Let’s face it, every year, the University of Michigan has been a top school for East Grand Rapids High School students. 

However, for this coming admissions cycle and moving forward, U of M undergraduate admissions has brought some changes to the application process, most notably, that they are now introducing a new admissions plan: Early Decision.

Early Decision (ED) is a binding college application process. This means that if a student applies to Michigan ED and is accepted, they MUST enroll and withdraw all other applications to other schools. Because it is a one-time, binding agreement, students can only ED to one school. 

This changes the game for U of M admissions. The university now knows if you ED to Michigan, it is absolutely your top choice. But will the binding factor steer people away from EDing to Umich, even if it’s their top choice?

“I’m not applying Early Decision to Michigan, even though I would probably like to go there, because I think it would be better to keep my options open,” Vivian Cherveny ‘26 said.

Data has proven that other seniors at East might feel the same way and have some hesitancy EDing to Michigan.  

“There could be a few more students who add Early Decision before November 1st, but as of now, there are 31 out of the class of 222 students who have decided to sign the Early Decision contract for Michigan,” Charissa Chapman, a guidance counselor, said. 

This is about half of the people who are applying; so far, around 60 people are applying to Michigan from this year’s class. Last year, the number was closer to 70, and the year before (the class of 2024), the number was closer to 100. 

“As the number of applicants has increased and the percentage of acceptance has decreased, the percentage of kids from East who are applying has decreased as well,” Chapman said.

When asked what alternative school is students’ top choice, there was an overwhelming response of southern schools, especially the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 

“I really like the urban feel of the UTK campus. I’ve always liked the SEC football atmosphere too,” Kaden Goosens ‘26 said. 

There are many other factors that could be leading kids from Michigan to go down south as well.

“I think some of [the reason people are going down south] is weather-related for sure… but then also I think there is a lot on social media as well, even what greek life looks like in the south, some students can get really excited for the potential of that,” Chapman said.

Early Decision, while it may increase your chances at some Ivy League schools, as of now, people from admissions at Michigan have been very clear in saying that they don’t know how ED is going to impact admissions. 

“Other universities we do see there is a slightly higher advantage when a student applies Early Decision, but [Michigan’s] goal in doing ED was to be able to release decisions earlier,” Chapman said.

Since it is the school’s first year with Early Decision, the future is unpredictable. 

“We just went to U of M last week for an admissions conference, and they said [they’re] still looking for top-tier candidates, whether they apply Early Decision, Early Action, or Regular Decision, they are still looking for the same kind of student. Councilors from U of M are telling us it doesn’t give a student an advantage to choose either of those paths,” Champman concluded.

With that said, this admission cycle is still going to be extremely competitive in whatever path is chosen. Watch out for the application deadline for ED on Nov. 1st, seniors, and look forward to the ED decisions coming out by the end of December!