To increase the socioeconomic diversity of the university’s undergraduate population and improve access for Michigan’s underserved communities, U-M will continue the HAIL (High Achieving Involved Leaders) Scholarship Program. This initiative provides full tuition and fees for high-achieving, low-income students from across the state.
Year Four Progress
Each year since its start in 2015, the HAIL Scholarship Program has contributed to an increase in applications from low-income students across Michigan, helping to increase the socioeconomic diversity of first-year classes. Overall, the program has proven to boost application, admission and matriculation rates, with the primary effect being a larger number of applications.
Now completing its fourth year, the HAIL Scholarship Program encouraged 791 new low-income first-year students to apply to U-M. Of those, 273 chose to enroll. In total, 1,088 HAIL recipients have enrolled during the first four years of the program, representing 73 Michigan counties and 330 different high schools from across the state. Of these, 85 percent received Pell Grants and 63 percent are first-generation college students.
First-year retention metrics for HAIL Scholarship recipients continue to improve. The one-year retention rate for the first cohort (Fall 2016) was 92.4 percent. That number rose to 94.1 percent for the second cohort and 96 percent for the third cohort, bringing the HAIL population’s retention rate in line with other non-HAIL, in-state, low-income students. The four-year graduation rate for the first cohort will be available in October 2020.
Table 1: Number of Applications from In-State Students with (Self-reported) Family Incomes of $50,000 or less (2015–2019)
| Year | Applications | % Change over Baseline |
| Fall 2015 cohort (Baseline) | 1,460 | — |
| Fall 2016 cohort | 1,944 | 33.2% |
| Fall 2017 cohort | 1,744 | 19.5% |
| Fall 2018 cohort | 2,174 | 48.9% |
| Fall 2019 cohort | 1,928 | 32.1% |
The HAIL Scholarship was first offered to the fall 2015 entering first-year class, and established a baseline to which future years would be compared.
Responsibility: Office of Enrollment Management