It's typically in the top 3 public US colleges and top 20 overall. The average SAT score coming in is 1900 with over 25% of their freshman class arriving with 4.0 GPAs out of high school. So they have a pretty good program by typical measures.
Their advantage then over similar schools is the sheer size and funding. A school like Dartmouth probably has 'smarter' students enrolling on average, but Michigan's engineering college has more students (8,000+) than the entirety of Dartmouth (6,100). So take those 8,000 engineering students and add another 32,000 in the non-engineering tracks (many of whom are in sciences, medicine, mathematics, physics, etc.) and you're bound to produce some interesting research.
So a ton of smart students, but then there's the money... U of M has the 8th largest endowment ($8 billion) in the US and the 2nd largest research budget at over $1.2 billion per year. They spent $190mm on engineering research last year and over $550mm in the medical school on health / biotech R&D.
One could ask why they don't produce more than they do.
Realistically, the only things that matter that you mentioned are money (not the endowment, though, just the research budget, AKA grant money) and the facilities.
Undergrads are basically worthless (in fact, they may be a detriment because they drain resources from the professors and the grad students).
Their advantage then over similar schools is the sheer size and funding. A school like Dartmouth probably has 'smarter' students enrolling on average, but Michigan's engineering college has more students (8,000+) than the entirety of Dartmouth (6,100). So take those 8,000 engineering students and add another 32,000 in the non-engineering tracks (many of whom are in sciences, medicine, mathematics, physics, etc.) and you're bound to produce some interesting research.
So a ton of smart students, but then there's the money... U of M has the 8th largest endowment ($8 billion) in the US and the 2nd largest research budget at over $1.2 billion per year. They spent $190mm on engineering research last year and over $550mm in the medical school on health / biotech R&D.
One could ask why they don't produce more than they do.