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The University of Michigan has around a 15% acceptance rate. How is it possible that they’re letting in kids who aren’t ready to do college level work? What are

The University of Michigan has around a 15% acceptance rate. How is it possible that they’re letting in kids who aren’t ready to do college level work? What are they selecting for?

dbvn 2mo ago
Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected. Clearly the entire thing is broken.
- csa 2mo ago
  > Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected. For most schools, it’s the opposite. For folks qualified to get in, they will be selected. For folks at the marginal threshold, it’s luck of the draw. > Clearly the entire thing is broken. I agree with your sentiment, but for opposite reason. We need to scale down the number of people at R1 schools and develop a more robust system of technical and trade schools (imho). The spreadsheet types have taken over the universities from the professors (it started decades ago), so I don’t think that this change will happen unless and until the current system implodes.
cogman10 2mo ago
It's a pretty different environment going from high school to college. There's a dynamic change that's pretty sudden where your parents are no long really in the picture for support. What they are trying to do is keep the kids that would otherwise do well but might freak out in the first semester. Seems pretty fine to me especially since those are grades that if we are being honest really don't matter anyways.
- cm2187 2mo ago
  I wonder how kids have managed to deal with that for two centuries…
  - wolttam 2mo ago
    Live in an overall less uncertain environment?
    - naasking 2mo ago
      What's less certain about modern environments compared to past ones?
      - Uncle_Brumpus 2mo ago
        I definitely didn't have to wonder if my career choice would be invalidated by AI by the time I graduate.
        t-3 2mo ago
        No, you would have to worry about your job being sent/lost to Mexico, Japan, China, etc. Now those jobs are already lost and we have a different vulnerability. Same story, different clothes.
        freejazz 2mo ago
        [flagged]
        t-3 2mo ago
        Downsizing and outsourcing hit all non-management positions, the only moat against it was technical expertise, but that's been eroded for quite a while. How much moaning about development being outsourced to India have we heard in the past decade?
        krupan 2mo ago
        Past 2 decades
        2mo ago
- naasking 2mo ago
  The coddling is a big problem these days, and this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy. The assessment that "they would otherwise do well" is speculative, at best.
  - jasonlotito 2mo ago
    > this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy. Yes. We should ignore things like school shootings, which have long been described as the result of mental health issues. Ignore PTSD. Soldiers can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. By all means, ignore the mental health of a rape victim or a child abuse victim. They can just tough it out. Clearly, that's the better strategy. Oh, and you've been working in this field for how long?
    - iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
      I was not going to engage, but I decided to point out something. Strawmanning on HN won't get you far. There. Hope it helps.
      - jasonlotito 2mo ago
        Do you think igaf? I called out your BS POV. > I was not going to engage Then don't.
    - naasking 2mo ago
      You need to do some reading: "Is raising mental health awareness causing more harm than good?", https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/analyst-comment/is-raising-mental-health-awareness-causing-more-harm-than-good/ https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/analyst-comment/is-raisi... "Are We Overdoing Mental Health Awareness?", https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/silicon-psyche/202502/are-we-overdoing-mental-health-awareness https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/silicon-psyche/20250...
      - jasonlotito 2mo ago
        That doesn't say what you think it says. Good try though.
- nobodyandproud 2mo ago
  U of M. is doing no favors to its students. While it's a different environment, that's part of growing up. Once you're on your own nobody coddles you and it can be brutal.
  - cogman10 2mo ago
    What harm exactly do you think giving a single semester reprieve is going to cause these students?
    - colpabar 2mo ago
      Won't they need a reprieve next semester since they'll have to go through the same thing?
      - cogman10 2mo ago
        That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen. So again I ask. What's the harm?
    - ungreased0675 2mo ago
      Employers thinking a UofM degree is a joke. Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency. Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass.
      - cogman10 2mo ago
        > Employers thinking a UofM degree is a joke. I've never cared about where the degree of someone comes from. You really think and employer is going to look at UofM and say "Oh, they gave their students a 1 semester reprieve, obviously they are of lower quality"? > Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency. Why would the policy of UofM change the hiring practices of companies that are not UofM? Where's the connection? > Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass. This may be a real harm, but ultimately they'll have to learn the foundational knowledge to continue going to UofM. Plenty of students fail to learn foundational knowledge outside of UofM, I know because I had to tutor them.
- iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
  Yes.. and that friction, too, served a purpose. There it a reason it tends to be referred to as a filter, because by first year you find out whether you have what it takes to survive that environment or not. The good news for everyone is that now we get to find out in 2nd year, where our sunk cost is much greater. Hurray for winning.
  - cogman10 2mo ago
    First semester, not first year. And I suspect that the filter will still be in play for students because they'll still have coursework to complete. They simply don't get the grade feedback reducing the stress of perfecting that semester while they are still learning the ropes.
    - iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
      We all know how it goes. Minimal adjustment is made to accommodate someone in some way only crazies like me would object to and soon the entire school is pass/fail depending on whether you show up with your own pencil; just to ensure we do not induce stress. Naturally, then stress will be first experienced in first real job, but lets have private ( non-school ) sector worry about that. Maybe they can institute their own stress-free policy. And so it will go on.
      - cogman10 2mo ago
        As I said to another commenter > That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen. They have proposed 1 semester, if they propose extending it then I'll be right along side you saying that's ridiculous. However, it's just as likely that they'll say "Actually, 1 semester was too long, we'll just do it for 1/2 a semester".
        iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
        It is genuinely hard to argue slippery slope fallacy when we have years upon years of examples like social promotion, resulting grade inflation and such. Own your argument man. If you are ok with end result, say so.
- account42 2mo ago
  Seems to me it would be fairer to kids to filter those not fit out quickly rather than to string them along.
  - cogman10 2mo ago
    You assume these kids are doomed to failure and not capable of adapting. Sure, some of them are, but not everyone. It's just 1 semester and also gives students time to switch majors if they determine it's not for them (which is also common).
alephnerd 2mo ago
Do you know what it takes to get admitted into Mich tier programs in 2026? Kids will take multiple APs (taking 10+ isn't unheard of, and in a lot of high schools is expected), do multiple extracurriculars (debate, MUN, DECA sports, academic olympiads, theatre), volunteering (NHS, CSF, etc), and even take college classes in high school. On top of that while tests are optional, most students still submit their SAT and ACT, and the expectation of 1500+ and 35+ still holds. And even then there's no guarantee you'll get in. Most applicants who successfully get into Ivies, impacted majors with single digit acceptance rates at Mich or Cal tier programs like EECS or a BBA, and other peer programs are basically burnt out by 17-18 (the age most kids at these programs now matriculate). And the first semester is not impactful in any shape or form. It's best to take summary and intro classes as P/NP to even the playing field and then throw in a weed-out class (in CS that was historically data structures or OS). So many HNers complain about how the younger generation is hyper-competitive yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching. Heck, with my profile from the late 2000s and early 2010s (right when everything became hyper-competitive and optimized), I actually wouldn't have a shot at most programs at Mich let alone my Alma mater, especially when I compare it to my younger sibling's profile who also attended a Mich tier engineering undergrad in the 2020s.
- doctorwho42 2mo ago
  Seriously, and how many HNers would cite MIT as one of the best around? Well I learned over a decade ago that they have had Pass/no-credit for the first year implemented for years... So at this point it wouldn't surprise me if you said it's been going on for two decades (at min.) Again, I think people are having the same reaction I had "what, MIT just gets off scotch free for the first year?!". Decade later, watching it help relieve the stress from their rat race of 110% from their childhoods... Man is it worth it. And everyone still loves hiring people out of MIT
  - cj 2mo ago
    MIT describes the purpose of Pass/Fail during the first semester as: > giving you time to adjust to factors like increased workloads and variations in academic preparation and teaching methods. [0] I can 100% get behind that logic. I can't get behind a college saying they're doing it to "curb a mental health crisis". [0] https://registrar.mit.edu/classes-grades-evaluations/grades/grading-policies/first-year-grading https://registrar.mit.edu/classes-grades-evaluations/grades/...
hbn 2mo ago
The University I went to has like an 80% acceptance rate so it's not comparable, but I was surprised when I got into 400-level CS classes and there were people who didn't know how to program at all. Our professor assigned us to write a fast fourier transform, and when we had class next week apparently everyone claimed that it was too difficult so he changed the assignment to "find an implementation online and write about it" I feel really grateful I graduated before the advent of LLMs because it was really easy to stand out as a good student when the standards are apparently so low. Side tangent but in the same class he caught people zero-citation copy-pasting from Wikipedia on the papers we were assigned to write, and the guys acted like they had no idea you couldn't do that.
- giantg2 2mo ago
  I went to a state school. The quality varied wildly depending on the department. It was very eye opening in the general English/writing classes when encountering people who couldn't read or write above a 4th grade level. The difference between they're, their, and there was like a riddle to some of them. Of course many didn't make it more than a semester or two. That's the big thing - the college might be dropping the first semester grades so they can squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
  - collabs 2mo ago
    > The quality varied wildly depending on the department. I feel like it has always been this way. I went to a small private university. The natural sciences and especially the pre-med students had their days fully packed, like the only time you could even have a moment to talk about anything was at the cafeteria during meals. Then there was the business department. The college athletes apparently picked business as a major because you have to pick something. You couldn't guess what was their preferred minor and why... The overwhelming preferred minor was music because the buildings for department of business and music were adjacent. Compare that to the pre meds who were always worried about getting a B and somehow "ruining their chances at med school".
    - vel0city 2mo ago
giantg2 2mo ago
15% seems extremely low for a non-ivy.
- alephnerd 2mo ago
  Because in America, Ivy versus non-Ivy isn't the distinction. What matters is your major and whether it is a well respected program. A CS@Texas student will have the ability to open the exact same doors professionally and prestige wise as a CS@Brown student. You have Ivies, Ivy Tier Privates (Stanford, Chicago, Duke, USC, Caltech, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Georgetown, CMU), and Public Ivies (Cal, UCLA, UCSD, Mich, UIUC, UW, UT, GT, Purdue, UNC Chapel Hill, UVA) that all recruit the same kind of applicant and place in the same careers and employers.
  - giantg2 2mo ago
    Some of that prestige is more regional. Perspectives change based on location and experience. The ivies tend to be more national.
    - alephnerd 2mo ago
      They ain't. A non-trivial amount of people have not heard of Brown or Dartmouth, and confuse UPenn with Penn State. Hell, I didn't hear about Brown until high school and I ended up attending an Ivy lol. And employers and us alums of these programs know the difference is marginal.
      - ryandrake 2mo ago
        I don't think anyone on the west coast of the US cares if you're an Ivy grad. Now, Stanford grads on the other hand, every employer seems to cream their jeans over them, for whatever reason. I knew a tech company that sorted their resumes into "Stanford" and "Everyone else". Having not gone there, I don't understand what the fuss is all about.
      - smcg 2mo ago
        Every employer in the northeast knows who Brown and Dartmouth are.
vehemenz 2mo ago
Exactly. They're rejecting 85% of applicants because they're not qualified, but the 15% they admit are, by and large, not qualified either. I'm at one of Michigan's peer institutions, and we have the same problem.
- rtkwe 2mo ago
  College is a pretty large step up for most people even if they're good at high school and go to a relatively decent one. It's a sudden promotion to full adult in charge of yourself and your success in a way that's hard to prepare for living at home.
  - chasd00 2mo ago
    > College is a pretty large step up for most people but it's always been this way since forever. Why would it need to change now and not a hundred years ago? What circumstances are different?
    - rtkwe 2mo ago
      Places are more concerned about mental health now for starters.
jcranmer 2mo ago
There are, I think, three big hurdles for freshmen in college: First, college can be a very abrupt shift from "someone is watching over you" to "you, and only you, are responsible for yourself." If you slack off in high school, someone--your parents, your teachers, your school administration--is likely to get on your ass to put you back on track, and this is more likely to be the case for people who get into tougher colleges ("helicopter parents" are very real things). But in college, if you sleep in and miss all of your classes... no one is going to care. Well, your parents might, but your parents aren't with you in college to do anything about it. I've seen quite a few people who went from straight A's in high school to failing most of their college courses because of this. Second, a lot of those accepted are going to be the smartest person in their class, who are now going to a college where they might be average--or even below average. Finally, college courses are generally more difficult than a high school course, even an AP course, teaching the same material; there's just a lot more that's expected as students. Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students, but by the time you get to a senior-level course, reading multiple research papers a day for per class is considered pretty normal. Of course, if you're a kid with a truckload of AP courses who let you skip your first year of college, now you're dropped into courses that expect you to have already adjusted to college life first.
- atomicnumber3 2mo ago
  "Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students" Interesting, that's not my observation at all. Instead freshman classes were the most grueling experiences, intentionally weed-out classes to try to detect and, well, weed-out early those who wouldn't have the combination of grit, intelligence and organization skills to make it to the end of the degree. I speak somewhat hyperbolically, it was never _unfair_, but the classes absolutely were paced and had homework/exam loads that you would simply be unable to cope with if you were trying to half-ass it. At my college, Calc I and Physics 1 were the big freshman showstoppers. I tested out of calc 1, but my IB HL was chemistry and as such I had a chemist's disdain (and begrudging respect) for the more academic science of physics, and while the actual topics weren't difficult, there was a LOT of homework and the exams left no stone unturned. Comparatively, jr+ classes tended to be much more relaxed, focused more on learning the material than ensuring you are willing to do 8-10 hours of physics homework per week. Every college is different though, I suppose.
okaram 2mo ago
They are NOT saying they're not ready for college level work, right? They may not be ready for UMich college level work. Also, they may need an adjustment period, which makes sense. I think we need to wait and see how it works, before blindly criticizing a possible good idea
SubmarineClub 2mo ago
[flagged]
- t3hTao 2mo ago
  I hope 'economic' backgrounds also mean nepo babies.
t3hTao 2mo ago
As someone who lives in this area... Sorry for saying this.. Ready for it: Nepo babies and affirmative action babies. (Dont @ me about Gratz, lets not pretend its no longer happening) The students that come out of there are just normal. There is nothing special in the UoM sauce. They have more ego as their state school grad who makes the same money as them. Sure there is a floor, they didn't let the alcoholic nepo baby in. But the people that made it to entry level Fortune 20 companies were the same tier, or maybe they were worse. Best engineers were people from random schools around the country that just wanted to work there. Note: This didn't apply to people that had been there for 2 or 3 years. After that, even the UoM grads had their ego destroyed and they were normal people again.
- vondur 2mo ago
  How many kids are "Nepo", and aren't they usually donating some kind of money to the University to sweeten the deal?
  - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
    > How many kids are "Nepo", and aren't they usually donating some kind of money to the University Plenty of kids are small-town nepo. Daddy threatens to call his lawyer every time they get a C or get in trouble, and teachers and administrators cave.
steveBK123 2mo ago
If you are an old like me, I don't think you can use current acceptance rates. They are artificially low compared to old rates because kids just send so many applications out now. 20 years ago UofM had a 50% acceptance rate, from some light google searching. Apparently they received 115k applications last year vs under 25k in 2005. The biggest factor is that applying is a lot easier in the age of web applications, common application, and students being advised to send 10-15 applications out. In the 2000s even a good student might apply to 3-5 schools and feel they had covered enough.
frollogaston 2mo ago
They made the SAT optional. But they don't entirely ignore it like some schools.

The University of Michigan has around a 15% acceptance rate. How is it possible that they’re letting in kids who aren’t ready to do college level work? What are they selecting for?

dbvn 2mo ago

Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected. Clearly the entire thing is broken.

csa 2mo ago
> Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected. For most schools, it’s the opposite. For folks qualified to get in, they will be selected. For folks at the marginal threshold, it’s luck of the draw. > Clearly the entire thing is broken. I agree with your sentiment, but for opposite reason. We need to scale down the number of people at R1 schools and develop a more robust system of technical and trade schools (imho). The spreadsheet types have taken over the universities from the professors (it started decades ago), so I don’t think that this change will happen unless and until the current system implodes.

cogman10 2mo ago

It's a pretty different environment going from high school to college. There's a dynamic change that's pretty sudden where your parents are no long really in the picture for support. What they are trying to do is keep the kids that would otherwise do well but might freak out in the first semester. Seems pretty fine to me especially since those are grades that if we are being honest really don't matter anyways.

cm2187 2mo ago
I wonder how kids have managed to deal with that for two centuries…
- wolttam 2mo ago
  Live in an overall less uncertain environment?
  - naasking 2mo ago
    What's less certain about modern environments compared to past ones?
    - Uncle_Brumpus 2mo ago
      I definitely didn't have to wonder if my career choice would be invalidated by AI by the time I graduate.
      - t-3 2mo ago
        No, you would have to worry about your job being sent/lost to Mexico, Japan, China, etc. Now those jobs are already lost and we have a different vulnerability. Same story, different clothes.
        freejazz 2mo ago
        [flagged]
        t-3 2mo ago
        Downsizing and outsourcing hit all non-management positions, the only moat against it was technical expertise, but that's been eroded for quite a while. How much moaning about development being outsourced to India have we heard in the past decade?
        krupan 2mo ago
        Past 2 decades
      - 2mo ago
naasking 2mo ago
The coddling is a big problem these days, and this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy. The assessment that "they would otherwise do well" is speculative, at best.
- jasonlotito 2mo ago
  > this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy. Yes. We should ignore things like school shootings, which have long been described as the result of mental health issues. Ignore PTSD. Soldiers can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. By all means, ignore the mental health of a rape victim or a child abuse victim. They can just tough it out. Clearly, that's the better strategy. Oh, and you've been working in this field for how long?
  - iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
    I was not going to engage, but I decided to point out something. Strawmanning on HN won't get you far. There. Hope it helps.
    - jasonlotito 2mo ago
      Do you think igaf? I called out your BS POV. > I was not going to engage Then don't.
  - naasking 2mo ago
    You need to do some reading: "Is raising mental health awareness causing more harm than good?", https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/analyst-comment/is-raising-mental-health-awareness-causing-more-harm-than-good/ https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/analyst-comment/is-raisi... "Are We Overdoing Mental Health Awareness?", https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/silicon-psyche/202502/are-we-overdoing-mental-health-awareness https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/silicon-psyche/20250...
    - jasonlotito 2mo ago
      That doesn't say what you think it says. Good try though.
nobodyandproud 2mo ago
U of M. is doing no favors to its students. While it's a different environment, that's part of growing up. Once you're on your own nobody coddles you and it can be brutal.
- cogman10 2mo ago
  What harm exactly do you think giving a single semester reprieve is going to cause these students?
  - colpabar 2mo ago
    Won't they need a reprieve next semester since they'll have to go through the same thing?
    - cogman10 2mo ago
      That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen. So again I ask. What's the harm?
  - ungreased0675 2mo ago
    Employers thinking a UofM degree is a joke. Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency. Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass.
    - cogman10 2mo ago
      > Employers thinking a UofM degree is a joke. I've never cared about where the degree of someone comes from. You really think and employer is going to look at UofM and say "Oh, they gave their students a 1 semester reprieve, obviously they are of lower quality"? > Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency. Why would the policy of UofM change the hiring practices of companies that are not UofM? Where's the connection? > Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass. This may be a real harm, but ultimately they'll have to learn the foundational knowledge to continue going to UofM. Plenty of students fail to learn foundational knowledge outside of UofM, I know because I had to tutor them.
iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
Yes.. and that friction, too, served a purpose. There it a reason it tends to be referred to as a filter, because by first year you find out whether you have what it takes to survive that environment or not. The good news for everyone is that now we get to find out in 2nd year, where our sunk cost is much greater. Hurray for winning.
- cogman10 2mo ago
  First semester, not first year. And I suspect that the filter will still be in play for students because they'll still have coursework to complete. They simply don't get the grade feedback reducing the stress of perfecting that semester while they are still learning the ropes.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
    We all know how it goes. Minimal adjustment is made to accommodate someone in some way only crazies like me would object to and soon the entire school is pass/fail depending on whether you show up with your own pencil; just to ensure we do not induce stress. Naturally, then stress will be first experienced in first real job, but lets have private ( non-school ) sector worry about that. Maybe they can institute their own stress-free policy. And so it will go on.
    - cogman10 2mo ago
      As I said to another commenter > That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen. They have proposed 1 semester, if they propose extending it then I'll be right along side you saying that's ridiculous. However, it's just as likely that they'll say "Actually, 1 semester was too long, we'll just do it for 1/2 a semester".
      - iugtmkbdfil834 2mo ago
        It is genuinely hard to argue slippery slope fallacy when we have years upon years of examples like social promotion, resulting grade inflation and such. Own your argument man. If you are ok with end result, say so.
account42 2mo ago
Seems to me it would be fairer to kids to filter those not fit out quickly rather than to string them along.
- cogman10 2mo ago
  You assume these kids are doomed to failure and not capable of adapting. Sure, some of them are, but not everyone. It's just 1 semester and also gives students time to switch majors if they determine it's not for them (which is also common).

alephnerd 2mo ago

Do you know what it takes to get admitted into Mich tier programs in 2026? Kids will take multiple APs (taking 10+ isn't unheard of, and in a lot of high schools is expected), do multiple extracurriculars (debate, MUN, DECA sports, academic olympiads, theatre), volunteering (NHS, CSF, etc), and even take college classes in high school. On top of that while tests are optional, most students still submit their SAT and ACT, and the expectation of 1500+ and 35+ still holds. And even then there's no guarantee you'll get in. Most applicants who successfully get into Ivies, impacted majors with single digit acceptance rates at Mich or Cal tier programs like EECS or a BBA, and other peer programs are basically burnt out by 17-18 (the age most kids at these programs now matriculate). And the first semester is not impactful in any shape or form. It's best to take summary and intro classes as P/NP to even the playing field and then throw in a weed-out class (in CS that was historically data structures or OS). So many HNers complain about how the younger generation is hyper-competitive yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching. Heck, with my profile from the late 2000s and early 2010s (right when everything became hyper-competitive and optimized), I actually wouldn't have a shot at most programs at Mich let alone my Alma mater, especially when I compare it to my younger sibling's profile who also attended a Mich tier engineering undergrad in the 2020s.

doctorwho42 2mo ago
Seriously, and how many HNers would cite MIT as one of the best around? Well I learned over a decade ago that they have had Pass/no-credit for the first year implemented for years... So at this point it wouldn't surprise me if you said it's been going on for two decades (at min.) Again, I think people are having the same reaction I had "what, MIT just gets off scotch free for the first year?!". Decade later, watching it help relieve the stress from their rat race of 110% from their childhoods... Man is it worth it. And everyone still loves hiring people out of MIT
- cj 2mo ago
  MIT describes the purpose of Pass/Fail during the first semester as: > giving you time to adjust to factors like increased workloads and variations in academic preparation and teaching methods. [0] I can 100% get behind that logic. I can't get behind a college saying they're doing it to "curb a mental health crisis". [0] https://registrar.mit.edu/classes-grades-evaluations/grades/grading-policies/first-year-grading https://registrar.mit.edu/classes-grades-evaluations/grades/...

hbn 2mo ago

The University I went to has like an 80% acceptance rate so it's not comparable, but I was surprised when I got into 400-level CS classes and there were people who didn't know how to program at all. Our professor assigned us to write a fast fourier transform, and when we had class next week apparently everyone claimed that it was too difficult so he changed the assignment to "find an implementation online and write about it" I feel really grateful I graduated before the advent of LLMs because it was really easy to stand out as a good student when the standards are apparently so low. Side tangent but in the same class he caught people zero-citation copy-pasting from Wikipedia on the papers we were assigned to write, and the guys acted like they had no idea you couldn't do that.

giantg2 2mo ago
I went to a state school. The quality varied wildly depending on the department. It was very eye opening in the general English/writing classes when encountering people who couldn't read or write above a 4th grade level. The difference between they're, their, and there was like a riddle to some of them. Of course many didn't make it more than a semester or two. That's the big thing - the college might be dropping the first semester grades so they can squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
- collabs 2mo ago
  > The quality varied wildly depending on the department. I feel like it has always been this way. I went to a small private university. The natural sciences and especially the pre-med students had their days fully packed, like the only time you could even have a moment to talk about anything was at the cafeteria during meals. Then there was the business department. The college athletes apparently picked business as a major because you have to pick something. You couldn't guess what was their preferred minor and why... The overwhelming preferred minor was music because the buildings for department of business and music were adjacent. Compare that to the pre meds who were always worried about getting a B and somehow "ruining their chances at med school".
  - vel0city 2mo ago

giantg2 2mo ago

15% seems extremely low for a non-ivy.

alephnerd 2mo ago
Because in America, Ivy versus non-Ivy isn't the distinction. What matters is your major and whether it is a well respected program. A CS@Texas student will have the ability to open the exact same doors professionally and prestige wise as a CS@Brown student. You have Ivies, Ivy Tier Privates (Stanford, Chicago, Duke, USC, Caltech, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Georgetown, CMU), and Public Ivies (Cal, UCLA, UCSD, Mich, UIUC, UW, UT, GT, Purdue, UNC Chapel Hill, UVA) that all recruit the same kind of applicant and place in the same careers and employers.
- giantg2 2mo ago
  Some of that prestige is more regional. Perspectives change based on location and experience. The ivies tend to be more national.
  - alephnerd 2mo ago
    They ain't. A non-trivial amount of people have not heard of Brown or Dartmouth, and confuse UPenn with Penn State. Hell, I didn't hear about Brown until high school and I ended up attending an Ivy lol. And employers and us alums of these programs know the difference is marginal.
    - ryandrake 2mo ago
      I don't think anyone on the west coast of the US cares if you're an Ivy grad. Now, Stanford grads on the other hand, every employer seems to cream their jeans over them, for whatever reason. I knew a tech company that sorted their resumes into "Stanford" and "Everyone else". Having not gone there, I don't understand what the fuss is all about.
    - smcg 2mo ago
      Every employer in the northeast knows who Brown and Dartmouth are.

vehemenz 2mo ago

Exactly. They're rejecting 85% of applicants because they're not qualified, but the 15% they admit are, by and large, not qualified either. I'm at one of Michigan's peer institutions, and we have the same problem.

rtkwe 2mo ago
College is a pretty large step up for most people even if they're good at high school and go to a relatively decent one. It's a sudden promotion to full adult in charge of yourself and your success in a way that's hard to prepare for living at home.
- chasd00 2mo ago
  > College is a pretty large step up for most people but it's always been this way since forever. Why would it need to change now and not a hundred years ago? What circumstances are different?
  - rtkwe 2mo ago
    Places are more concerned about mental health now for starters.

jcranmer 2mo ago

There are, I think, three big hurdles for freshmen in college: First, college can be a very abrupt shift from "someone is watching over you" to "you, and only you, are responsible for yourself." If you slack off in high school, someone--your parents, your teachers, your school administration--is likely to get on your ass to put you back on track, and this is more likely to be the case for people who get into tougher colleges ("helicopter parents" are very real things). But in college, if you sleep in and miss all of your classes... no one is going to care. Well, your parents might, but your parents aren't with you in college to do anything about it. I've seen quite a few people who went from straight A's in high school to failing most of their college courses because of this. Second, a lot of those accepted are going to be the smartest person in their class, who are now going to a college where they might be average--or even below average. Finally, college courses are generally more difficult than a high school course, even an AP course, teaching the same material; there's just a lot more that's expected as students. Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students, but by the time you get to a senior-level course, reading multiple research papers a day for per class is considered pretty normal. Of course, if you're a kid with a truckload of AP courses who let you skip your first year of college, now you're dropped into courses that expect you to have already adjusted to college life first.

atomicnumber3 2mo ago
"Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students" Interesting, that's not my observation at all. Instead freshman classes were the most grueling experiences, intentionally weed-out classes to try to detect and, well, weed-out early those who wouldn't have the combination of grit, intelligence and organization skills to make it to the end of the degree. I speak somewhat hyperbolically, it was never _unfair_, but the classes absolutely were paced and had homework/exam loads that you would simply be unable to cope with if you were trying to half-ass it. At my college, Calc I and Physics 1 were the big freshman showstoppers. I tested out of calc 1, but my IB HL was chemistry and as such I had a chemist's disdain (and begrudging respect) for the more academic science of physics, and while the actual topics weren't difficult, there was a LOT of homework and the exams left no stone unturned. Comparatively, jr+ classes tended to be much more relaxed, focused more on learning the material than ensuring you are willing to do 8-10 hours of physics homework per week. Every college is different though, I suppose.

okaram 2mo ago

They are NOT saying they're not ready for college level work, right? They may not be ready for UMich college level work. Also, they may need an adjustment period, which makes sense. I think we need to wait and see how it works, before blindly criticizing a possible good idea

SubmarineClub 2mo ago

[flagged]

t3hTao 2mo ago
I hope 'economic' backgrounds also mean nepo babies.

t3hTao 2mo ago

As someone who lives in this area... Sorry for saying this.. Ready for it: Nepo babies and affirmative action babies. (Dont @ me about Gratz, lets not pretend its no longer happening) The students that come out of there are just normal. There is nothing special in the UoM sauce. They have more ego as their state school grad who makes the same money as them. Sure there is a floor, they didn't let the alcoholic nepo baby in. But the people that made it to entry level Fortune 20 companies were the same tier, or maybe they were worse. Best engineers were people from random schools around the country that just wanted to work there. Note: This didn't apply to people that had been there for 2 or 3 years. After that, even the UoM grads had their ego destroyed and they were normal people again.

vondur 2mo ago
How many kids are "Nepo", and aren't they usually donating some kind of money to the University to sweeten the deal?
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  > How many kids are "Nepo", and aren't they usually donating some kind of money to the University Plenty of kids are small-town nepo. Daddy threatens to call his lawyer every time they get a C or get in trouble, and teachers and administrators cave.

steveBK123 2mo ago

If you are an old like me, I don't think you can use current acceptance rates. They are artificially low compared to old rates because kids just send so many applications out now. 20 years ago UofM had a 50% acceptance rate, from some light google searching. Apparently they received 115k applications last year vs under 25k in 2005. The biggest factor is that applying is a lot easier in the age of web applications, common application, and students being advised to send 10-15 applications out. In the 2000s even a good student might apply to 3-5 schools and feel they had covered enough.

frollogaston 2mo ago

They made the SAT optional. But they don't entirely ignore it like some schools.