Michigan State University is a public Big Ten university located in East Lansing, Michigan, approximately 3 miles from the state's capital. MSU has the distinction of being the first agricultural college in the United States, and today it is well known for its highly ranked academic programs, especially in education and agriculture. Its study abroad program is the largest of any single-campus university in the United States and offers over 200 programs in more than 60 countries on all continents, including Antarctica. Over the 2004-05 school year, 2,461 MSU students studied abroad.
MSU has the sixth largest student body in the U.S. with a total of 45,166 students and a faculty of approximately 4,500 with 6,000 staff members. MSU ranks 77th in the world and 74th in the United States with over 200 academic programs, several of which are highly ranked, including the programs in the
Physics & Astronomy department,
communications,
agriculture,
media,
criminal justice,
music therapy,
packaging,
political science (MSU's close proximity to the state's capital allows many students to get internships with state politicians),
business, and
education. The MSU
College of Law is considered the number one law school of the Big Ten.
In
athletics, MSU has 22 sports teams called the Spartans who participate in the NCAA's Division I-A and in the
Big Ten Conference in all varsity sports except ice hockey, which competes in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. MSU is the only division one athletic program to have multiple national championships in both football and basketball. Men's ice hockey has also garnered recognition for winning two national titles. On October 6, 2001, traditional archrivals MSU's and the University of Michigan's ice hockey teams played "The Cold War" in Spartan Stadium in front of a record crowd of 74,544 (and viewed by over 38,000,000 people worldwide). The game ended in a 3-3 tie.
Presently, there are approximately 389,000 living MSU alumni with famous MSU alumni spanning across various fields, especially in sports. Notable alumni include billionare Eli Broad, actors James Caan and Robert Ulrich,
Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, former and current NBA players Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Jason Richardson, and Zach Randolph, and football players Morten Andersen, Derrick Mason, and Bubba Smith.
MSU Admissions
