An Overview of Michigan’s Mechanical Engineering Program

What is Mechanical Engineering at UofM? 

The University of Michigan’s Mechanical Engineering Program has been very well known for a long time. Michigan has always had ties with the automotive industry and the big three automakers (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) whom have provided tremendous support to establish a world class Mechanical Engineering Program. 

According to the current U.S. News Rankings, Michigan’s Undergraduate Engineering program ranks number 6 in the country and they rank 4 in best Mechanical Engineering programs. According to university-list, UofM ranks #5 for Graduate Mechanical Engineering Programs.

There are numerous buildings associated with the College of Mechanical Engineering, including the GG Brown Building (where a lot of classes are), Ford Robotics Building (research and classes), Automotive Laboratory (research) and the Wilson Center (project teams). 

Admission Statistics and Strengths

Admission to the college of Engineering varies significantly depending on whether you are applying from in-state or out of state. The overall acceptance rate for UofM was 26% my year (class of 2024) but dropped to 18% for the class of 2025 due to an increase in applications from 65,000 to 83,000.  

For the College of Engineering, the acceptance rate is a little lower. For my year, it was around 20% for combined in-state and out of state. Overall, the acceptance rate was 47.5% for in state, and 21.9% for out of state. Translating that over to the College of Engineering, we can expect the in-state acceptance rate to be around 30-40%, and the out of state acceptance rate to be 11-16%. Of course, these numbers are a lot lower this year compared to my year due to the large amount of applications. 

For the statistics, it takes on average a: 3.9 GPA, ACT of around 34 and an SAT score of 1450 to gain admission. 

As far as academic strengths, Michigan’s Mechanical Engineering Program sends a lot of students to jobs in the automotive industry, which makes sense due to its long standing roots with the automotive companies in Michigan. Michigan also prepares its students for a career in mechatronics and consumer electronics with extensive design and manufacturing courses that mechanical engineering students have to take throughout their 4 years. Along with the traditional curriculum, Michigan encourages learning outside of the classroom as well. There are numerous project teams at Michigan, including but not limited to: Solar Car, MRacing Formula SAE, Michigan Baja Racing, MRover, Michigan Supermileage, SPARK Electric Racing, and many more. UofM also provides numerous research experiences to enrich the learning of mechanical engineering students. 

My UofM Mechanical Engineering Experience 

In my freshman year, I took general College of Engineering courses, such as Physics 140, Math classes, humanities classes, and my first mechanical engineering class (ME211, Solid Mechanics). I was fortunate enough to have a lot of AP credits so I was able to start taking degree-related courses my freshman year. I also joined MRacing, the University of Michigan’s Formula SAE Team in the business division, as well as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as their Business Chair.  

Sophomore year was when I dove into Mechanical Engineering. I took Thermodynamics, Design and Manufacturing 1 and 2, Dynamics, Circuits, Mechanical Behavior of Materials and a math class for my math minor. I also joined Professor Boehman’s lab, doing research on internal combustion engines and how to optimize Biodiesel in them. I was also elected Business Director of MRacing, which has been a great privilege. Participating in these project teams also opens a lot of career opportunities and resources that previously would not be available to you. 

Another opportunity Michigan provides is a lot of career resources. There are resume reviews, internship labs and networking opportunities. This assisted ,e in getting my first internship in manufacturing at Michelin, as well as my second internship in propulsion systems at Stellantis (formerly FCA).  

Overall, I have found that the professors in the Mechanical Engineering Department have been extremely good. Their office hours are helpful, they genuinely care about students and their feedback, and are always there to assist you. The grading is never extremely harsh and everything is explained very well. It helps to have a tool like Atlas to see how good each professor is, but even the professors that have been rated a little lower, I’ve found to be very helpful.  

My favorite course so far has been Design and Manufacturing 1, where we were tasked with designing and manufacturing our own robot which had to complete a certain amount of tasks. Although it was a very high workload class, I felt that I learned so much from it that it was justified. My favorite theoretical course has been Mechanical Behavior of Materials because I enjoyed learning about different materials and loading criteria and how these materials fail and yield.  

Written by Madhav Bhat, PathIvy University of Michigan Student Ambassador