Monica Sendor

I wish I could say that I have been a Michigan fan from birth, that my first words were "Hail to the Victors", and that I only applied to U of M my senior year of high school. However, I can say that I made one of the hardest, but the best decisions of my life in choosing to come to Ann Arbor.

So what drew me to Michigan?

First of all, it was the biggest and the best state school in Michigan. In-state tuition was definitely a plus to my parents when they compared U of M to the other private colleges I applied to that had $40,000 + price tags a year. Ann Arbor is 2.5 hours from my hometown, so it was both far enough for me to feel independent and yet close enough to home that I could come home if I needed to without too much of a hassle. My biggest reason for going to Michigan was their Biology program. I initially was a biology major when I applied to college, and Michigan had the best programs in Biology and the sciences. I looked for programs similar to UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program) on other campuses without much success. And I knew that U of M's Medical School was top-notch, so I would have many great opportunities to volunteer and maybe do research under leaders in the field.

I also knew that I could make a big school smaller but I couldn't make a small school bigger. I needed snow and four distinguishable seasons. When I visited campus, I really liked how it was nestled in Ann Arbor and how close campus buildings were to each other (as opposed to the campuses I visited that felt very spread-out like MSU and Duke and even Notre Dame). U of M touted Diversity with a capital D, so I knew that most of my peers would come from very different walks of life - adding to the "out of classroom" learning experience.

What made me hesitant about going to the University of Michigan?

The University of Michigan was the only in-state school I applied to, and I hate to admit it, but it was my "safety school." I heard back from Michigan first, in November, and was excited at my first acceptance but also relieved that I had gotten in. I set my admissions from Michigan aside and focused on getting into my reach school, Harvard. In the course of the next couple of months I frantically checked my mailbox each day for thick envelopes from the other schools I had applied to - Notre Dame, Duke, Northwestern, MIT, and University of Washington, St. Louis.

Around February I filled out the FAFSA and in March started receiving financial aid offers from the schools I had been accepted to. To mine and my parents' surprise, the University of Michigan, an instate public school, had the worst percentage of grants, loans, and work-study making up its offer. Private institutions, such as Notre Dame (which had the best offer, by the way) have more money through endowments and less financial dependency on the government, which allow them to offer larger grants and need-based scholarships than a public institutions.

As the oldest of five kids in my family, I knew that my parents would help as much as they could in paying for college, but in the end, I would carry most of the load on my shoulders. In addition to applying for college I searched scholarship sites like fastweb.com and frequently visited my guidance counselor's office for local scholarship applications. When I remember the hours I put in writing essays and filling out my contact information for the 5oth time, I am amazed that I had the fun senior year that I did. I also am very grateful and oh so thankful to all the teachers that wrote recommendation letters and filled out those pesky recommendation forms. And of course, I wouldn't have received any scholarships if it wasn't for the guidance department's faithful sending out of my transcripts and recommendation letters. I have no idea how many times they had to send out my test scores and transcript, but it was A LOT. Thank you.

Anyways, Michigan dropped to the bottom of my list as the May 1st notification deadline approached. Then, during the last week of April, my parents and I sat down with the admit packets, the financial aid offers, and lots of notes scribbled during our campus visits. We spent hours crunching numbers, debating about a schools reputation, looking at programs offered, and listing pros/cons of attending each school. It was very frustrating and exhausting. At one point I broke down and started crying while my dad complained that I had applied to too many schools.

"In Poland," he told me, "You only got accepted to one school and into only one program. There was no "undecided" students in college. You went to a technical school and then went on to find a job in that field. You went to pre-med school and then medical school. You went to teacher school and became a teacher." To my parents, who had not been educated in America, but rather in communist Poland, the freedom to choose was very foreign to them. I had to explain and re-explain every decision I made throughout the college application process because of their unfamiliarity with the system in America. And sometimes I misunderstood things, but I was always looking ahead, learning as much as I could about the process so I could then teach it to my parents, be a guide for my siblings, and get myself into a good program at a good school.

I still remember that night that I made my decision. It was the last Monday in April, and the debate was approaching its seventh hour. I had ruled out Duke because of the distance, all but ruled out Northwestern's engineering program, and was holding Notre Dame's letter in one hand and Michigan's letter in the other. I had been waitlisted at my three other schools, which I had ruled out early in the evening. My mother was looking over both school's financial aid offers, my father was on my computer looking up programs, and I was sitting on the floor, holding the letters. I said a little prayer, closed my eyes, and imagined myself on each campus. I imagined what kind of students I would be interacting with and the opportunities I would have. I thought about all I knew about each school and how each school could prepare me for my future.

"Mom, Dad, I am going to Michigan."

Both parents asked if I was sure. I hesitated a little, my thoughts returning to the beautiful Notre Dame campus, the catholic education, the best financial aid package, Touchdown Jesus and South Bend, Indiana. But then I thought about the highly rated biology department at UofM, my acceptance into the Honors program, the Big House, the UROP program, and Ann Arbor, and I knew. My mother, who was a little biased towards Notre Dame, told me to sleep on my decision and then mail it out the following morning. My dad got the checkbook and wrote out the $200 nonrefundable deposit. I crawled into bed that night still thinking about my decision.

And that, my friends, is the story of why I chose to come to the University of Michigan. In the end, it was the promise of the Honors college to make the big university smaller (and the inability to make a small university bigger), it was the promise of diversity at the University of Michigan, it was the promise of scientific discovery in the newly built Life Sciences buildings, the rich traditions of the "M" and Football Saturdays and campus life I had heard about on my campus tour, it was the nearly 400,000 living alumni working throughout the world and in outer space, and it was the promise of a "Michigan Education" that helped me decide. I knew that I would work and study hard to become successful no matter where I went, but in the end, I felt that the University of Michigan was the school I wanted to call my alma mater.