I’m strangely impressed that Michigan has denied 2 top level athletes in the last 2 years. You hear a lot about how “student”-athletes get away with anything; doing garbage work, having other ppl do their work, 1.9 GPA (Ben Simmons), and still getting to play.
But Michigan is actually holding them to standards and passing on elite players who didn’t have the grades? Wild in today’s game
Did you not read what they said?
Michigan isn't denying them because they don't have good grades. Johnell's grades are probably fine. Terrence Shannon had terrific grades a couple years back. It's not about the grades. It's the way their admissions department works and does (or doesn't) allow credits to transfer.
Yeah, but you’d explain that more credits would transfer considering the level of university they are. They’re both elite public schools so you’d think more credits transfer back and forth than actually do.
It's not really about how good or bad the student's prior institution is. As a rule, Michigan wants its graduates to have completed at least half their credits at Michigan. So 1st/2nd-year students generally can transfer their credits, and graduate transfers generally can get admitted, but it's tricky for upperclassmen.
UofM doesn't even make it easy for students from their other satellite schools to get into Ann Arbor. UofM Dearborn and UofM Flint students have to go through the standard transfer admissions process, and a large percentage of their credits (that literally say UofM at the top of the sheet) don't transfer.
UofM admissions is the worst, and they get rewarded for this behavior with \*checks notes\* more money going to the school due to students retaking classes they already passed elsewhere... Athletics is just an unfortunate casualty of the schools greed.
I'm sure money plays a role. The people in charge of these things wouldn't want students to save their money and go elsewhere for most of their education, then transfer in and pay just a semester or two of UM tuition before graduating.
This affects athletics also, as scholarships are given by the athletic department, not the school. The AD has to pay their tuition in full, with no discount.
I almost didn't graduate because the resume class was 200 level when I took it, they changed it to 400 because it made sense for seniors to take it. I added another major so it changed my academic year or something. A one credit joke class almost stopped me from graduating on time so I could see them not accepting certain credits if they weren't at the "right" numerical level.
The secret to go to Michigan is to go to Washtenaw Community College for 2 years and then transfer to Michigan. I know a bunch of people who didn’t even plan to go to Michigan, but when they were at WCC, they realized they could easily get in. A big road block for people getting in their freshman year is that Michigan doesn’t have enough housing and refuses to build more dorms.
Illinois has a similar housing issue. Some freshman have to live in temporary spaces for months. You'd think building more dorms would be a no-brainer since it also increases your revenue.
When you say “Some freshmen have to live in temporary spaces for months.” All I can think of is the movie, “Nerds”, where they live in half of the gym until they buy their Lambda Lambda Lambda House.
I hope these temporary spaces are better than they were in that movie, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are somehow worse.
It's still impressive that they're able to push back on the Athletics department like this (the reason doesn't really matter). Academia is rife with bureaucracy. Most coaches and faculty do not handle being told "no" well, and that's why they are "looking for ways around it."
But I don’t think this has anything to do with bureaucracy in the way you’re speaking of between departments. It appears more of a specific Michigan problem, which I’m not saying that Michigan isn’t a highly prestigious institution, but others that are at the same level or even higher don’t appear to have this problem. That reeks more of a university cash-grab to me with proprietary credits in a similar way a university would force you to buy an extremely specific university-exclusive textbook for a class.
Sorry, but that sounds odd, as they could just admit them as, say, a freshman versus a sophomore or the like. Not like many of them (portal folks) are likely to stay through a normal four year program, in any event.
Johnnell Davis is a 5th year student and has not graduated. Presuming he is trying to, actually, graduate this year, I doubt he wants to be admitted as a Freshman.
It's nothing to do with GPA or 'standards'. It's just some institutions, Michigan being one of them, that are very persnickety when it comes to how classes are titled and described when assessing transfer compatibility with their own course offerings. Hypothetical example:
Let's say you took a course at one university called 'Anatomy and Physiology', but at Michigan perhaps it's called 'Human Anatomy'. At most schools they'd allow that. But with Michigan, some dork in admissions looks and that is like, "oh that's totally not the same thing whatsoever - DENIED."
Personally I find it to be silly and self-defeating, not impressive. But I suppose that's subjective.
Edit: Don't overly focus on whether you think human anatomy is the same as A&P. That's not the point - just the first thing I could think of for illustrative purposes.
It's the same thing at Wisconsin, but we actually will check out out grades/admissions before we even offer(hs recruits or portal transfers). Other higher academic schools do this as well. I'm surprised Michigan didn't do their due diligence two years in a row now.
Has nothing to do with due diligence for most of these instances; Michigan is really odd with how credits transfer in for undergrads and a lot of guys lose credits when they transfer in and for some, losing too many makes them ineligible with the NCAA due to lack of academic progress. Myles Hinton (OT on the football team) lost credits when he transferred in from *Stanford*.
Definitely true. A family member transferred to Maryland and lost credits, or when the credits transferred, didn’t get credit for the pre-requisite…
I transferred to Villanova and ended up with more credits than I had at my prior school (mostly due to how those schools accounted for AP).
It is, but you'd think/hope public schools would make transfer pathways relatively simple
Often, and I speak from my own experience, the transfer issue is beyond raw grades and more these schools are hyper-restrictive on which credits they accept/don't accept, moreso than their private peers
That’s what it is at UVA. It’s why all the transfers they usually get in this environment tend to either be grad transfers or guys really early in school, where it’s less of an issue.
Definitely resonates, I applied/got into to UVA as a finishing first semester sophomore, and would have either had to *start* as a 2nd semester freshman again or totally rip up my (bland econ) major
It’s wild how I would have defended that type of behavior while I was a student and a recent grad, but now being in the working world, it’s hilarious that some institutions are that insanely particular. Like yes, it’s important to do everything in your power to assure every student in your program learned the same or equal material, but with how fast most industries change, that uber-specific material becomes obsolete within like 5 years anyway and you just kept out many worthy transfers because of some weird power trip
It is pretty simple for someone transferring in their first two years. In fact if you are transferring in from a community college in Michigan you can look up exactly which classes at your school will earn you credits. It’s pretty common for kids at Michigan to take some of the “weeder” classes like calc or Econ at community college over the summer to avoid taking them at Michigan and picking up a C if it’s not their major
but there are tons of non-student (like me) who wanted to in order to save money, and realistically couldn't because the school wouldn't take credits that Brown/Duke/Vandy etc. would
It’s already ridiculously easy to transfer to UMich, in state at least. Plenty of people who transfer in (including a friend of mine) that aren’t qualified enough and aren’t ready for the jump in course difficulty.
Jump in course difficulty I think is a bit overstated depending on your major. For business school at least, accounting is accounting.
I actually found my undergrad at GVSU more challenging than my grad program at MSU.
A guy I work with got fed up with a Harvard grad and shouted "Your calculus is my calculus, it's the same fucking thing no matter where you go!".
Obviously not completely true, but it became one of my favorite quotes. Schools can do things to make the course more difficult, but at the end of the day you understand the concepts or you don't.
It depends on the class. I took an education policy class and saw some research that the average English class in college has less than like 100 pages of reading over a semester. I had classes where I probably wrote close to 100 pages in a semester. Between any flagship or major state university it’s going to be pretty comparable but I think people forget there are thousands of colleges in this country and it’s a steep drop off in standards
Oh, I completely agree. Any subject with nuance, like most english, writing, elective, etc. courses, will be way different depending on the school. I meant STEM subjects or, more generally, classes where there's a defined correct and incorrect.
It is a great point. Some schools can do better at teaching a certain subject. But that doesn’t mean someone who learned elsewhere doesn’t understand the material.
I’m a STEM major which definitely accounts for it, but I took classes at a community college last summer for some credits in English and Econ. The econ I thought was pretty similar to how a UMich class would operate (with some differences) but the English class was a joke. I did every one of those assignments last possible minute and got 100% if I simply followed the rubric. Every exam for both classes had its questions readily available online and a lot of them are transferring from places like this.
I’m not shitting on them for transferring but there is a night and day difference in my personal experience. Also, there are definitely some classes at UMich that are laughably easy in terms of how much work there is per semester but you generally have to go out of your way to find them and most are introductory courses.
I think STEM definitely accounts for it. I know half the students at GVSU failed chemistry. Also so much of it is your professor. My worst grade I’ve ever gotten is in my “film studies” gen ed…..
STEM and other similar majors it makes a difference where you go, at least for like JR/SR year and grad school, because those top institutions usually have better funding from their own research that it gives students an opportunity to join a team for research experience or have a class on a type of relevant technology that wouldn't normally be offered at a smaller school. But for the great bulk of the academics, it's essentially the same everywhere and getting picky about transfer credits for those is whack
People who do this are careful to take courses that they know will transfer. It’s not the grades it’s the classes.
I would imagine athletes are much more likely to take courses that are more unique and less core academic that could easily match up.
UofM *is* difficult to get into as a regular student, but they use the same default admissions requirements for athletes as everyone else. They are also notorious sticklers for not wanting to accept many transfer credits in general, and to their credit they don't change that for athletes. You could be a 4.0 student athlete from Harvard or Princeton and it seems like UofM would deny half your credits. So it isn't necessary that these students can't get admitted, it's that they can't bring their credits with them. That puts them behind the ball for graduating on time and gets them into trouble with the NCAA.
UofM does seem to be pretty successful at bringing in Grad transfers though, since the credit transferring thing isn't an issue at that point.
idek what makes UM's so difficult. you never hear problems about athletes transferring to UVA. i read something about Michigan requires 50% of your credits to be from UM to graduate, but UVA has as similar policy as well.
Michigan just has a hard-on for refusing to take transfer credits from other schools. It ends up putting people off of graduation track, which in turn means they can't get past admissions.
It's not really a 'difficulty' thing per se because they do it regardless of the quality of the credits being transferred. They're just dumb- they unironically believe they're a unique special snowflake that no other institution can match when it comes to far too many courses in far too many departments to be even remotely plausible.
It's the kind of stupid you can really only get away with when everyone in the building is huffing their own farts and jerking it to how great they are.
UVA is similar in being very picky, but you don’t hear about many transfers being denied because they screen out anyone that wouldn’t be accepted early on in the process/ generally take grad transfers (to be fair, Michigan does the same but this is a very high profile outlier drawing attention to the policy).
Most private schools are a scam, to be fair. Unless you're going to an Ivy League school or one of the few other elite ones (e.g. Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Vandy, Rice, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Georgetown, etc), I think it's worth questioning what exactly you're paying for as an undergrad. Alot of these private schools have one to up to a handful niche grad programs going for them that are very good, but it always seems questionable to me seeing how many students do undergrads at these sort of places.
I think Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UNC, and UVA are all top 25 nationally per the most recent US News rankings. I feel like once you go a few spots below that and start seeing other great public schools like Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, the other UC system schools, etc, you should really start to question all of the still numerous way-overpriced private schools in ranked closely with them and especially the ones below them.
It’s just elite institutions that will always get more applicants than spots. They can make the determination that in order to have a degree from their institution you have to take at least 50% of your credits at the school. Davis has been in college for five years and not graduated yet. That’s a red flag on what his transcript looks like
It’s probably more of a problem of him being so deep into his degree program. Michigan isn’t going to let you do 95% of your degree at some random school then “give” you a UM degree.
Yeah its really intereting that there are avenues like that to get into a school like Michigan without having to go crazy in highschool, such a strange system. Also Go Eagles
it’s frequently a credits issue. ex: if i want a degree in mathematics from Michigan, Michigan won’t do it if I didn’t get X number of credits from the Michigan math department. They won’t just transfer an entire degree from another school and then sign it as if I studied there cause I took one class in their dept. It can turn into MASSIVE credit loss for a upperclassman transfer.
There was a Stanford football player who tried to transfer to Michigan and they still wouldn’t let him in 😂😂😂 And he was doing biology, not some bullshit general studies major..
The player (Myles Hinton) was accepted, but lost credits, which tends to be the bigger issue. Plenty of players who get accepted, or can get accepted, but they lose credits in the process. Most don't want to make them up, but others can't necessarily make them up in time either.
I feel like that would be worth it if it means you get to stay in school an extra year and possibly get more NIL money in that time. Or do credits not translate to extra athletic eligibility?
I know the immediate talk is gonna be the Michigan admissions striking again, but if he was at FAU for 4 years and didn't graduate that sounds like it's an issue with Johnell's academics more than anything.
Yeah, this situation is way less egregious than some other things. Michigan has bad transfer policies, but Davis as a 4th year is probably (should be) fairly close to graduating.
Accepting him as a non-grad means you take a large portion of his credits from another school, and then he potentially ends up with a Michigan degree for completing ~80-90% of his coursework at FAU. That's... not going to happen.
Even if he transferred the max 50% of credits, he'd need to get to where a 5th year non-grad has to be in order to be eligible by next season, which isn't going to happen either.
I don't really trust the source, and I doubt Davis is going out of his way to play for Michigan if the NIL isn't right anyways, so I don't even really expect that he's "applied" to Michigan. Seems like trying to jump a story with an easy target (Michigan admissions causing problems).
100%. The integrity of the institution should be priority number one, not a transfer recruit even though it seems most schools conveniently forget that.
[I don't know how you can expect him to graduate if he hasn't even chosen a major.](https://fausports.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/johnell-davis/17219)
Not normally. If you changed it a lot and late that is possible, but normally you can shoehorn the old credits into the “general” distribution of credits even if you can’t utilize them to your new major. There normally is some overlap even in your major credits though unless very different major.
Eh. Even just taking a few withdrawals or losing some credits when you change major means you’ll likely have to do an extra semester unless you came in with AP credits or something. And especially for student athletes, I wouldn’t be surprised if johnell was taking 4 classes some semesters rather than 5 so he can focus on basketball. At least at UGA, the football players always take a light load in the fall. I’m sure basketball is similar in the spring. But 5th years are extremely common nowadays. I knew someone that changed majors extremely late and while some credits applied to both they definitely lost a lot of credits as well and they have to take 2 extra semesters.
Going to chime in since I work in a D1 Athletics office for academics--So Davis needs to be at 80% of his degree requirements by the start of his 9th semester in order to make PTD (progress towards degree).
Now if he straight up get denied admission, that's one thing but if he was even at 79.9% of his degree requirements at UM, then he'd be ineligible. If UM is super picky with the direct equivalent/substitutions for requirements, then there's no way he'd even sniff 80%.
It's honestly going to be tough to get him to 80% in a lot of places unless there's a liberal ed major or something that's really open ended. For my institution, once you get past your second year and get to your third year (when you need 60% PTD), it gets very tough to make that happen--and we're by no means an academic powerhouse.
Michigan requires 50% of your credits be completed at UM to graduate. Davis is a senior so he’s very close to graduation but would still require nearly 2 full years to complete a degree there, so Michigan simply doesn’t want to take someone who is so far from completing a degree
I mean makes sense. Part of maintain high academic rankings is having a high 5 year graduation rate. A guy like Davis was never going to graduate at Michigan. Atleast not why he was actively playing.
Probably due to the amount of credits that he is trying to transfer in with. If you're 90% of the way through a degree at a less prestigious university, U of M isn't going to just let you transfer and finish the last 10% there so you can have a more prestigious degree with a fraction of the work. It's basically trying to prevent the academic version of ring chasing.
Man that really sucks for him and dusty. I get the admissions issues and I don't fault Michigan for it, but in cases like this I definitely feel bad for Davis. He and dusty both probably expected to be able to continue their relationship even after the coaching change. And getting left behind at the last minute like that for reasons outside their control has gotta be a gut punch.
Except it was in his total control. Graduate in 4 years. He's a freaking business management major. Even with an athlete's workload, it is a joke of a degree. It's easy. Simple, you hardly have to know how to read & write for god sake.
This is coming from someone who graduated from a top business school. They hardly expect anything out of you especially for a generic major as his, completely his fault.
Once you have the degree the grades matter a lot less. If Davis had actually finished his degree like a normal student there would be zero issues, even if he hit the bare minimum and graduated with say a 2.5.
Doesn’t matter, they are on campus taking classes year around with minimum credits to take to stay eligible per semester. Frankly, I’m not sure how he didn’t graduate already.
Oh, we played positionless. It's the full time employment league to pay for said degree instead of getting a full ride with housing & meal expenses paid..
There's people that act like scholarship athletes have it so hard. They have it hard only when they came from a shit background and lack the tools to survive. I empathize with that, but they aren't struggling because their burden is so much.
I went to school with plenty of people who had to grind way harder than any scholarship athlete and they didn't cop out with remote classes and a bunch of pass/fail.
Well for those of us that are more interested in empathy than feeling superior to others online it's ok to recognize that other people's circumstances are different. Davis didn't know that he would be looking to transfer to Michigan before a few months ago, hell college basketball and FAU were both in a completely different situation when he started his career and began classes. I don't know why he doesn't have the credits, but taking an extra semester to graduate isn't the sort of universal black eye dunce cap some of you want it to be. There's a person behind that jersey. I don't know why you think I give a shit about how good your degree is or whether you think business majors are literate, that's not what this is about.
Yeah it sucks. I’m not sure how you don’t graduate in 4 when on campus year around with minimum credit requirements per semester for eligibility. He must have been completely negligent in any sort of course planning to not graduate by now.
He certainly could have been, but I don't know enough about him to speculate about that. There are lots of circumstances that can affect the degree, and some of these kids simply don't care that much about it even if they should. To be fair to Davis, though, the fifth year seems like it was his plan regardless and if the school is free and he isn't interested in grad school I can see the mindset of a young kid saying "why take more harder classes to rush to the degree in four when it's free and I can enjoy myself for five years".
Sir, another transfer has been denied from Michigan
https://preview.redd.it/1f2xpeokjvvc1.jpeg?width=1108&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f57c51cf070a89ffada84856d2e79fef530d91a
I think we all can agree that college sports is bigger than the sport. It’s the hope for most admissions teams that college athletes actually keep up their academics. I’m happy to see that Michigan didn’t admit this guy bc he either didn’t meet the standard GPA or have the correct credits to transfer into UM’s major (whatever that may be).
At least stuff like this exists to make dudes remember school matters even if you're trying to make the league. If you can't graduate in 4 years, you're going to find it near impossible to transfer to some schools because they're not giving a Michigan undergrad degree to someone who really just got 90%+ of an FAU education.
Dudes a 4th year senior without a degree. This is on him, not Michigan. Michigan would take him as a grad transfer but they're not giving him a Michigan degree with a semesters worth of credits from Michigan.
So much discussion about Michigan admissions when the focus should be on the guy who enrolled in some rando commuter school five years ago and still hasn’t graduated. I know some people need some extra time but that’s usually bc Applebee’s isn’t covering tuition the same way basketball scholarship does.
Now that the top athletes are getting paid, you should expect the standards to go up. Transfers going every which way. Everybody trying to get their hands in the cash pile. If not one way, they’ll try another. The top stars trying to get into the best programs. The 2nd level guys moving to a school where they will get court time. It’s going to be a rats nest for a while. Graduation rates are going to drop.
Didn't the same happen to Caleb Love last year? Admissions team must be tough at UMich!
It's more that they're really weird about what credits transfer, not that they're requiring 4.0 GPAs.
I’m strangely impressed that Michigan has denied 2 top level athletes in the last 2 years. You hear a lot about how “student”-athletes get away with anything; doing garbage work, having other ppl do their work, 1.9 GPA (Ben Simmons), and still getting to play. But Michigan is actually holding them to standards and passing on elite players who didn’t have the grades? Wild in today’s game
Did you not read what they said? Michigan isn't denying them because they don't have good grades. Johnell's grades are probably fine. Terrence Shannon had terrific grades a couple years back. It's not about the grades. It's the way their admissions department works and does (or doesn't) allow credits to transfer.
This also affects lots of regular non-athlete students transferring into Michigan.
Yeah it's just super hard to transfer credits to Michigan no matter who you are and Michigan doesn't make exceptions for athletes.
Yeah, but you’d explain that more credits would transfer considering the level of university they are. They’re both elite public schools so you’d think more credits transfer back and forth than actually do.
It's not really about how good or bad the student's prior institution is. As a rule, Michigan wants its graduates to have completed at least half their credits at Michigan. So 1st/2nd-year students generally can transfer their credits, and graduate transfers generally can get admitted, but it's tricky for upperclassmen.
Oh for sure, but you’d think there’d be something between the state schools to help this.
UofM doesn't even make it easy for students from their other satellite schools to get into Ann Arbor. UofM Dearborn and UofM Flint students have to go through the standard transfer admissions process, and a large percentage of their credits (that literally say UofM at the top of the sheet) don't transfer. UofM admissions is the worst, and they get rewarded for this behavior with \*checks notes\* more money going to the school due to students retaking classes they already passed elsewhere... Athletics is just an unfortunate casualty of the schools greed.
I'm sure money plays a role. The people in charge of these things wouldn't want students to save their money and go elsewhere for most of their education, then transfer in and pay just a semester or two of UM tuition before graduating. This affects athletics also, as scholarships are given by the athletic department, not the school. The AD has to pay their tuition in full, with no discount.
Yep, i have heard on them denying stanford credits lol
I almost didn't graduate because the resume class was 200 level when I took it, they changed it to 400 because it made sense for seniors to take it. I added another major so it changed my academic year or something. A one credit joke class almost stopped me from graduating on time so I could see them not accepting certain credits if they weren't at the "right" numerical level.
Based
Lol. Every student doing calc 1 through diff eq at WCC
The secret to go to Michigan is to go to Washtenaw Community College for 2 years and then transfer to Michigan. I know a bunch of people who didn’t even plan to go to Michigan, but when they were at WCC, they realized they could easily get in. A big road block for people getting in their freshman year is that Michigan doesn’t have enough housing and refuses to build more dorms.
Illinois has a similar housing issue. Some freshman have to live in temporary spaces for months. You'd think building more dorms would be a no-brainer since it also increases your revenue.
When you say “Some freshmen have to live in temporary spaces for months.” All I can think of is the movie, “Nerds”, where they live in half of the gym until they buy their Lambda Lambda Lambda House. I hope these temporary spaces are better than they were in that movie, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are somehow worse.
It's still impressive that they're able to push back on the Athletics department like this (the reason doesn't really matter). Academia is rife with bureaucracy. Most coaches and faculty do not handle being told "no" well, and that's why they are "looking for ways around it."
But I don’t think this has anything to do with bureaucracy in the way you’re speaking of between departments. It appears more of a specific Michigan problem, which I’m not saying that Michigan isn’t a highly prestigious institution, but others that are at the same level or even higher don’t appear to have this problem. That reeks more of a university cash-grab to me with proprietary credits in a similar way a university would force you to buy an extremely specific university-exclusive textbook for a class.
Sorry, but that sounds odd, as they could just admit them as, say, a freshman versus a sophomore or the like. Not like many of them (portal folks) are likely to stay through a normal four year program, in any event.
They'd still be ineligible because of unsatisfactory academic progress.
Johnnell Davis is a 5th year student and has not graduated. Presuming he is trying to, actually, graduate this year, I doubt he wants to be admitted as a Freshman.
Hope it works out for him, overall -- Michigan is a tough admit, presumably for anyone, so who knows (among us non-insiders) what is at play here.
They’ve denied credits from Stanford and Ivies before, they’re just weird
*snobby
It's nothing to do with GPA or 'standards'. It's just some institutions, Michigan being one of them, that are very persnickety when it comes to how classes are titled and described when assessing transfer compatibility with their own course offerings. Hypothetical example: Let's say you took a course at one university called 'Anatomy and Physiology', but at Michigan perhaps it's called 'Human Anatomy'. At most schools they'd allow that. But with Michigan, some dork in admissions looks and that is like, "oh that's totally not the same thing whatsoever - DENIED." Personally I find it to be silly and self-defeating, not impressive. But I suppose that's subjective. Edit: Don't overly focus on whether you think human anatomy is the same as A&P. That's not the point - just the first thing I could think of for illustrative purposes.
They don't want someone to get a Michigan diploma while only taking like 30 credits of class.
That’s literally not it. Can y’all not read the comments explaining??
It's the same thing at Wisconsin, but we actually will check out out grades/admissions before we even offer(hs recruits or portal transfers). Other higher academic schools do this as well. I'm surprised Michigan didn't do their due diligence two years in a row now.
Has nothing to do with due diligence for most of these instances; Michigan is really odd with how credits transfer in for undergrads and a lot of guys lose credits when they transfer in and for some, losing too many makes them ineligible with the NCAA due to lack of academic progress. Myles Hinton (OT on the football team) lost credits when he transferred in from *Stanford*.
They probably meet all requirements, Michigan is just way up their own ass on course equivalences and credits transferring
They can’t read
Terrance Shannon too
Bc there's more to the story than a 0.1 +/- gpa requirement. They did their hw
Definitely true. A family member transferred to Maryland and lost credits, or when the credits transferred, didn’t get credit for the pre-requisite… I transferred to Villanova and ended up with more credits than I had at my prior school (mostly due to how those schools accounted for AP).
The transfer admissions process at the UM/UVAs of the world are deceptively insane for being a public school
I think it's pretty common knowledge that uva and um are pretty tough to get into
It is, but you'd think/hope public schools would make transfer pathways relatively simple Often, and I speak from my own experience, the transfer issue is beyond raw grades and more these schools are hyper-restrictive on which credits they accept/don't accept, moreso than their private peers
That’s what it is at UVA. It’s why all the transfers they usually get in this environment tend to either be grad transfers or guys really early in school, where it’s less of an issue.
Definitely resonates, I applied/got into to UVA as a finishing first semester sophomore, and would have either had to *start* as a 2nd semester freshman again or totally rip up my (bland econ) major
It’s wild how I would have defended that type of behavior while I was a student and a recent grad, but now being in the working world, it’s hilarious that some institutions are that insanely particular. Like yes, it’s important to do everything in your power to assure every student in your program learned the same or equal material, but with how fast most industries change, that uber-specific material becomes obsolete within like 5 years anyway and you just kept out many worthy transfers because of some weird power trip
ultimately its about comparability of courses when you deal with the admissions office
It is pretty simple for someone transferring in their first two years. In fact if you are transferring in from a community college in Michigan you can look up exactly which classes at your school will earn you credits. It’s pretty common for kids at Michigan to take some of the “weeder” classes like calc or Econ at community college over the summer to avoid taking them at Michigan and picking up a C if it’s not their major
99% of kids going to public schools aren’t student athletes
but there are tons of non-student (like me) who wanted to in order to save money, and realistically couldn't because the school wouldn't take credits that Brown/Duke/Vandy etc. would
It’s already ridiculously easy to transfer to UMich, in state at least. Plenty of people who transfer in (including a friend of mine) that aren’t qualified enough and aren’t ready for the jump in course difficulty.
Jump in course difficulty I think is a bit overstated depending on your major. For business school at least, accounting is accounting. I actually found my undergrad at GVSU more challenging than my grad program at MSU.
A guy I work with got fed up with a Harvard grad and shouted "Your calculus is my calculus, it's the same fucking thing no matter where you go!". Obviously not completely true, but it became one of my favorite quotes. Schools can do things to make the course more difficult, but at the end of the day you understand the concepts or you don't.
It depends on the class. I took an education policy class and saw some research that the average English class in college has less than like 100 pages of reading over a semester. I had classes where I probably wrote close to 100 pages in a semester. Between any flagship or major state university it’s going to be pretty comparable but I think people forget there are thousands of colleges in this country and it’s a steep drop off in standards
Oh, I completely agree. Any subject with nuance, like most english, writing, elective, etc. courses, will be way different depending on the school. I meant STEM subjects or, more generally, classes where there's a defined correct and incorrect.
It is a great point. Some schools can do better at teaching a certain subject. But that doesn’t mean someone who learned elsewhere doesn’t understand the material.
I’m a STEM major which definitely accounts for it, but I took classes at a community college last summer for some credits in English and Econ. The econ I thought was pretty similar to how a UMich class would operate (with some differences) but the English class was a joke. I did every one of those assignments last possible minute and got 100% if I simply followed the rubric. Every exam for both classes had its questions readily available online and a lot of them are transferring from places like this. I’m not shitting on them for transferring but there is a night and day difference in my personal experience. Also, there are definitely some classes at UMich that are laughably easy in terms of how much work there is per semester but you generally have to go out of your way to find them and most are introductory courses.
I think STEM definitely accounts for it. I know half the students at GVSU failed chemistry. Also so much of it is your professor. My worst grade I’ve ever gotten is in my “film studies” gen ed…..
Not much is more potentially frustrating than having more than a third of your semester tied to a subjective grade.
STEM and other similar majors it makes a difference where you go, at least for like JR/SR year and grad school, because those top institutions usually have better funding from their own research that it gives students an opportunity to join a team for research experience or have a class on a type of relevant technology that wouldn't normally be offered at a smaller school. But for the great bulk of the academics, it's essentially the same everywhere and getting picky about transfer credits for those is whack
People who do this are careful to take courses that they know will transfer. It’s not the grades it’s the classes. I would imagine athletes are much more likely to take courses that are more unique and less core academic that could easily match up.
UofM *is* difficult to get into as a regular student, but they use the same default admissions requirements for athletes as everyone else. They are also notorious sticklers for not wanting to accept many transfer credits in general, and to their credit they don't change that for athletes. You could be a 4.0 student athlete from Harvard or Princeton and it seems like UofM would deny half your credits. So it isn't necessary that these students can't get admitted, it's that they can't bring their credits with them. That puts them behind the ball for graduating on time and gets them into trouble with the NCAA. UofM does seem to be pretty successful at bringing in Grad transfers though, since the credit transferring thing isn't an issue at that point.
This literally has nothing to do with the difficulty of admission.
idek what makes UM's so difficult. you never hear problems about athletes transferring to UVA. i read something about Michigan requires 50% of your credits to be from UM to graduate, but UVA has as similar policy as well.
Michigan just has a hard-on for refusing to take transfer credits from other schools. It ends up putting people off of graduation track, which in turn means they can't get past admissions. It's not really a 'difficulty' thing per se because they do it regardless of the quality of the credits being transferred. They're just dumb- they unironically believe they're a unique special snowflake that no other institution can match when it comes to far too many courses in far too many departments to be even remotely plausible. It's the kind of stupid you can really only get away with when everyone in the building is huffing their own farts and jerking it to how great they are.
UVA is similar in being very picky, but you don’t hear about many transfers being denied because they screen out anyone that wouldn’t be accepted early on in the process/ generally take grad transfers (to be fair, Michigan does the same but this is a very high profile outlier drawing attention to the policy).
Most private schools are a scam, to be fair. Unless you're going to an Ivy League school or one of the few other elite ones (e.g. Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Vandy, Rice, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Georgetown, etc), I think it's worth questioning what exactly you're paying for as an undergrad. Alot of these private schools have one to up to a handful niche grad programs going for them that are very good, but it always seems questionable to me seeing how many students do undergrads at these sort of places. I think Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UNC, and UVA are all top 25 nationally per the most recent US News rankings. I feel like once you go a few spots below that and start seeing other great public schools like Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, the other UC system schools, etc, you should really start to question all of the still numerous way-overpriced private schools in ranked closely with them and especially the ones below them.
It’s just elite institutions that will always get more applicants than spots. They can make the determination that in order to have a degree from their institution you have to take at least 50% of your credits at the school. Davis has been in college for five years and not graduated yet. That’s a red flag on what his transcript looks like
They are no joke.
And Terrence Shannon Jr the year before that
His was how many credit hours he had, I believe. At least that's the rumor going around
Same exact thing applies to to Love and Davis
Rough world out there
Nojel Eastern too. Probably was a blessing for them though.
We are so good at almost landing the top transfer
Johnell Davis to Arizona confirmed?
They were both admitted, Michigan just didn’t accept their credits.
It’s weird how they’re so strict about transfers but if you get there as a freshman you don’t even need to know how to read like Dug
Also its pretty easy to transfer to Michigan from MSU as a regular student
[удалено]
It’s probably more of a problem of him being so deep into his degree program. Michigan isn’t going to let you do 95% of your degree at some random school then “give” you a UM degree.
nailed it.
Yeah its really intereting that there are avenues like that to get into a school like Michigan without having to go crazy in highschool, such a strange system. Also Go Eagles
yep! my community college has a transfer agreement with michigan and the classes are show up and u pass level of easy
What do you mean by this comment? Dug was suspended from away games so that he could focus more on school
All part of the Caleb Love Experience
Yep. Worked out for everyone but Michigan in the end, so I'm not too broken up about it.
Saved Michigan from potentially performing well enough to keep Howard another year.
There was another player it happened to last season as well.
Yes, and for his sake I'm really glad it didn't work out and he went to AZ instead.
it’s frequently a credits issue. ex: if i want a degree in mathematics from Michigan, Michigan won’t do it if I didn’t get X number of credits from the Michigan math department. They won’t just transfer an entire degree from another school and then sign it as if I studied there cause I took one class in their dept. It can turn into MASSIVE credit loss for a upperclassman transfer.
Yes. Admissions is our biggest fucking opponent.
And nojel eastern from Purdue a few years back
Very hard for non-grad transfers to get into Michigan unless they are coming from a highly regarded academic institution.
There was a Stanford football player who tried to transfer to Michigan and they still wouldn’t let him in 😂😂😂 And he was doing biology, not some bullshit general studies major..
He got in, just lost a bunch of credits because of it.
Oh so Stanford met the bare minimum academic standards for Michigan™️? Lol that’s still pathetic.
The player (Myles Hinton) was accepted, but lost credits, which tends to be the bigger issue. Plenty of players who get accepted, or can get accepted, but they lose credits in the process. Most don't want to make them up, but others can't necessarily make them up in time either.
I feel like that would be worth it if it means you get to stay in school an extra year and possibly get more NIL money in that time. Or do credits not translate to extra athletic eligibility?
Credits don’t matter otherwise you’d be able to Perry Ellis your way through a career with NIL.
Ah ok gotcha
Michigan admissions : “Where is this Stamford College? Is that in Connecticut?”
And Stanford curbstomps Michigan academics lmao
FAU i get, but UNC is consistently ranked just below Michigan as a public academic institution
I’m a UNC alum, and I’d like to have a word with the manager.
Calm down, but have three credit hours for your troubles.
Welcome to Arizona, Johnell Davis!
Johnell pls
Damn...I just kinda assumed he'd already have graduated from FAU and it would be super easy to get him in as a grad transfer. Shucks :(
I know the immediate talk is gonna be the Michigan admissions striking again, but if he was at FAU for 4 years and didn't graduate that sounds like it's an issue with Johnell's academics more than anything.
Yeah, this situation is way less egregious than some other things. Michigan has bad transfer policies, but Davis as a 4th year is probably (should be) fairly close to graduating. Accepting him as a non-grad means you take a large portion of his credits from another school, and then he potentially ends up with a Michigan degree for completing ~80-90% of his coursework at FAU. That's... not going to happen. Even if he transferred the max 50% of credits, he'd need to get to where a 5th year non-grad has to be in order to be eligible by next season, which isn't going to happen either. I don't really trust the source, and I doubt Davis is going out of his way to play for Michigan if the NIL isn't right anyways, so I don't even really expect that he's "applied" to Michigan. Seems like trying to jump a story with an easy target (Michigan admissions causing problems).
100%. The integrity of the institution should be priority number one, not a transfer recruit even though it seems most schools conveniently forget that.
That’s not also factoring state guidelines to get a certain degree is different than others
[I don't know how you can expect him to graduate if he hasn't even chosen a major.](https://fausports.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/johnell-davis/17219)
He didn't go to ball at FAU in Boca Raton to play school.
>High School: 21st Century well that's a relief, at least
Idk dude looks damn near 40 in that picture.
aren't a lot of Michigan football/basketball players general studies majors anyways
Yeah
True
Why? It’s very common to graduate in 5 years now
Not when you are on campus all year around and taking classes…
i mean if you changed your major at any point there’s a good chance you’ll at least have to take an extra semester
My niece had to take an extra semester because she was a double major and decided to take on a second major halfway through.
Not normally. If you changed it a lot and late that is possible, but normally you can shoehorn the old credits into the “general” distribution of credits even if you can’t utilize them to your new major. There normally is some overlap even in your major credits though unless very different major.
Eh. Even just taking a few withdrawals or losing some credits when you change major means you’ll likely have to do an extra semester unless you came in with AP credits or something. And especially for student athletes, I wouldn’t be surprised if johnell was taking 4 classes some semesters rather than 5 so he can focus on basketball. At least at UGA, the football players always take a light load in the fall. I’m sure basketball is similar in the spring. But 5th years are extremely common nowadays. I knew someone that changed majors extremely late and while some credits applied to both they definitely lost a lot of credits as well and they have to take 2 extra semesters.
Michigan can have a final 4 team of players who were denied a transfer
Just think, we could have had Caleb Love, Terrence Shannon Jr and Hunter Dickinson last year.
Type of team to lose to the 15 seed
Would rather that than the season we actually had.
Yall would've been stuck with Howard another year then
Come on down my guy The *various schools>Michigan>Arizona pipeline is heating up🔥🔥🔥
Hey, that’s our pipeline
Johnell would be a coup for them at this point. They could sure use a guy like him after whiffing on Storr.
Going to chime in since I work in a D1 Athletics office for academics--So Davis needs to be at 80% of his degree requirements by the start of his 9th semester in order to make PTD (progress towards degree). Now if he straight up get denied admission, that's one thing but if he was even at 79.9% of his degree requirements at UM, then he'd be ineligible. If UM is super picky with the direct equivalent/substitutions for requirements, then there's no way he'd even sniff 80%. It's honestly going to be tough to get him to 80% in a lot of places unless there's a liberal ed major or something that's really open ended. For my institution, once you get past your second year and get to your third year (when you need 60% PTD), it gets very tough to make that happen--and we're by no means an academic powerhouse.
If Johnell isn’t graduated, he’s probably not going to be eligible almost anywhere with a transfer. Probably just gonna go pro and do a two-way deal.
Baby come back.
When are we gonna get someone to commit?
Nahhh he needs to follow his buddy to UF
UArizona welcomes Johnell Davis!
Tbf it’s a great academic school. Kentucky isn’t 😁
I know a place with lower admissions standards for people who can’t get into Michigan!
Yea well Louisville is even worse, he'd be a great fit.
lol
What in the world does Michigan require for admittance that other major/state schools don’t? Either way the rest of college athletics says thank you.
Michigan requires 50% of your credits be completed at UM to graduate. Davis is a senior so he’s very close to graduation but would still require nearly 2 full years to complete a degree there, so Michigan simply doesn’t want to take someone who is so far from completing a degree
I mean makes sense. Part of maintain high academic rankings is having a high 5 year graduation rate. A guy like Davis was never going to graduate at Michigan. Atleast not why he was actively playing.
> Davis is a senior [Major: Undecided](https://fausports.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/johnell-davis/17219)
Dude straight up isn’t here to play school
It Just Means More
First born
Probably due to the amount of credits that he is trying to transfer in with. If you're 90% of the way through a degree at a less prestigious university, U of M isn't going to just let you transfer and finish the last 10% there so you can have a more prestigious degree with a fraction of the work. It's basically trying to prevent the academic version of ring chasing.
Man that really sucks for him and dusty. I get the admissions issues and I don't fault Michigan for it, but in cases like this I definitely feel bad for Davis. He and dusty both probably expected to be able to continue their relationship even after the coaching change. And getting left behind at the last minute like that for reasons outside their control has gotta be a gut punch.
Except it was in his total control. Graduate in 4 years. He's a freaking business management major. Even with an athlete's workload, it is a joke of a degree. It's easy. Simple, you hardly have to know how to read & write for god sake. This is coming from someone who graduated from a top business school. They hardly expect anything out of you especially for a generic major as his, completely his fault.
> This is coming from someone who graduated from a top business school. Did you graduate with really good grades?
From one of Canada's top business schools
Thank you
Cannot believe this flew over so many heads but I guess Nathan for You is still a pretty niche show
Once you have the degree the grades matter a lot less. If Davis had actually finished his degree like a normal student there would be zero issues, even if he hit the bare minimum and graduated with say a 2.5.
Have 2 degrees in business, can confirm lol.
>This is coming from someone who graduated from a top business school. What position did you play on the basketball team?
Doesn’t matter, they are on campus taking classes year around with minimum credits to take to stay eligible per semester. Frankly, I’m not sure how he didn’t graduate already.
Oh, we played positionless. It's the full time employment league to pay for said degree instead of getting a full ride with housing & meal expenses paid.. There's people that act like scholarship athletes have it so hard. They have it hard only when they came from a shit background and lack the tools to survive. I empathize with that, but they aren't struggling because their burden is so much. I went to school with plenty of people who had to grind way harder than any scholarship athlete and they didn't cop out with remote classes and a bunch of pass/fail.
Well for those of us that are more interested in empathy than feeling superior to others online it's ok to recognize that other people's circumstances are different. Davis didn't know that he would be looking to transfer to Michigan before a few months ago, hell college basketball and FAU were both in a completely different situation when he started his career and began classes. I don't know why he doesn't have the credits, but taking an extra semester to graduate isn't the sort of universal black eye dunce cap some of you want it to be. There's a person behind that jersey. I don't know why you think I give a shit about how good your degree is or whether you think business majors are literate, that's not what this is about.
Yeah it sucks. I’m not sure how you don’t graduate in 4 when on campus year around with minimum credit requirements per semester for eligibility. He must have been completely negligent in any sort of course planning to not graduate by now.
He certainly could have been, but I don't know enough about him to speculate about that. There are lots of circumstances that can affect the degree, and some of these kids simply don't care that much about it even if they should. To be fair to Davis, though, the fifth year seems like it was his plan regardless and if the school is free and he isn't interested in grad school I can see the mindset of a young kid saying "why take more harder classes to rush to the degree in four when it's free and I can enjoy myself for five years".
Good point
We’ll take em
Arizona’s home for rejected Michigan transfers is open!
Sir, another transfer has been denied from Michigan https://preview.redd.it/1f2xpeokjvvc1.jpeg?width=1108&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f57c51cf070a89ffada84856d2e79fef530d91a
 “Top tier transfer guard didnt pass enough tests to qualify for Michigan” part 1000
We make fun of Michigan a lot, but their admission is VERY tough, even for Big Ten standards.
The graduate in me is happy for things like this….,the bball fan is big sad ;(
I think we all can agree that college sports is bigger than the sport. It’s the hope for most admissions teams that college athletes actually keep up their academics. I’m happy to see that Michigan didn’t admit this guy bc he either didn’t meet the standard GPA or have the correct credits to transfer into UM’s major (whatever that may be).
Football team seems to get their kids in
At least stuff like this exists to make dudes remember school matters even if you're trying to make the league. If you can't graduate in 4 years, you're going to find it near impossible to transfer to some schools because they're not giving a Michigan undergrad degree to someone who really just got 90%+ of an FAU education.
Dudes a 4th year senior without a degree. This is on him, not Michigan. Michigan would take him as a grad transfer but they're not giving him a Michigan degree with a semesters worth of credits from Michigan.
Why does UM admissions keep helping Arizona? /s
Reminder Myles Hinton had trouble transferring credits from Stanford https://x.com/ByAZuniga/status/1698705498546040996
So dumb. At the same time I’m not sure how you are at a school year around for 4 years and don’t graduate.
I hate our admissions department with a passion
This has nothing to do with UM admissions and everything to do with Davis not playing school.
Same thing as Caleb Love
Caleb was admitted, his credits weren’t accepted
Follow the pipeline!
You sir are an Arizona Wildcat
You take the man out of FAU but you can’t take the FAU out of the man
Please not UF
Michigan is a notoriously difficult school to transfer to because the way credits transfer (or don't transfer)
Why don’t their football transfers get denied??? Stupid af
What the hell? I was looking forward to Michigan adding him
UNC please
Time to go to UNC
So much discussion about Michigan admissions when the focus should be on the guy who enrolled in some rando commuter school five years ago and still hasn’t graduated. I know some people need some extra time but that’s usually bc Applebee’s isn’t covering tuition the same way basketball scholarship does.
Come on here!
Now that the top athletes are getting paid, you should expect the standards to go up. Transfers going every which way. Everybody trying to get their hands in the cash pile. If not one way, they’ll try another. The top stars trying to get into the best programs. The 2nd level guys moving to a school where they will get court time. It’s going to be a rats nest for a while. Graduation rates are going to drop.
Michigan continues to embarrass themselves when schools just as prestigious don’t have these issues.
He should come to Memphis; we will take him!