thoughts out of my head. Good luck to everybody, I hope the wait is not long. Try to consider other options and visit campuses, as this is probably not something feasible with Michigan due to the very limited time-frame. Again, I am not looking to spark controversies or anything. Best of luck.
@chrys1 I can’t agree with you more.
@chrys1 Give me another example with >15% increase in applicants this year. UCB deferred many students to Spring admission a couple years ago if you want to know a more stressful example.
They have received near 20% EA application this year and yet finished the EA admission within the schedule. 85% of EA applicants are not admitted and therefore deferred (not because they did not finish the review process). They have reached their admission goal.
what time have they released decisions previously? I doubt there will be anything today but who knows at this point, it’s all just speculation.
@billcsho The problem is the waves of announcements creates MORE stress for the majority of applicants. I was discussing the college application process with someone who teaches adolescent psychology at Tulane. Her daughter is a senior this year at the same school as my child. We were discussing how different schools handle it and she agreed that Michigan’s process is like waves of stress that keep building on each other. Certainly, for those that get in it is a relief but there is MORE stress on everyone else. USC has no EA or ED and over 64000 applications for far less spots and all of their acceptances and rejections are out. Five UC colleges got over 100,000 applications EACH and all of their acceptances and rejections are out. This is nothing against UM which is easily one of the finest Universities in the country. They just need to figure out a process that serves those that are rejected a bit better as the tease of these waves makes it excruciating for some. They also need to make sure they do not let thousands of EA applications get deferred because they did not have the personnel to even OPEN them.
I think we all can understand that given the increase in applications they have been extremely busy. But wouldn’t it be safe to say they could have hired people in the admissions office to help?
@JohnGalt Exactly my point! Maybe they should create an ED round to alleviate the stress of some students who have Umich as their first choice!
@UMichparent17 I just do not understand why they do not issue EA rejections like almost every other school which offers EA does. I would think that would make things easier for UM to get those applications off their desks to deal with RD and deferred rather than defer everyone. It tells a lot of folks who do not have a shot that they do not have a shot so they can cross UM off. Some people hold out hope and benefit from that early answer.
@billcsho You mention Spring admission above. THAT is not stressful. USC offers that in lieu of a waitlist and you are guaranteed admission in the Spring. While a delay for sure you still get in.
@UMichparent17 They may if they can forecast the numbers. The temporary readers were hired and trained in the summer. In the past, they have around 1 reader per 1000 applicants (EA and RD combined). A 15% increase may only take up to an extra week. I don’t think there is a very significant delay this year as the first 2 batches of RD admission were actually earlier than previous years. The same complaint showed up every year and yet they finished their admission process as their schedule every year.
To have the rolling admission release, there are at least those who got admitted early would be less stressful instead of everyone waiting for the full schedule. If everyone just wait for the email notice instead of keep checking this forum for admission release, it would be far less stressful. The earlier admission notice is supposed to be a surprise. But if you expect to be surprised every week, you will be disappointed.
@billcsho .WHY NOT ISSUE EA rejections like every other school that offers a similar program?
I’m going to agree with @chrys1. In response to @billcsho, I don’t know any other schools who are giving a mid-april final notification. Who is left? The Ivies have gone - they deal with huge numbers. CMU hasn’t released, but they do it all at once and then have all the visit days (nearly daily!) throughout April, AFTER everyone has heard. It’s a legit criticism - other big schools manage the application process better. (University of Washington had an 18% bump in applications last year and still managed to release them all over a 24 hour period, much earlier than this.) I love that you’re a huge fan of the school (and it was a top choice for us!) but you can admit this is a legit criticism. It’s inefficient and needlessly stressful to have “waves” over such a long period of time. Cal Poly, CU Boulder and Purdue (from our list) all did waves, but within a few days. Since my kid was coming from an aerospace themed high school, lots of kids applying to the same schools. Hard when one kid knows and the others have to sweat. A week, two weeks, sure…but kids have been getting admissions decisions since January and now this huge time lag to the final wave. I can only come up with two explanations: UMich admissions is either uncaring and/or (at least somewhat) incompetent or woefully understaffed or something. This is a poor reflection of a terrific school…I can see no advantage for them drawing it out like this either. I would like to think they aren’t uncaring…but as we approach April 1 with no communication at all, I’m really disappointed. And for the experts out there, try to have a little empathy and put yourselves in the kids’ shoes. This year seems especially disorganized. I didn’t believe the rumors that they didn’t get to read all the EA apps…but now I’m thinking I do.
@NWhummingbird I totally believe the rumor about not reading all the EA applications because I heard it from two sources and one would have good information on that.
@JohnGaltIII Their primary goal is admission, not rejection. Deferral from EA is offering a second chance for admission so one may demonstrate an improvement in GPA, test score, or achievement in other area strengthen their application. Around half of the RD admission are from the deferred applicants. Should that second chance only be offered to some of the EA applicants? That may be the question they have been working on. Actually, they have recently revised their EA potential outcome in some of their online documents to include rejection. This may hint the change in upcoming years. Their admission process is still evolving. The current EA and RD rolling format is within this decade. It used to have early rolling.
So you heard the rumor twice does not make it real. The fact is they have admitted the target number of students in EA.
When they had that problem 4 years ago, there were January admission released.
@NWhummingbird - Spot on!!
@billcsho UCSB had like 12+% and is a smaller school with probably a smaller core admissions staff. Michigan admissions process has been a joke. Just give the decisions so these kids can move on and make their choices.
It would be curious to see if the head admissions director is the same next year as this current year (where it’s gone so badly). As I see it, the only way U Mich will improve their admission’s process is one of these two factors (maybe both): 1) overwhelming negative feedback regarding this process from students and media, and 2) mismanaged poor yield numbers as a result of this year’s pool.
UMich had the biggest 25% jump in application when they joined the CommonApp in 2010, and they finished the admission process as scheduled. As I mentioned above, I don’t expect the 15% increase would be a major issue especially when they have 2 rounds of RD admission released earlier than previous year. Most people are upset because they did not receive the rejection notice earlier than they promised. If they change the admission release for all to early April or late March like many other schools, I am sure there would also be a lot of complaints as they used to release the admission earlier.