The Satellite Campuses - Flint and Dearborn

So satellite school's tarnish Michigan's name.....but letting in guy's who barely passed high school but because they are good athelets doesn't? Must be a numbers game.

I teach at a college fairly far down the academic rankings. It makes U of M Flint look good.

Having said that, the students in my class, and in my department, learn their stuff. We are all pretty good teachers (leaving aside the diversity hire instructors, who are hit or miss), and we love our subjects, and the students learn something. 

I know that is not always the case at A2, much less the top five schools, because they value and rank more than teaching ability and course design. I don't know if that is the best thing for undergrads.

Looking online, here's how it denotes Michigan-Dearborn.

I don't see what the big deal is.  I went there because it was closer to home and cheaper.  I never once said I went to Ann Arbor when talking about "where did you go to college?"  Student tickets worked just the same for us then anyone else.  The campus is nice, and they have added dorms and a bunch of student housing.  I don't see how it takes anything away from the "image" of Michigan.

I sort of took a different route in my UMich system journey. I went to A2 freshman year (lived close enough to commute) but due to major financial constraints decided to transfer to the Dearborn campus. Freshman year I took mostly basic courses and pre-med prerequisite classes. I found that curriculum difficulty and workload was about the same for the pre-med classes in chemistry, physics, and biology. The differences were mostly in the quality of student at each campus. UM-D's top students performed just as well as the top students in A2, however, on average the UM-AA students were of higher quality (brains, motivation/focus, what have you).

My observations were that in the humanities/liberal arts, UM-AA's curriculum was much more difficult than that at UM-D in most programs. In the natural sciences of which I have the most experience, I found that at least for the lower level courses, the curriculum difficulty was about equal. The engineering programs at UM-D are pretty reputable throughout the state and even the country but I don't know how they stack up compared to the excellent eng. programs at A2. I have no experience in the business classes at UM-D but I don't think they're near the caliber of rigor as compared to Ross. I do know that a lot of UM-D business grads get pretty darn good internships within southeastern MI and have pretty good jobs when they leave so that is a pretty good sign.

I'd say the main distinction between the schools aside from curriculm rigor is the cultural differences. UM-D is definitely more working class, has a lot of returning, "non traditional" students who are older in age, a large population of students if not nearly all are MI residents, a lot of them are from the city of Dearborn aka Middle Eastern, and the motivation levels are wide in range ("I'm just here b/c I'm supposed to do this" to "I want to cure cancer and solve the world's problems"). UM-AA is much more traditional in age (18-24), students are largely pretty affluent, many out of state students (ton of NOO F'IN YORKAZ and Cali residents), large Asian population both of the East and South varieties, and on average are what you'd expect motivation-wise out of an upper echelon university.

Overall I loved my experiences at both campuses but for totally different reasons. UM-D I was able to leave almost debt free, got a lot of one-on-one time with my professors which I was too intimidated to do at A2, and got very involved in the metropolitan-Detroit community that is in obvious need of help. At UM-AA I got to have pretty much (outside of living on campus) an awesome traditional college experience at a nationally renown public university in a town that I absolutely adore.

Jeez. The amount of arrogance in this thread reflects very poorly on the University of Michigan imo.

Get some class people.

Is UM-Flint the former GMI?  I had given some thoughts to being an automotive engineer and a few of my contacts that worked for GM were really recommending that place.  I actually found their brochure this past week while going through a box of old stuff.

First off, I wanted to apologize for bumping an old thread that's been around since late 2010, but I found this thread via Google last night and felt compelled to register and post my thoughts.  This is going to be a bit long, so please bear with me.

I also wanted to thank Brodie and the other posters in this thread that have done an excellent job in pointing out the facts, whether people like it or not. 

In my case, I feel that I am in a totally different position than most others because I do not reside in the state of Michigan and as a matter of fact, have never physically set foot in the state either (well, at least not yet).  I was born, raised, and currently live in the state of Florida.  I have my life set up here and have no plans of relocating any time soon.  That being said, I attended FIU right out of high school, never finished because of increasing work obligations, and went back to school years later to finish up my degree at Barry University.

Because I was interested in switching career paths, I decided to earn a second bachelors degree.  Since I continue to work and cannot attend classes physically on-campus, I was only interested in programs that could be completed entirely online.  This proved to be more of an arduous task than I had ever imagined because either the school I was interested in didn't offer what I was interested in or only offered certificates (i.e. Notre Dame).  Some only had a mixed-mode option, where some courses are taken online and some are taken physically on-campus.

After a few hours of going through all of my options, I came across the web pages for the Flint and Dearborn campuses of the University of Michigan.  Unfortunately, UM-AA only offers mixed-mode programs and in fields I was not interested in (i.e. dental, nursing, medical, etc).  Even if UM-AA decided to offer programs completely online, I would probably not consider it due to the fact that I am an out-of-state student and would be in debt up to my eyeballs, but that's neither here nor there.

I just wanted to post this to illustrate that not all students attending the satellite campuses are there because of whatever reason(s) some of you have conjured up in your heads.  Some, like myself, have no other way of attending the University of Michigan, and I feel that I am a pretty damn good student.  I have met other students in the few classes I have taken so far that are coming back from the Middle East and go to U of M Flint or Dearborn, others are much older and would feel very awkward and out of place sitting in a classroom full of teenagers, some simply cannot afford it, etc.  No one is saying that the campuses are on an equal footing academically with UM-AA (no satellite campus that I know of is equal to the flagship for that matter), but to judge everyone without knowing the real reasons why they chose that particular campus is completely ignorant and not in keeping with the supposed intelligence that I would expect from students attending the campus in Ann Arbor.  I could be just as ignorant and claim that all the undergraduate students at UM-AA are living off the reputation of the graduate programs, which in my opinion is what makes Michigan "Michigan," but I have more respect for people than that.

Don't get me wrong, I totally get that some UM-AA students are ticked off at the few satellite students who decide to lie and claim that they went to the flagship, but I clearly state in my resume that I am attending the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.  Again, please don't generalize based on a few idiots.

Here are some fun facts I wanted to throw out there (Please note: I've only been taking courses at U of M Flint for two semesters, so I don't know everything there is to know about the school):

- The University of Michigan's Physical Therapy program was moved from Ann Arbor to the Flint campus.  If someone is seeking a doctorate in PT, they go to the Flint campus, not Ann Arbor.

- Speaking of the PT program, it was chosen by the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare system to provide special training.

- UM-AA and UM-Flint have a guaranteed Engineering transfer program set up between the two campuses.

- UM-Flint houses the only Nurse Anesthetist program, which is ranked in the top 1/3 nationally.

- The UM-Flint honors program has a 100% acceptance rate for students going into graduate, medical, and professional schools.  This record has lasted since the early 1970's.

- UM-Flint offers graduate programs through UM-AA's Horace H. Rackham school of graduate studies. Dearborn has a similar setup.

- Professors at UM-Flint are all required to have no less than a Ph.d and they are well-published, well-versed, and knowledgeable from what I've seen and heard.  Some, as others have pointed out, also teach at the main campus.

Thanks for reading and Go Blue!

oh god it's back, kill it with fire 

We recently hired someone from UM-F that has been a professional for a few years now. She was a consultant that made her way full time with our company. During the Interview process she mentioned that she attended the flint campus; I am from Philadelphia so we usually pick from wharton and stern and I really have no idea about these other campus's of UM.

But let me first state at the end of the day this "inferior" graduate as some of you may call her, wiped most all of our "ivy" applicants and her business and communication skills were amazing. Her BBA from Flint may not be the same as the BBA from Ross, but a business degree non-theless. And yes, our HR department noted it from the transcripts. I wouldnt of chosen a more qualified person, she did not need to flaunt her education during the interview like the others, we wanted her to prove to us that she could satisfy business needs and that is what she did regardless of where she studied her academics. 

In short, most of the comments I have read here are very close minded, Im sure most of you understand why the campus was started in Flint, so just let it go, its a part of UM. One may be academically strong in a great school, but professionally terrible for a professional organization. 

http://michiganjournal.org/2013/02/19/um-d-officially-changes-name-from-...

Dearborn's sports teams will now be known as the "Wolverines" rather than the "Wolves", trying to spart "further collaboration between the athletic departments." 

77% of people polled affiliated with Dearborn already identify themselves as "Wolverines".