How does undergraduate teaching at Notre Dame compare to Michigan?

The biggest practical tradeoff is scale: Notre Dame is smaller and tends to feel more undergraduate-centered, while Michigan offers a much larger academic universe but can feel more impersonal, especially early on. In day-to-day teaching, that usually means easier professor access and more consistently small-to-medium classes at Notre Dame, versus more variation at Michigan depending on department, course level, and how proactive you are. Both have excellent faculty, but the student experience around those faculty is often different.

At Notre Dame, undergraduates are the core of the institution, so teaching and advising are usually built around them. Intro classes can still be sizable, but many students find office hours, faculty mentorship, and discussion-based classes easier to access. Upper-level courses are often where Notre Dame stands out most, because the smaller student body can translate into closer relationships with professors and more direct feedback.

At Michigan, the academic depth is enormous, and that can be a real advantage if you want specialized courses, large departments, and lots of research-active faculty. The flip side is that intro classes in popular areas can be quite large, and your experience may depend more on GSIs, lecturers, or discussion sections before you get into advanced work. In many departments, upper-level classes become much more personal, but you often have to navigate a bigger system to get that attention.

If teaching quality means feeling known, getting regular faculty contact, and having a campus culture that leans heavily toward undergraduates, Notre Dame has the edge. If you are excited by breadth, are comfortable advocating for yourself in a large university, and want access to a very wide range of courses and departments, Michigan can still deliver excellent teaching, just with more unevenness from class to class.