University of Michigan block M

Twenty-two years of Troy School District admissions to U-M

Tangled up in
Blue

Troy School District sends more students to the University of Michigan than almost any district in the state. Since 2004 its applications have doubled — and its odds have been cut nearly in half. This is what changed, and what it cost.

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The short answer

Same seats. Twice the line.

In 2004, a Troy High or Athens senior who applied to Michigan had better-than-even odds — about seven in ten got in. In 2025, fewer than four in ten did. The district did not send fewer students, or worse students. It sent twice as many, with far stronger records, into a door that had narrowed faster than they improved.

Applications and admissions — Troy School District to U-M

Troy High and Athens combined, entering classes 2004–2025.

Every bar is one year's applicants. The solid block is the ones who got in; the faded block is the ones who did not. The solid block barely grows while the faded one keeps climbing. Source: University of Michigan FOIA response #261656.

At 2004’s odds, Troy High and Athens would have produced 1,208 more Michigan admits between 2005 and 2025 than they actually did.

Act I · Two high schools

Troy High and Athens

Two public high schools, three miles apart, in the same district, with the same counselors and the same course catalogue. They have not fared the same.

2004

Seven in ten

Troy High sent 131 applications to Ann Arbor and got 94 admits — a 71.8% rate. Athens sent 68 and got 49, at 72.1%. For a strong student in this district, Michigan was less a reach than an expectation.

2010

The high-water mark

Troy High's best year on record: 183 applications, 142 admits, a 77.6% rate. More Troy High students were admitted to Michigan in 2010 than in any year before or since — including years when twice as many applied.

2016

The schools split

Athens drops to 39.7% while Troy High holds at 48.4%. From here on the two schools diverge and never fully re-converge — Athens runs consistently below its sibling, and the gap is widest in the years the university is tightening fastest.

2025

Four in ten, and three in ten

Troy High: 292 applications, 118 admits, 40.4%. Athens: 112 applications, 38 admits, 33.9%. Both schools now send more students than ever and get back roughly what they got back twenty years ago.

Admit rate by school

Share of each school's U-M applicants who were admitted.

Athens tracks below Troy High in most years, and the gap widens after 2016. School colours, sampled from each school's own athletics mark, are Athens #C20F2F / #B4A169 and Troy High #CFD0D2 / #000000. The chart itself uses the site's validated data palette instead — silver is achromatic and cannot carry meaning in a chart.

Applications sent, by school

Troy High has grown its applicant pool far faster than Athens.

Troy High more than doubled its applications (131 → 292). Athens grew far less (68 → 112) — part of why its admit count fell while Troy High's held.

Act II · The door

What happened in Ann Arbor

None of this is really about the district. Between 2004 and 2025 the University of Michigan went from 21,293 first-year applications to 109,112 — a five-fold increase — while the size of the admitted class barely moved.

U-M first-year applications and admits

The university admits about the same number of people it did twenty years ago.

Admits (orange) are close to flat across two decades. Applications (blue) went up five-fold. Source: U-M Common Data Sets, 1998–99 through 2025–26.

The bar moved too

It is not only that more people applied. The academic profile of the people who got in rose sharply. A 30 ACT was above the 75th percentile of Michigan's entering class in 2004; today it is below the 25th.

ACT composite range of enrolled first-years

25th and 75th percentiles. The whole band shifts up six points at the bottom.

The 2004 75th percentile (30) is the 2019 25th percentile. Test-optional years (2021–2023) reflect only the students who chose to submit scores.

Share of enrolled first-years with a high-school GPA of 3.75 or above

Reported in the Common Data Set; 2004–2006 not published.

From 64% to 93.9%. Nearly the entire entering class now arrives with an A average.

Act III · Three campuses

Not one door — three

"Getting into Michigan" is really three different admissions problems, on three different pieces of ground. The FOIA data breaks the district's applicants out by college, and the three tell very different stories.

Colours below are the University of Michigan's official brand palette — the exact values published by the university's Brand & Visual Identity office.

Central Campus · U-M Arboretum Blue #2F65A7 & Rackham Green #75988D

The College of Literature, Science & the Arts

LSA is the volume play — it takes more than half of everything the district sends, and it is where the collapse is sharpest. Troy High's LSA rate went from 70.5% to 36.0%. Athens' LSA rate is now under one in three.

North Campus · U-M Taubman Teal #00B2A9 & Wave Field Green #A5A508

The College of Engineering

Engineering is the one bright spot. Troy High sent 79 applicants to CoE in 2025 — its most ever — and 42 got in, a 53.2% rate that is well above the university's overall 16.4%. A Troy High engineering applicant today still has better odds than a Troy High applicant of any kind had in 2016.

Ross School of Business · U-M Ross Orange #D86018

Preferred admission to Ross

Ross only appears in the record from 2017, when the university began itemising it. It is the hardest door in the dataset and the most volatile: Athens sent 6 applicants in 2023 and got 1 in. Across nine years, Troy High and Athens together sent 246 applicants to Ross and got 74 offers.

Admit rate by college — Troy High

Engineering holds up; LSA slides; Ross is a different animal entirely.

Ross is itemised only from 2017. "Other" is every remaining U-M school and college, derived as the school total minus the itemised three.

Where Troy High's applications go

Troy High applications by college, 2004–2025.

The mix has shifted toward Engineering and toward the schools outside the big two — but LSA is still the bulk of what the district sends.

Act IV · What Troy pays

The house, and the bill

People move to Troy for the schools, and they pay for the privilege in the price of the house. So it is fair to ask what that purchase now buys at the state's flagship university.

Typical home value in the four Troy ZIP codes

Zillow Home Value Index, annual mean of monthly values.

Troy's housing market peaked in 2005, lost a third of its value by 2011, and did not regain its 2005 nominal level until about 2017. 48098 (north-west Troy, which feeds Troy High) is the most expensive of the four throughout.

The finding people miss

In nominal dollars a typical Troy home is up 56% since 2004. Adjusted for inflation it is down about 8%. Troy homeowners are not, in real terms, wealthier than they were in 2004 — but the tuition bill in front of them is up 44% in those same real dollars.

Troy home value vs. U-M in-state tuition, in constant 2025 dollars

Both indexed to 2004 = 100, so they can share one axis honestly.

Indexed because the two series have different units — the alternative, a second y-axis, can be made to show almost anything.

Precincts, and the honest caveats

Troy redrew its voting map on 21 April 2025, cutting 37 precincts down to 27. Precinct boundaries do not follow ZIP boundaries, and — more importantly — they do not follow school-district boundaries either: seven school districts reach into the City of Troy. Troy School District covers most of the city but not all of it, and a handful of Troy addresses are zoned to Avondale, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Royal Oak, Lamphere or Warren Consolidated.

So the ZIP-level values below are the closest defensible stand-in for "what a house costs in TSD," not an exact district figure.

Act V · Who pays for Michigan

The state stepped back

There is a reason the door narrowed, and it is not that Michigan decided to dislike Troy. Adjusted for inflation, the State of Michigan's appropriation to the Ann Arbor campus is roughly a third smaller than it was in 2004.

State appropriation to U-M Ann Arbor, constant 2025 dollars

Fiscal years ending 30 June. Source: IPEDS finance survey.

Nominal appropriations rose from $312M to $366M. In real terms they fell from $531M to $366M — a 31% cut in purchasing power.

A university that loses a third of its public subsidy per real dollar has three options: shrink, charge more, or admit more of the people who pay triple. Michigan chose the last two.

In-state vs. out-of-state tuition and fees

Published full-time undergraduate rates, nominal dollars.

A non-resident now pays about 3.5× a resident — $69,447 against $20,082. Every non-resident admitted is, in budget terms, worth three-and-a-half Troy High or Athens kids.

The number that explains the rest

Michigan's House Fiscal Agency reports that U-M Ann Arbor has the lowest in-state share of any public university in Michigan — 49%, against a statewide average of 80%. Barely half of the students at the state's flagship are from the state.

Endowment and institutional scholarships, constant 2025 dollars

Indexed to 2004 = 100.

The endowment nearly tripled in real terms, to $21.2 billion. The university's own scholarship spending more than doubled in real terms too — the counterweight to the tuition line, and a real one.

In fairness

Sticker price is not what most admitted Michigan families pay. U-M's institutional aid rose from $169M to $626M — up 129% after inflation — and from autumn 2025 the Go Blue Guarantee covers full tuition for in-state families earning under $125,000. A student from either school who gets in today may well pay less than one who got in in 2004. The problem this site documents is the getting in.

Act VI · The ledger

So — are we getting more, the same, or less?

Everything on one page, 2004 against 2025, in the units a household actually experiences. Money is in constant 2025 dollars wherever the row says so.

Everything indexed to 2004 = 100

What you pay, against what the district gets back.

The two flat lines at the bottom are the ones that matter: admits, and the odds of getting one. Everything that rises is a cost.

The counterfactual

Hold the odds at 2004's 71.9% and run every later applicant pool through them. The gap between that and what actually happened is the clearest statement of what changed.

Admits Troy School District would have had at 2004 odds

Against admits it actually received.

The shaded distance between the lines totals 1,208 admissions across 2005–2025 — a little over one Troy High graduating class, spread across twenty-one years.

The verdict

Fewer. Not fewer in raw count — the district squeezed out nine percent more admits by sending twice as many students. Fewer per applicant, fewer per dollar of house, fewer per dollar of tuition, and fewer per taxpayer. Troy High and Athens did everything right: more applicants, better records, stronger scores. It bought a worse result, at a higher price, from a university its taxes fund less of every year.

The record

Year by year

Every figure on this site, in one table. Blank cells are gaps in the source record, not zeros — they are left blank on purpose.

Download the full table as CSV ↓ · the site's JSON payload

Methods & sources

Where all of this comes from

Admissions
University of Michigan FOIA response #261656 — first-year applications and admissions from Troy High and Athens, entering terms 2004–2025, itemised for Engineering, LSA and (from 2017) Ross. "Other" is derived as the school total minus those three, and covers Nursing, Kinesiology, Music/Theatre & Dance, Art & Design, Architecture, Information and Public Policy.
University
U-M Office of Budget & Planning, Common Data Sets, 1998–99 through 2025–26 (28 workbooks). Applications, admits, test-score percentiles and GPA distributions are parsed from these directly. Where a workbook states its own column total, the parse is checked against it; all eleven years that publish one reconcile exactly, and the pre-2015 years match IPEDS independently.
Finance
NCES IPEDS finance survey, form F1A, UNITID 170976, fiscal years 2004–2023 — state appropriation (F1B11), endowment market value (F1H02) and institutional scholarships (F1E05 + F1E06). FY2024 and FY2025 endowment come from U-M's published University Endowment Fund Profiles ($19.2B and $21.2B); FY2024–25 appropriations from the state budget. IPEDS has not yet released FY2024 finance, so the scholarship row stops at 2023.
Tuition
IPEDS academic-year tuition and required fees, full-time undergraduate, 2004–2023; AY2024–25 and AY2025–26 read from the CDS 2025–26 workbook (resident and non-resident taken off the same two columns so the pair stays on one basis).
Housing
Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), all homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted, at ZIP level for 48083, 48084, 48085 and 48098, averaged to annual figures. ZHVI is the typical value of a home in the 33rd–67th percentile range — not a median sale price. Zillow's ZIP-level median sale-price series does not extend back to 2004, which is why ZHVI is used.
Inflation
BLS CPI-U, US city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted, annual average of monthly values. 2025 is the average of eleven months — BLS never published an October 2025 index.
Geography
City of Troy Clerk — the precinct map adopted 21 April 2025 reduced Troy from 37 precincts to 27. Seven school districts reach into the City of Troy, so ZIP-level housing values approximate Troy School District without matching it exactly.
Colour
University of Michigan hues are the official values published by U-M Brand & Visual Identity (Maize #FFCB05, Blue #00274C, Ross Orange #D86018, Taubman Teal #00B2A9, Arboretum Blue #2F65A7, Wave Field Green #A5A508). The block M at the top of this page is the university's own mark, taken from its published logo file and shown in maize #FFCB05; it is used to identify the institution this page is about, not to suggest any affiliation. School colours were sampled from each school's own athletics mark: Troy High #CFD0D2 / #000000; Athens #C20F2F / #B4A169 / #000000. Chart marks use a separately validated categorical palette — brand colours are used for identity, never to encode data, because several of them fail colour-vision separation and contrast checks.
Music
The Michigan Marching Band — "Let's Go Blue," "Temptation," "M Fanfare," "The Victors," and the Bond opener (Goldfinger / Dr. No) — and Bob Dylan, "Tangled up in Blue," live at Wembley Stadium, July 1984, which the site is named for.
Caveats
The FOIA covers applications from these two high schools, which is not the same as applications from residents of the district. Admit counts are offers, not enrolments — some admitted students go elsewhere. Test-score percentiles for 2021–2023 reflect only submitters during the test-optional period. And 1,208 is a counterfactual, not a forecast: had Michigan admitted at 2004 rates it would have admitted differently everywhere, not only in Troy.
Let's Go Blue
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