The University of Michigan boasts of one of the largest health care complexes in the world, one of the best university library systems in the country, and some of the best computer access for students and faculty of any campus in the world. Michigan's teaching and research staff is highly distinguished, including an astronaut, distinguished world authorities, Pulitzer Prize winners, internationally acclaimed performing artists and composers, Supreme Court Justices, and best-selling novelists, artists, and filmmakers. Michigan has more than 300 named endowed chairs. Most of its academic departments, graduate, and professional schools (including its law, medical, and business schools) are ranked in the top 10 nationally in their respective disciplines. Furthermore, the university is the largest pre-law and pre-medicine university in the country and has the largest yearly research expenditure of any public university in the United States.

Founded in 1854, the College of Engineering extensively supports numerous engineering and science related degree programs. The Aerospace Engineering program at the University of Michigan was the nation's first in 1914 and maintains strong relationships with Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The College of Engineering is noted for its Solar Car team 

The University of Michigan Health System includes C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, University Hospital, and Women's Hospital, as well as nearly 150 clinics and MCare, an HMO. The university opened the first university-owned hospital in the United States in 1869. The EKG, gastroscope, and Jonas Salk's polio vaccine were invented at the university.

The University is also home to the National Election Studies and one of the nation's most watched economic index, the University of Michigan's Consumer Confidence Index.

The students at the University of Michigan come from all 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. Almost 50 percent of undergraduates come from the top five percent of their graduating high school class and most are in the top tenth of their class.

In 2003 two lawsuits involving the school's affirmative action admissions policy reached the U.S. Supreme Court (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger). President George W. Bush took the unusual step of publicly opposing the policy before the court issued a ruling, though the eventual ruling was mixed. In the first case, the court upheld the Law School admissions policy while in the second, it ruled against the university's undergraduate admissions policy.