Over 100 members of South’s 2026 class applied to Michigan, according to Naviance. While the number of South students who apply to Michigan has remained steady, Michigan reported hitting a record high of 115,125 applicants this admissions cycle. With the increase in applications, Oriel Admissions predicts the 2030 acceptance rate to land near 12.5 percent, nearly a four percent decrease from the 2029 admissions cycle. Michigan has not yet released its 2030 admission statistics through the Common Data Set.
As a counselor at South for 19 years, Beth Walsh-Sahutske said she has seen the admissions cycle at Michigan evolve over the years. Though the importance of test scores has stayed consistent over time, the significance of course rigor has increased.
“When I first began, you could get a 4.0 and not have any AP classes and you would have a good chance of getting in,” Walsh-Sahutske said. “The importance of curriculum has gone up an awful lot.”
With the recent release of Regular Decision (RD) for Michigan, many previously deferred applicants, or applicants who applied RD, received their final decision from the university. While many found confetti when they opened their portal, others faced the reality of a waitlist or rejection. According to Walsh-Sahutske counselors don’t see what activities students list or their essays, making it hard to decipher what got a student into Michigan and not into another school and vice versa.
“The vast majority of our students who applied to Michigan would succeed and do very well on campus if they were admitted,” Walsh-Sahutske said. “So it’s really a matter of, are they prepared for the school? It gets into how the admissions department is designed, based on their criteria, who are going to be their top choices.”
Joey Reid ’26 was admitted during the Early Action (EA) admissions round. He said that going into the process, he wasn’t expecting the level of difficulty in admission.
“I had three siblings who went there, which definitely skews your perspective,” Reid said. “They were all smart individuals, but none of them were out-of-this-world students. I think that puts this perspective that getting in was more of an expectation than other top universities at the same level.”
In addition, Reid found himself surprised by some decisions, especially regarding some of his friends. He found that, particularly with reference to the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) and the College of Engineering, there is a different level of competition in admissions.
“There were plenty of people that I would say are good students, but that I wouldn’t have expected to get in over my friends who were rejected,” Reid said. “It came down to LSA versus Engineering. I was very surprised by a group of people who either got rejected or who got waitlisted, who I feel like in previous years maybe would have been accepted, and because of the increase in applications that they keep getting year after year, ended up getting waitlisted or rejected instead of a potential acceptance.”
Walsh-Sahutske believes that everyone applying to and going to college should understand that there is no ideal college for everyone and that a university doesn’t define a student.
“I hope that this is something that will come through in every conversation about colleges, especially highly competitive colleges,” Walsh-Sahutske said. “A person’s value is not based on the college that they are admitted to and their future is not dictated by the college they’ve gone to. It has everything to do with what the students do with wherever they choose to go. People can succeed at all different schools; it’s not a matter of having to go to any one particular school to have success.”
