OT: Nephew looking to defect to U of M
My nephew who is an exceptional student in Ohio (save the jokes), was born and raised a Buckeye and has seen the light. The young man is looking to defect to Michigan and attend U of M. His parents looked to book a tour but they are all booked solid at this time. I'm looking for some recommendations to create our own tour to help the young man in this process. He is looking to work toward a degree in the medical field to be a PA eventually. Any relevant advice is helpful.
It's not really a defection.
He's seeking refugee status.
Actually LOL'd.
But yeah as for the nephew. He should major in Kinesiology and take the pre-med requirements for medical/PA school. Kinesiology is more clinical based and will prep him better than the hard science majors while simultaneously saving his GPA (Kines is easy mode) as he will likely struggle a bit more with biochem, orgo, physics and the hard science reqs needed for graduate school. All while doing this he should begin to shadow doctors/midlevels at the University hospital as soon as he gets his bearings straight on campus. This will open doors later for clinical research opportunities, shadowing hours and letters of recommendation.
Best of luck.
Sorry, but I disagree. 1) Majoring in kinesiology because it's easier is more a recipe for mediocrity than success. 2) "Shadowing" in the hospital as an undergrad will not open any doors. They're already working with medical/nursing/PA/pharmacology/etc students and residents. 3) You're not going to get a useful letter of recommendation from someone you followed around for a week while not actually understanding what they were doing.
Edit: My credentials include undergrad and med school at Michigan and working in multiple labs for professors and physicians while there.
Hmm then I guess my crop of friends from UM and I did it all wrong. Thank you for correcting my errors without offering actual tangible advice MGoFoam.
I managed to shadow one of the top cardiac surgeons in the nation at UofM leading me to get my name on things I had no business having my name on as an undergraduate while another friend of mine dominated Kinesiology w/ a 4.0 while surviving pre-med reqs getting a full ride to medical school. (I did Neuroscience btw, big mistake and largely irrelevant for what I ended up specializing in).
Getting oneself engrained into the health system early no matter how low on the totem pole one is will never be a bad thing. Doing Kinesiology from UM will still be looked upon well with a 4.0 GPA vs doing a harder subject and getting a 3.4 while saying I'tS hArDeR especially as things become more competitive year after year.
It's a numbers and screening game w/ clinical experience/research > bench work unless one has already made up his/her mind about specific specialties wherein that bench work actually leads to some modicum of clinical relevance.
Just a warning. Not sure when you went to Michigan but Kinesiology isn't the cake walk it was 15 to 25 years ago. Kines actually has a lower acceptance rate than LS&A for the last couple of years. Kines got a bad rap because until the early aughts the University stashed athletes there. The athletes were forced out when Kines upped the requirements to graduate, got rid of the Phys Ed program and made it much tougher. Shortly after the athletes were moved over to LS&A in general studies. I've heard of a lot of high school students who applied to Kines because their alumni parents told them it was easy to get in who then get rejected and they probably would have got in if they applied to LS&A. Don't fall in that trap.
I can Second James, Kines got serious, this isn’t the 1990s anymore
Went to UM in the 2000-10s. It’s not that hard. There’s a reason why it’s competitive to get into. The cat’s out of the bag. Obviously, nothing at Michigan is a breeze.
Lol !!!
Michigan isn't accepting students from different planets at this time.
Loljk welcome to the family young fella, I hope you get in to Michigan and make all of your dreams come true.
As someone currently "stuck" in Ohio, I applaud his efforts.
Now:
Comrades, our own fleet doesn't know our full potential. They will do everything possible to test us; but they will only test their own embarrassment.
For the fall? Isn't it kinda late in the game now?
This will be for the fall of 2022.
Just to give you an update on tours, Michigan JUST started doing tours again after shutting down in March 2020. This presents more of a problem than you think because two years worth of tour guides have graduated and all are seniors or juniors. Right now they are training soon-to-be seniors who have never given a tour and don't have any of the kids from the last two classes around to help them train the new people. It sucks. Accordingly they sent a few test groups out at the end of June and through July but they are severely limiting the number of tours (because they're still training tour guides) and the number of families who can go on the tour (I think its like 3 or 4 families at a time where in the old days it was 7 or 8). The other thing is that the tour only goes outside. They're not going into buildings. I believe the goal is to open to bigger groups thus making more availability once the fall rolls around and they get more seniors trained up and the University starts reopening. My suggestion is to wait until the fall and schedule something then.
Also, they aren't open now but you may want to get a tour of the School of Kinesiology as their program on the science side of the School is geared towards people looking for PA degrees, medical school or science based Ph.D.'s. You could certainly do LS&A and major in any of the medical sciences but I know there are a lot of kids in Kinesiology who are there specifically to head off and be a P.A. or Doctor.
I love UM, have 2 degrees from there and know a ton of MD's (not PA's). I don't think it's worth the additional cost for your nephew to attend UM > OSU to be a PA. It could be, if he wants to be a super specialized PA/ RN.
Same here (to an eerie degree). I'm a huge fan of Michigan but the ROI here looks poor. If I were based in Ohio I'd be perfectly happy with my offspring going to OSU, especially for pre-PA.
Related: I recently spoke with a friend in a state with good public universities. His wife is fixated on private schools (for which he's been emptying his wallet for many years at the K-12 level) and wants to send the kids to an expensive East Coast NON-Ivy school when the time comes. Hurts to see it. I told him that will work out only if we all wind up in a "Snowpiercer" scenario and his kids are partying near the front of the train. :)
I (M alum x3) also agree about the ROI. I think engineering (at least for some flavors) might be worth the added cost vs OSU, but I don't see it for Pre-PA.
I would love for my daughter (who is 12) to go to UofM, but as a longtime resident of Ohio, I can't imagine that it would be worth the extra cost (unless I move back to Michigan in the next couple of years).
Even with Engineering, if you’re good enough to get into UM, you’re good enough to get into top schools elsewhere, including private schools and large state schools willing to shell out large scholarships where UM wouldn’t.
An interesting point. I (as posted below) am a UofM undergrad now PA. I was instate though. So yes OOS tuition is a lot, but PA school tuition is much less that MD/DO (largely because 2 fewer years). In my personal experience, I was likely accepted to PA school largely due to my UofM degree. The idea that PA school is much easier to gain admittance than medical school is incorrect.
I HATE, HATE, HATE to say it... but I agree. UofM undergrad (International Economics), in state back in '93 and then MPAS at Wayne State '03. The cost of out-of-state tuition and then the cost of grad school... means cost-benefit analysis indicates that Michigan out of state is not a good ROI. Unless his parents are paying for it, there are much better cost effective ways to achieve his goals.
HOWEVER, I would not trade my undergrad experience for anything.
GO BLUE!!!
The old adage about bringing a car to Ann Arbor as a student is you have to bring your parking spot. I think for students from Ohio they have to bring their own pooper cooler.
I'm skeptical.....
Can he play press-coverage?
Former undergrad tour guide here. The tour we gave was a circle around central campus starting at the student activities building (by the cube). In one direction it went: Union, law quad, south U (nod to clements and cook), ugli, chem 100, north u/geddes, diag, Angell, state street, back to start. I could be missing a stop or two as it’s been a number of years, but that’s a decent starting point. I think, for example, we had a demo dorm room set up in west quad, but I’m guessing you won’t be able to see the dorms on your own. If you have time I’d look around the hill both for the med school/life sciences institute and for the dorms. And of course I’d always recommend families check out Main Street and Kerrytown, and the athletic facilities if that was of interest, which I assume applies to you.
FWIW I'm also from Ohio and just completed a tour last week. About to post a very long diary comparing the Michigan tour to the OSU & Miami tours.
Thank you for your response. I haven't posted in a while and I appreciate the help.
We finished third? Rick's must not be on the official tour anymore.
No, we'd finish about ninth if that were the case.
mGrowOld
If you did the tour in the last six weeks, just keep in mind that the tour you did very likely sucks and was completely unrepresentative of what it would usually be. Read my comment above. The tour guides are brand new and never got the ability to shadow or learn from their predecessors since the seniors that did it in spring '20 are long gone and the seniors of '21 didn't get to do tours and are also now gone. Further, the University won't let anyone into buildings yet. Not really that much fun to point at the outside of buildings. Whatever you did probably didn't look good. If it colored your applicant's viewpoint at all I would say apply regardless and maybe take the tour again later once things normalize a little.
Very eager to read your comparison/review. I just completed and OSU tour with my son yesterday. And I am checking daily to try to get a Michigan tour scheduled. (As a Miami of Ohio alum, I would like him to check it out as well. But he has ZERO interest--which hurts just a little. ;-)
We also toured the University of Dayton--and they did a fabulous job. The experience, in many respects was superior to the OSU. Though I am sure they do not do anywhere near the volume of a Michigan or OSU.
One of my sons friends did the tour last week and that is what they did. They did not go in any buildings, though.
Link to self guided tour
https://admissions.umich.edu/sites/default/files/file/Self_guided_driving_tour.pdf
Thanks for the link. My 12 yr old granddaughter is starting 7th grade in a month and has talked about wanting to attend U of M. I'll show that link to her mom and get the ball rolling, maybe giving her some additional incentive for good grades, etc. And my niece is a HS soph who is also interested in U of M so I'll share it with her and my brother.
Being a self-guided tour, I take it this means middle school kids kids of any age can take the tour.
We have done some self guided tours of other schools. It is amazing the difference in quality. I am far from a computer geek, but how hard could it be to create an app, with a map, that will tell you where you are, let you click on a building you see and get a description.
Also, are most people really going to want to do a walking tour of Michigan that spans the stadium to north campus? Wish they could do better.
As someone from Ohio who is now at UM looking to enter the medical field, he’s making an excellent choice.
I just wrote a tour itinerary for another friend visiting who was also shut out from official tours but shortly thereafter realized that I wasted my time because the University self guided tour is pretty good.
The real missing parts are what is off campus. Make sure to spend time on South U, Kerrytown, Main Street, and in the area around state/liberty. Hit Fritas, Jug (atmosphere and history of UM more than food), Taq, Angelo’s, really any of the well rated restaurants are properly praised.
Also, depending on weather, the Arb is amazing this time of year and also Argo nature area is a great spot I didn’t find out about until my Sophomore year.
I am a PA who went to UofM undergrad. There are multiple good options for majors to prepare for PA school application. I did school of Kinesiology with movement science major. A very good option as it has fewer other requirements which allows space for all the prerequisite classes to be taken. MANY fellow students were preparing for health graduate schools (MD, DO, PT, OT). It depends on how far he got through his other program and what is completed already.
Great! Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to pass it along to him.
Hell to help someone out from Ohio to A2, I'd give the tour myself. But I'm north of Denver. Is there anyone who lives close to A2 here that would donate a couple of hours to a future wolverine?
My daughter got a degree in Neuroscience at U-M and is graduating from PA school in 3 weeks. From what I've observed, getting into a PA school is just like getting into any medical program -- the greatest emphasis for admission is grade point average. You don't get extra points for a Michigan degree. The Neuroscience program isn't an easy way to get to PA school, but it positioned her well when she did get admitted. The program makes you study all the core course requirements for PA school.
That (PA admissions anecdote) is interesting.
Unless things have changed in the many years since I went through the process, it absolutely does matter where you did undergrad and what you studied.
"Back then" (and possibly still) several schools (medicine, engineering, law, business) were big fans of Michigan undergrads. (LSA graduate programs? Not so much. Not sure why. Ivy envy, maybe.)
Engineers had an edge in the non-engineering graduate programs, too. You could have a lower GPA than someone in (e.g.) straight biology when applying to med school.
Per Malcolm Gladwell, and backed up by research, if he wants to go into Medicine / STEM field he should not go to Michigan. Organic Chemistry weeds out the same percentage at Michigan as it does at Western Michigan. So, congrats on going to Michigan, you are now fighting for a small percentage against much more academically gifted kids. Don't believe me....go watch his video on YouTube.
What if he is academically gifted and wants to volunteer and/or work under some of the top medical faculty in the world?
Everyone thinks they are "academically gifted"...then they get to Michigan, Stanford, Princeton, etc and find out they probably aren't as gifted as they think they are comparative to their peers. Again, go watch his video and it makes perfect objective sense that one should never go to an elite school if they want to go into a STEM field.
It still depends on what you mean by going into a STEM field. If you want to get a generic industry job, then sure. If you have aspirations of becoming an academic or industry leader, then you have an uphill battle choosing to go to Western Michigan instead of UofM.
Come application time, Harvard Medical School is going to give more weight to an A in Orgo from UofM than from Western.
But if the end goal is to become work in whatever hospital somewhere in the United States as a PA, then I agree that there's no real incentive to paying out-of-state tuition for UofM over an in-state school in Ohio.
You may want an "academic" or "prestigious" career in medicine and a great school will help you get there for sure. But you run the risk, by going to an elite University, that you may get "weeded" out because of your "competition" being more talented than you...and if you had only gone to a "lesser" institution of learning you would not have been weeded out because the talent pool is lesser.
Watch his video and he presents an argument backed up by solid objective data that is pretty airtight.
I can verify that this is truly a thing in competitive fields like medicine where numbers matter more than the qualifying factors involved purely b/c of screening metrics.
Nobody will care where you went when the algorithm filters out anyone w/ less than a 3.7 GPA regardless of whether you went to Michigan vs West Bumblefuck State.
I'm still not over our loss to West Bumblefuck State in 2007.
If you plan on going to a competitive school and getting a 4.0, then considering going to a less competitive school would not make any sense. What does merit consideration is getting a 3.8-4.0 at less competitive school versus a 3.3-3.5 at a more competitive school (or the more extreme scenario of getting a degree versus not getting a degree which Gladwell talked about). That does matter, and I saw more than a few kids who graduated with me get passed over by UMich grad school for kids from less competitive schools.
Far and away the least competitive math class I took at UMich was the "advanced math" requirement in engineering, where I was in a graduate level course.
You are speaking of GPA’s after the fact. If everyone could prognosticate with 100% surety that they would have a 4.0 at an elite school, then your argument is correct. But no one knows how they will academically perform until they get to a school.
I think the people who get the A's in orgo, calc 3 honors, etc. knew they were likely to do so before they got to college. Just watched the lecture you posted. It actually shows, pretty robustly, that if your entry SAT was in the top third relative to your school's average scores, you are way more likely to persist in a STEM degree.
Of course, to your point, there are many more people who think they can get an A in these hard classes than there are those who actually do. But again, if you are honest with yourself, you can minimize the odds of that happening--according to the lecture that you keep promoting.
I also have to mention that I nearly stopped watching after his obnoxious simplification of suicide rates and happiness indices.