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My comment is primarily aimed at out-of-staters. I got dinged from Yale, Stanford, Duke but got into a handful of USNews' (very superficial) 5-20s. I chose the UMich Honors Program because I got sold on the supposed Ivy League experience on a Big Ten campus. I'm going negative, but I must say that I enjoyed my time in Ann Arbor and had a lot of friends (many of them out-of-state) who thrived at the school and are currently having great careers. Social life was good, especially during spring term. I went to a great high school with many good teachers. It's a different educational model, but I'd say only 2 of my 18 UMich classes would fall into the good category. (I later transferred to a smaller private university where about 80% of my classes were good.) UMich classes were very large. Main format is a lecture followed by a discussion section that is led by TAs. Different TAs for the same class might have wildly different grading standards. Grading curves are often harsh. Most college course grades are going to be based on an overall points system - final exam is 40% of grade, two tests are 20% each, homework and participation are 20%, etc. At UMich, one had to worry about getting a mediocre paper in the right format in the right number of copies to the right email address(es) than writing a good paper in terms of grading. At my later school, I had to worry a lot more about the writing, organization and ideas. Grading curves are often harsh, and multiple-choice tests were often poorly conceived, making said grades arbitrary.If you're willing to pay the out-of-state UMich tuition, I very much advise going elsewhere. Go to a liberal arts college with smaller classes. Go to a private school. Or save a lot of money and go to your state school. For law or medical or whatever graduate school, most universities say they take grade inflation or deflation or average GPA into account. My time working in a law school admissions office indicates otherwise. At a private school (whether Harvard or USC), the middle-of-the-road, average-student grade for a biology 101 course may be a B+ (3.3). At that same course at UMich, it might be a B- (2.7). Act accordingly. |
