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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is Michigan a lot less intense than Columbia? Genuinely interested to know. As such, does the comparison hold for non-engineering, non-math areas as well? Say, economics or political science?[/quote]

I currently live in Michigan.  Attended Michigan for MBA school.  Have worked with many U of M people in different fields.

Midwestern culture is different from DMV and NYC.  Much more emphasis on appearing conventional, pleasant, nice, understated vs. appearing smart, accomplished, demanding, verbal.  This cuts both ways as far as cultural strengths and weaknesses.  Since U of M undergrad still has a large % of top of class in-state kids I would expect that to hold.

I agree that the target list of schools sounded disjointed.  However, Michigan and MSU have a lot more in common than they'd like to admit.  PSU also shares in that commonality.  It's more than just the football culture - they are big state schools with student bodies drawn from top 30% of high school classes.  One could get a good education at any of them.  Michigan is harder to get into and has a more intellectual vibe if you have no interest in sports.  [By the way, the immediate past president of Columbia (Lee Bollinger) came directly from running U of M which suggests some philosophical compatibility of approaches.]

A math department for a female student could have a microclimate that people outside the department wouldn't know about (e.g., the male/female skew, whether it's mostly international or out of state students, how hard the weed out courses are).  That should be researched before applying.

The more quant the major, the more of a weed-out it is.  I do not have direct experience but I would expect econ to be tougher than poli sci, although you could probably fine tune the difficulty in econ quite a bit to be easier or harder.[/quote]

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