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<p>Michigan is the second largest research expending university in the world. Beyond the official undergrad research programs such as UROP, SURE, SROP, Research Scholars and the multitude of undergraduate research fellowship programs, you can just go up to practically any professor and ask to help them out with their research. I’m just a sophomore at Michigan, but during my short time here I was able to work on 3 separate research projects with 2 different professors. Getting research experience at Michigan is incredibly easy and is available to all students. </p>
<p>With regard to academics, I’m really interested in why you think WUSTL academics are so dramatically better than Michigan’s. If you look at the USNWR departmental rankings, Michigan is almost always ranked higher when comparing like fields. Now you could say that many of those rankings are graduate programs and that’s definitely a valid critism, but even when you look at the undergraduate teaching rankings, Michigan holds the edge. Michigan is ranked 6th wheras WUSTL isn’t even listed. </p>
<p>You mentioned the endowment per student disparity, but you need to remember Michigan’s 8.5 billion dollar endowment is not the extent of their revenue. Michigan also receives just under 300 million dollars from the state in unrestricted allocations per year. They also have the ability to request even more state money for capital outlay projects given legislature aproval. Michigan gets a little over 300 million dollars on average in donations which is expected to go up to ~420 million once they start their capital campaign later this year. Also, when comparing the finances, you really shouldn’t forget the proportion of WUSTL’s endowment that is restricted towards patient care. Michigan has similar endowment investments in patient care, but since they have many alternative sources of revenue, the overall proportion is much less than WUSTL’s. </p>
<p>WUSTL is a great university, but you don’t need to pretend that its’ peers are beneath it.</p>