New Offer - Buckle up?

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the Big Ten has higher admission standards than other conferences. They have a little higher standard for maintaining eligibility.

Wisconsin, Northwestern and Michigan all have higher standards than other Big Ten schools. In the last few years, Wisconsin had to drop good recruits that MSU snapped up.  OSU has raised standards for instate recruits only.

While we have the same minimum standards for test scores and GPA, admissions will only accept a small number that fall on the lower end of those scores. RR had problems because he was trying to take a lot of those marginal qualifiers. The school clamped down. Harbaugh was able to get more flexibility when he was hired, but not carte blanche. There are people on here that know more about the subject.

Additionally, we require more core classes than the minimum to meet NCAA standards. This is Wisconsin's issue too. 

Transfers are another story altogether. The main issue is accepting credits. Our admissions can be very fussy about that. 

I just spoke directly to Sam Webb about this question. He said that while Michigan can take athletes who fulfill the NCAA minimum for academic eligibility even though they don't meet the general student admission requirements, U-M does so infrequently. Webb said specifically he knows of a number of athletes that Michigan has recruited over the years who were refused admission by U-M's admissions office even though they met the NCAA minimum, and they were denied admission because they were too far below Michigan's own standard.

Sam put it like this: Michigan will never load up its recruiting classes with kids who are NCAA minimum qualifiers; OSU and many other schools have no such hesitation. What this means functionally is that OSU, MSU and some other BIG schools are able to take kids that we simply can't and won't.

for Valenti and other pro-MSU radio hosts. It pays to be very skeptical of anything they have to say about Michigan.