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Welcome. I work for the Engineering Office of Undergraduate Recruitment. I’m here to talk a little bit about Michigan Engineering and enumerate some of the reasons why you might want to apply and eventually attend Michigan Engineering.

We’ll start out with a little bit of information about our setting. We’re located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which has been the university’s home since 1837. Over the years, we’ve evolved into a diverse and exciting college town with a reputation as being one of the best college towns in the United States of America. And that highly regarded college town features an outstanding university.

Michigan Engineering is one of the best engineering programs in the nation and it’s embedded in one of the best public universities in the United States of America. Within Michigan Engineering, we have a host of highly regarded academic departments and majors. On the screen you can see their current rankings, according to U.S. News and World Report. We have excellence across the board, and you have an opportunity to choose from most of these different disciplines.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about the experience of being a Michigan Engineer. Obviously, part of the Michigan Engineering experience consists in the classes that you’ll have to take. The first year curriculum is a little bit of a template. You’ll take the beginning of the core math and science sequence that every engineer takes during their first two years as a student. These core math and science courses are part of the excellent engineering fundamentals that we think you need to have to be a successful engineer.

There’s a math class, a science class, and also an intro engineering course each semester. One of those semesters you’ll take Engineering 101, which is a computer programming course, C++, and a little bit of MATLAB. The other semester you’ll take Engineering 100, which is a combination of technical communications as well as a design build test first year project. That Engineering 100 course, it’s actually the beginning of a design curriculum that’s a part of every Michigan Engineering discipline. Design is going to show up both inside and outside the classroom.

In the classroom, there’ll be courses specific to your major as well as the senior design capstone. Outside of the classroom, there are a variety of experiential learning opportunities that we want Michigan Engineering students to take advantage of. For example, there are a series of design-based student organizations, approximately 100 of them associated with the College of Engineering, and they’re a part of the approximately 1600 student organizations that exist on campus. And those approximately 1600 student organizations feature cultural organizations, fraternities and sororities, artistic organizations, and many, many more.

Another experiential learning opportunity that we want you to take advantage of is research. The University of Michigan has one of the largest research budgets of any university in the United States of America. And this allows us to bring together faculty members across a range of disciplines. And this convergence of disciplines leads to some really exciting opportunities. As an undergraduate student at the university, you’ll have access to a variety of programs, including UROP, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. UROP sets aside seats for first and second year students to do research in the natural sciences, the humanities and the social sciences as well as engineering to do some really, really cool projects and to get your hands dirty, so to speak, at the beginning of your academic career.

Here at Michigan Engineering, we want to encourage our students to have a global worldview, which is why we encourage students to take advantage of a variety of international experiences. We have an office called IPE, International Programs in Engineering, dedicated to helping students study, work, research and volunteer abroad. There are opportunities to expand your horizons and to work cross-culturally in a host of different settings.

So those are just a few of the opportunities we want students to take advantage of during their undergraduate career. At the conclusion of that career, what can you expect? Well, Michigan Engineers happen to graduate and go on to outstanding opportunities.

Let’s talk about a few of them. The Engineering Career Resource Center is the office responsible for helping students transition from campus to career. They provide a variety of services, including resume building opportunities and bringing companies to campus, generally over 400 every academic year. Our students report highly competitive salaries across a variety of industries.

So that’s why you might want to study at Michigan Engineering. Now, let’s talk about how you can do so as we discuss the application process.

We accept applications using the Common Application. At the University of Michigan, we have a non-binding early action process, which means that if you complete your application by November 1st, you’re guaranteed to hear something from us before the end of next January. We also have a regular decision time frame, which means that a completed application by February 1st will guarantee you a decision in the spring.

The College of Engineering is a first year admitting unit, which means that you apply directly to Michigan Engineering. If accepted, you’ll have access to 17 of the 18 different majors. The one exception to that is computer science, which will be most accessible through the advance selection pathway. If you select advance selection, you’ll apply first to the College of Engineering and then your application will be passed along to the computer science selection process. You’ll then get a second decision from computer science. If admitted, you’ll be able to declare that major as soon as you meet your first year requirements. And if not admitted to CS (Computer Science), you’re still in the College of Engineering.

When considering applications, we use an individualized holistic review. There are five or six primary criteria, both qualitative and quantitative. On the quantitative side, we’ll consider your grades, the rigor of your curriculum and potentially test scores. Both the SAT and ACT are optional for this coming academic year. On the qualitative side, we’ll take a look at your extracurricular involvement, recommendations from teachers, as well as the essays that you have to write as a part of the process. We’ll use all of this information to come to a decision in collaboration with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

As you go through the application process, we hope you stay connected to the college. Hope you learned some things today and go blue.