University of Michigan - Ann Arbor Rankings by Salary Score

This is more of a review on living in Ann Arbor (AA) and attending the University of Michigan (UofM). This review will be biased towards one side more than the other. I am currently a graduate student in engineering and have attended UofM for two years now, but have only been able to live in AA for one year. The pros of living in AA are that if you like the cold, like me, it's pretty much constantly cold from October through early April. This comes with a caveat as it is pretty much always dreary outside since... Read More I have been here during these times. There are plenty of things to do in AA, and downtown AA during the summer is gorgeous. Michigan in general is beautiful, and AA captures that by being unique in its layout and non cookie cutter outline. I will also say that most of the professors that I have had have been some of the best that I have had in my numerous courses and are knowledgeable in their area. Most have emphasized understanding the topic instead of just knowing it to get a good grade which I have found is a key trait to have/look for in a professor. I will also say that since UofM is such a large university that it allows for a large and vast network of connections that one can utilize as well as allows for numerous amenities to be available to the students. That's where I personally believe the positives end. The cons of AA and UofM long and often overlooked, I know because I did when I arrived here. I personally am not a huge fan of public transportation, unless its in the from of subways or trolly cars. AA has neither of those and uses busses pretty much for everything. UofM does the same thing, busses are used to shipped students to and from the North, Medical and Central campus locations as well as other satellite locations around those campuses, this is because there is pretty much no parking available to students on Central campus unless you want to back $2.00 and hour for metered parking. By no parking I mean there is no parking available for students who have purchased a UofM parking pass, so you have to either park on sub street and walk, pay the $2.00 per hour parking or find a place to park in the overly crowded student parking locations to take the bus too and from wherever you parked at. Then there is the case of the numerous rec locations that UofM has, all of which there is no parking near them unless you want to pay $2.00 an hour for metered parking. This is all assuming that you have a vehicle and drive to these locations, which I prefer. If you have a vehicle and are deciding to move to Michigan from out of state you should do some of the following: A). Have a brand new vehicle with a warranty, B). Buy a warranty for your vehicle or C). Become a mechanic or knowledge enough to fix your vehicle. I say this for two reasons 1 being that Michigan is in the rust belt and you car will hate you after only one winter for all the rust it will get. 2) The roads in Michigan are one of, if not the worst maintained/repaired road system in all of the United States. With all honesty 80-85% of the time when I am driving I am driving on roads littered with potholes (and this is after finding the routes that have the nicest roads). Some of the potholes that you will encounter will be large enough and deep enough that they will quite literally snap some of your suspension components, shake things out of place on your vehicle or even break entire rusty components on your vehicle if you are driving fast enough. Unfortunately some of the larger potholes that will do this to your vehicle just happen to be on the highways/interstate. Another aspect that must be kept in mind is the cost of living, which is 10% higher than the national average in AA. Meaning for every $1.10 you spend in AA the average American spent $1.00. This is especially evident in rent prices. I have friends who live in Lawrence, KS who live in a 3 bedroom 2 bath house with a two car detached garage and a giant backyard who pay 300 less than I do for a 1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment which is priced about average compared to other styled apartments in AA. The food is more expensive, the gas is more expensive than most. Almost everything is more expensive than most of the midwest except for alcohol. Lastly for the cons is the price of tuition for out of state residents. The out of state tuition is over three times higher than instate tuition (for reference my alma mater (Kansas State University) is two times higher but still half the price of UofM's out of state tuition). There is also no viable way for an out of state student to obtain instate tuition as well. The only way I would recommend someone attend UofM if they are not native to Michigan is to start signing up for as many scholarships as one can or talk to professors to get in with them as early as one can. Finally, people here are nice, but not down to earth. What I mean by this I mean most people here are nice because the know its the correct thing to do/act but are not genuinely nice people in the AA/Ypsilanti area compared to most of the midwest. In conclusion, UofM looks like the perfect location on paper or at a glance but as you look closer at it you it looks less and less appetizing. For those alcoholics its like this "When you go out and drinking and see someone who looks like a solid 8-10, but when you wake up next to them the next morning they're actually a solid 4-5." Make sense? If you had made it this far you may tell that I am from a less densely populated area than AA/Ypsilanti/Detroit area and that's why I don't enjoy some of the things I listed above. If you grew up in Michigan, and or have money to spare, and or already have secured funding for tuition/housing/food/gas then Michigan may be right for you, otherwise if you are from out of state and don't have at least two of the three from above then DO NOT attend the University of Michigan. People will say UofM is a topnotch school, and it is, but do not let the rankings fool you like they have numerous other individuals. I have been on numerous campus visits at all of the top 10 engineering schools in America and I would say nearly 90% of the students that I have talked to have been from universities that I have never heard of and aren't even on the top 50 engineering programs. This just goes to say that UofM does have numerous possibilities, which if one utilized all of them can make for a brilliant individual, but it's more about what you as an individual do that will distinguish yourself than what you school ranking is. As stated prior, you can obtain the same quality, if not higher, level of understanding from other universities at a cheaper price, the main thing you get from UofM are the name, network and the possibilities. Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

I basically had to teach myself the material- 2-3 hours of classroom instruction a week for each class was insufficient to teach me. So, most of my time was spent alone staring at a computer screen, which led to feelings of alienation and loneliness. There was a big sense of competitiveness rather than collaboration, often driven by the fact that grades were based on a 'curve,' so instead of helping each other with the material, students benefited off their peers performing worse than them. Even in classes... Read More specific to my major, class sizes were large (50-100 students) and I'm sure my professors didn't know who I was. I also got the feeling that a lot of the professors cared more about their research than engaging in quality teaching to their students, and a lot of classes consisted of rapidly going through numerous wordy slides with the assumption that students would go back and learn the material later on their computers on their own. U of M is also a party school, so if you're into that, maybe it's good for you, but that was never my scene. I also had the expectation that with a bachelor's degree I would be able to get a job doing something I liked in my field of Kinesiology, but it turns out that grad school is the only option moving forward, and most people in my major had intentions of going on to Physical Therapy school. However, my experience at U of M turned me off to school so much that I definitely can't imagine stomaching 3 more years of graduate school. As a comparison, I liked my high school a lot and felt like most of my teachers actually cared about me, and I had close relationships with friends, but in college I felt as though my professors saw me as more of a nuisance getting in the way of their 'real' work and most people I met were just very competitive or uptight or self-righteous. I should have dropped out, because it really got me nowhere except into a headspace of depression, but I was fed the lie over & over again by everyone around me (not just those at school- family, anything I read online, etc) that if I just stuck it out and graduated, the world would be my oyster.