College Academic Ratings

[Bullaholic]

We all know how college athletic teams are rated, but is there a reliable, accurate system that ranks universities academically, other than heresay?

Which University has the best academic rating in Texas?

It seems that some institutions are consistently rated in a particular field year after year:

Harvard- Business
Johns-Hopkins- Medicine
MIT- Engineering

[bandera7]

I believe the USA Today puts one out yearly...

[bandera7]

Scratch that U.S. News and World Report

[bandera7]

http://www.metrolyrics.com/you-me-lyrics-dave-matthews-band.html

Puts UT at 76, Rice at 100, A&M at 179. Baylor and SMU not on the list.

However, this list is criticized for not analyzing practical factors such as % degree attainment, and merely looks at exclusivity and price and things like that. Take this as you will.

[sahen]

Originally posted by bandera7
http://www.metrolyrics.com/you-me-lyrics-dave-matthews-band.html

Puts UT at 76, Rice at 100, A&M at 179. Baylor and SMU not on the list.

However, this list is criticized for not analyzing practical factors such as % degree attainment, and merely looks at exclusivity and price and things like that. Take this as you will.

your source is the lyrics to a dave matthews band song? you must've copied and pasted the wrong link??

typically the knock on US News and World Report is they also include money things like endowment in their rankings which really don't make a lot of sense for an academic ranking...


i think the best way to look at universities is by field...if your interesting in doing X then go to a university that is good at training and getting jobs for X...cause ultimately thats all you care about...

[bandera7]

http://www.usnews.com/sections/education/worlds-best-universities/index.html

hahaha. Yes definitely the wrong link. That is a great song though.

[Bullaholic]

You guys are running into the same things that I have in the past---it depends upon whose ranking you consider to be credible based on the criteria they use.

[bandera7]

There is a pretty well established public opinion on a lot of universities. And yes this is a problem, in that the rankings have weird ways of figuring these kind of things out.

[Bullaholic]

Originally posted by bandera7
There is a pretty well established public opinion on a lot of universities. And yes this is a problem, in that the rankings have weird ways of figuring these kind of things out.

Yep--and it seems the bigger the "rep"---the bigger the tuition ol' mom and dad get to pay.

[ASUFrisbeeStud]

http://www.angelo.edu/news/PrincetonReview.html

ASU made The Princeton Review this year.

[bandera7]

I have a few friends that go to ACU and they enjoy it alot and are pretty satisfied with the way the job hunt is looking in a few years. They feel they will be more than competitive.

[big daddy russ]

Originally posted by Bullaholic
We all know how college athletic teams are rated, but is there a reliable, accurate system that ranks universities academically, other than heresay?

Which University has the best academic rating in Texas?

It seems that some institutions are consistently rated in a particular field year after year:

Harvard- Business
Johns-Hopkins- Medicine
MIT- Engineering
I know Rice is definitely the most academically-prestigious Texas university. The only Texas school that's considered an Ivy-level education. After that, Southwestern, Trinity, UT, Baylor and SMU are all pretty high academically.

[Keith7]

Originally posted by big daddy russ
I know Rice is definitely the most academically-prestigious Texas university. The only Texas school that's considered an Ivy-level education. After that, Southwestern, Trinity, UT, Baylor and SMU are all pretty high academically.

Rice only uses branding to make it appear "ivy league" it's not any better than any other college in Texas. In fact there is not much difference between UT and Midwestern State. A degree is only as valuable as what you put into it, it doesn't matter what the name of the school is on the diploma or how much you spend to get into the school.

[Txbroadcaster]

Originally posted by Keith7
it doesn't matter what the name of the school is on the diploma or how much you spend to get into the school.

I disagree I do think SOME people look at the name of the school on a diploma when it comes to hiring

[RMAC]

Originally posted by Txbroadcaster
I disagree I do think SOME people look at the name of the school on a diploma when it comes to hiring

I agree with that to an extent. . . I've been told by numerous business owners though that they don't care about where an employee went to school as much as how much money are they going to make that company. Businesses are in the business of staying in business, and in the end, that's all that matters. . . and to do that, you've got to get the best employees overall, not the employees that went to the "best" colleges/universities.

[Daddy D 11]

Originally posted by RMAC
I agree with that to an extent. . . I've been told by numerous business owners though that they don't care about where an employee went to school as much as how much money are they going to make that company. Businesses are in the business of staying in business, and in the end, that's all that matters. . . and to do that, you've got to get the best employees overall, not the employees that went to the "best" colleges/universities.

True but if you can't "predict" the future... which we can't. And all an employer has to go by is the education that someone has received. It looks a lot better when you have graduate from UT and not UNT.

[Daddy D 11]

Originally posted by Keith7
Rice only uses branding to make it appear "ivy league" it's not any better than any other college in Texas. In fact there is not much difference between UT and Midwestern State. A degree is only as valuable as what you put into it, it doesn't matter what the name of the school is on the diploma or how much you spend to get into the school.


False. You have to put in more to get a degree at a better university. Hours wise you can argue it takes as many credits but a school like UT or A&M has a far superior faculty than other universities. Thus relating in more challenging courses. Thus resulting in a better education.

9 times out of 10 an employer is going to choose a UT, A&M, Baylor, SMU, TCU grad over a UNT, MSU or UofH grad.

All are quality schools, but some are better.

[DDBooger]

Originally posted by Daddy D 11
False. You have to put in more to get a degree at a better university. Hours wise you can argue it takes as many credits but a school like UT or A&M has a far superior faculty than other universities. Thus relating in more challenging courses. Thus resulting in a better education.

9 times out of 10 an employer is going to choose a UT, A&M, Baylor, SMU, TCU grad over a UNT, MSU or UofH grad.

All are quality schools, but some are better. In the advanced degrees absolutely. An MBA from UT or Harvard are golden. Undergraduate however, many of the renowned professors don't even teach. Research Universities care more about their publishing than their status as a teacher.

[mwynn05]

booger is right

[carter08]

Hotel and Restaurant management: Houston

UH also has the 2nd best creative writing program in the state, behind UT. Yeah!

[Txbroadcaster]

Originally posted by Daddy D 11
False. You have to put in more to get a degree at a better university. Hours wise you can argue it takes as many credits but a school like UT or A&M has a far superior faculty than other universities. Thus relating in more challenging courses. Thus resulting in a better education.

9 times out of 10 an employer is going to choose a UT, A&M, Baylor, SMU, TCU grad over a UNT, MSU or UofH grad.

All are quality schools, but some are better.

ehh depends on the school and their reputation of their individual depts.

The school my wife and I went to is known for their education and Psych programs. Even as a "smaller" school to have a degree from that dep is considered a huge plus.

[big daddy russ]

Originally posted by Keith7
Rice only uses branding to make it appear "ivy league" it's not any better than any other college in Texas. In fact there is not much difference between UT and Midwestern State. A degree is only as valuable as what you put into it, it doesn't matter what the name of the school is on the diploma or how much you spend to get into the school.
Same could be said for Ivy League schools themselves. My wife went to a prestigious private high school here in Houston and she had a few friends at Ivy League schools. Her Ivy League friends (two went to Penn, one went to Yale) actually make fun of Harvard because it's one of the three toughest classical schools in the world to get into (Yale, Oxford), but has a curriculum on par with most state schools.

The three things that separate the eight Ivy League schools and numerous Ivy-level schools from the rest has nothing to do with the difficulty of the curriculum.

1. Selectivity- Texas, UNT, etc will accept students that wouldn't have a chance at Rice, Emory, Carnegie-Mellon, a service academy or an Ivy League. Yes, potential employers consider this when looking at a candidate.

2. Endowment per capita- Harvard has an endowment of between $25 and $35 billion for 20k students. Rice comes in at about $4 billion for 6,500 students. Meanwhile, UT has an endowment of $7 billion for 50k students. When endowment reaches nearly or upwards of $1 million per student, the student body will never lack access to the most advanced technology and research methods available.

3. Connections- The single most imporant resource to getting a job out of college. When your alumni base is full of CEO's and Congressmen, you have tons of opportunities to connect that many at Midwestern State never will.



Keith, there's a reason that the average salary of an Ivy grad beats out the average salary of a grad from a flagship public. And there are tons of reasons that go into it, many of them stemming from the individual.

But many of the traits of the individuals that do well in life are traits found in people who seek out academic challenge. Which is why it's far easier to find a Rice graduate making $200k a year than it is to find a Sam Houston State grad making $200k a year.

I chose Sam because it was cheap and I wanted a different educational path than most people. You had your reasons for choosing North Texas (among them, I'm just guessing, is that it's one of the state's premier j-schools). We can both be successful once we get out there because nobody cares about your degree after five years or so, but the early jobs don't line up for us at the rate they do for most Rice grads.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that most of these schools have a larger graduate enrollment than undergrad enrollment and that further education plays a major role in salary, but isn't that part of who a Rice undergrad is? Most of them aren't satisfied with "just" a bachelors. I'm assuming that you aren't satisfied with a bachelors, either?

[Daddy D 11]

Serious question BDR, what's a j-school?

Might be a dumb question but idk

[carter08]

Originally posted by Daddy D 11
Serious question BDR, what's a j-school?

Might be a dumb question but idk

I'm thinking he means journalism.

[big daddy russ]

Originally posted by Daddy D 11
Serious question BDR, what's a j-school?

Might be a dumb question but idk
Yeah, it's just a short hand way of saying journalism school.