The RC Experience

The small part of a big university.

The Residential College started in 1967, and it's still the only four-year Michigan Learning Community inside LSA. About 250 students join each year and live in East Quad, where most of their classes happen too. You get a small college without giving up anything Michigan has.

What Makes the RC Different?

• It doesn't box you in. Every RC student is an LSA student. Your major can be anything LSA offers, and pre-med or pre-law works exactly like it does anywhere else on campus. You can still do programs like Honors, CSP, and UROP. The RC is where you live, get advised, and find your people.
• Small classes, and advisors who actually know you. Classes usually run 10 to 20 people as discussions, so professors know who you are. The advising is what surprises people. RC advisors work with about 700 students. LSA's central office covers around 17,000. Yours is down the hall from your room.
• Home and class are the same building. East Quad holds your classrooms, the Keene Theater, the studios, music practice rooms, a dining hall, and your own room. You live there your first two years, so the people down the hall tend to be in your seminar too. Getting to class means walking downstairs.
• The requirements are lighter than they look. You finish the same LSA degree as everyone else. Your first-year writing seminar is capped at 15 and it's all RC students. Language is the real standout: between semi-immersion classes and the lunch tables and coffee hours, most people reach proficiency in about two semesters instead of four. And RC courses count toward distribution and your major, so you're usually knocking these out with classes you'd take anyway.
• You have people before you show up. RC MAP pairs you with an older student the summer before you start, and Summer Pen Pals means you arrive already knowing a face. After that, the Forums and the RC Student Union are the easy way in.

Why Choose the RC?

If a 300-person lecture hall sounds like the wrong way to spend four years, this is the other option. The students here aren't one type. Some are deep in the sciences, some in the humanities, plenty are still deciding. What they share is wanting a class where they actually talk, and professors who know their names. 

Two things families always ask. There's no separate RC tuition. And the two years in East Quad come with priority housing. The FAQ covers the rest.