The University of Michigan - Dearborn

Date: Feb 23 2010
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
The reviews on here are pretty much what I expected: the people who can't seem to spell think the place is a hole, there are lots of people who put an overwhelming amount of emphasis on discovering the social life, etc. You can identify each of these people in the classroom.

I'm a CIS/Computer Science major and this school has taught me the very valuable lesson that your education is what you make of it. There are a lot of people around here that have little or no faith in their education and make little of it—just pass the class, get the grade, and move on. Needless to say, many of the students here are not always the most enthusiastic about their classes.

There are actually a lot of opportunities to distinguish yourself. The Computer Science department is relatively small, so it's easy to get familiar with people. Many of the students are arrogant

I already know it all

dweebs who don't bathe and can't dress themselves, but there are also plenty of bright students with a healthy outlook. They become more common as you go throughout the coursework.

There are, reasonably so, a lot of comparisons made between UM-Dearborn and UM-Ann Arbor. The bottom line is, and this shouldn't be a shocker, UM-Dearborn is much less competitive, more personal, and easier to succeed in than the Ann Arbor campus. But on that note, I think most of the coursework is exceptional. I think the tests probe your understanding of the material, and many of the professors are excellent at teaching. Even where they aren't, there are plenty of excellent resources to help you learn the material. As with any college, you have to reach out for help, but many of the students here seem to think everything should just fall right in their lap. I guess between breaking their high score in Bejeweled on Facebook and blast rap music in the UC they didn't get a chance to stop by their professor's office hours.

There's this rather depressing attitude amongst students that UM-Dearborn is like the forgotten red-headed step child campus (not quite sure where that puts Flint). There's generally very little school pride, and I think many people wouldn't be here if it weren't for the name brand. The Dearborn campus actually has the second lowest admission ratio in the state after the Ann Arbor campus, even lower than State, and the statistics parallel or surpass State and Grand Valley, which are the other contenders for top. Make no mistake—without the Michigan name overshadowing this campus, it's one of the best Universities in Michigan, which is saying a lot.

I'm familiar with the computer science curriculum at this and several other Universities in the state, as well as the nationally recognized programs (MIT, Carnegie Mellon) and it stacks up pretty well. We generally cover a lot more material that competing programs (State, Mich Tech, Grand Valley) and the curriculum, sans pre-requisites, is very similar to the Ann Arbor campus and both move at a similar pace.

In retrospect I'm actually pretty glad I decided to go to this school. I wouldn't quite be me if it weren't for the lifestyle of this campus. If you're a motivated individual, UM-Dearborn lets you live as you'd like to, without the culture and stigma of college life, which for me would have held me back from doing things that I wouldn't be the same without doing. But, I have to say, if I were in my senior year of high school again, picking which college to enroll in, I think I might've passed up the commuter campus.