You will be competitive for any in Mich if you keep top quarter class rank. Do the best you can.
It's not wrong to be objective... that is the point of gpa and rank and why programs and schools use them.
You rank will go down... because the bottom quarter or so of your class will flunk or go to extended grad programs. Count on that. Most schools put the hardest courses with actual chance to fail during 2nd spring, 3rd summer, 4th fall 2nd year semester (physio, micro, LEA etc depending on your school).
It is always in your best interest to be humble and friendly and easy to work with on rotations regardless of your paper stats.
...Most of the Mich ones don't get as many apps as they probably should since they're not in a pod school city and Det has a bad rap. Still, realize a residency crunch or shortage is likely coming soon with new schools graduating, so max out your options and work hard to have no issues in match.
DMC was elite among pod residencies, but the longtime director retired and assistant director left to be in a different group. I think their quality competitiveness has dropped off at least a bit from elite to good or very good. They did get some good new attendings, but clerk and find out.
Beaumont Wayne (was Oakwood Annapolis for quite awhile) has a solid program but legendary director is near retirement... make sure there are young attendings and good cases when you visit. It will still be a solid option.
St John Ascension (StJohn Hospital or "StJohn Main") is good. It was my top choice in match, and I visited the 2 above and some really good programs elsewhere also. You can live in Grosse Pointe, which is nice and safe, and the hospital is large academic setting. The program is not the absolute monster it was decades ago since some of the hospitals in their umbrella spun off as newer programs (Ascension Macomb, McLaren Macomb, Henry Ford Macomb, etc), but there are still a lot of cases and academics and a good depth chart of attendings and history there. It's absolutely worth a visit.
Henry Ford Macomb and StMarys Livonia are your newer but fairly good Detroit ones... both smaller and pretty dependant on director for cases and academics, but potentially good. Pay close attention to how many cases they have per resident and how many residents they take.
Most of the other Detroit programs are average or lower... but some of them would still get fair or good interest if they were in a more popular location. Genesys (Ascension Grand Blanc) is in a nice area but pretty thin on trauma and overall balance... mostly just elective stuff. Ascension Providence gets a fair number of cases and you could do worse, but it's largely DM and limb salvage... you won't get the elective and trauma you see at the top 3 Det ones.
