Bingo. Also, like supermac and kpsta posted, having UT or A&M on your resume will get a little more attention in this state.
Its not really even a debate. UT and TAMU are more prestigeous. In Texas, and any other state. I also believe UT/TAMU hold higher clout out of state compared to Rice. And look at the undergrauates that Texas companies hire. I swear Target mgmt is all TAMU grads. I believe UH, and other schools (Southwestern) even have a different grading scale. At Southwestern an 85=3.5 grade pts. At TAMU or UT an 89 is gonna get you 3.0 grade pts... So if you go to Southwestern ur 3.5gpa wont hold as much value. How can you say there is no difference in VALUE (not actual substance) when comparing a Texas State engineer to one at UT?
I recommend getting out of state if you can. Open your horizons, see the country (if not the world). But if you stay in state, I recommend UT. Austin's a hell of a place to go to college. If I had decided to stay in-state, I would have gone there. UH is not a bad school, you just need to put more into it. Private schools will hold your hand and help you out. UH has what you need, but you need to make the extra effort. I went to Vanderbilt for undergrad and night school at UH for MBA, and I have a hell of a job.
Actually the minus/plus system versus the straight A/B/C system has been debated, and it turns out the +/- system is more stern when it comes to dishing out the grade points. Why? Because the scale doesn't include an A+, in addition to the B+, C+, etc. So you're getting screwed out of a tier of grades. A 93 at UT is a 4.0, a 93 at UH is a 3.67. (And an 85 will get you a 3.0, but an 83 will get you a 2.67) Last I heard UT/A&M were looking into adopting the +/- system as it is more a little more accurate, and becoming the national standard.
When I went to college, I chose between UT, UH and UNT. In the end, I chose UH and remain very pleased with that choice. The main reason I chose UH was to stay closer to home, near friends and family. A large majority of UH students choose the school for this very reason, as I'm sure you can imagine. Although I was considering studying music, UNT ultimately didn't appeal to me because it felt too small and was situated in a small town in North Texas- not an area of the world I'm fond of. I didn't consider UT as strongly as the other two schools because I felt their representatives that seemed to be everywhere for a couple of years were too cloying and proud. I could honestly give two ****s about college football, sorry guys. I was more interested in exploring Houston at that time than checking out Austin. Inevitably I visited friends at pretty much all of the larger state schools during my four years. I felt jealous at times seeing the state-of-the-art tower my buds at UT were living in while I was crammed into UH's Quadrangle, considered old and decrepit when my FATHER went to school there. I suppose I missed out on 6th Street but I had PLENTY of adventures on SCOTT Street, I can assure you. I wouldn't trade my experiences in inner Houston for any sort of fantasy Animal Houst "college experience" that a lot of the schools pimped. At 5 o'clock, the UH campus more or less completely empties. Those 10% of us who lived there had complete run of the place and believe me, there is plenty to do is Houston if you aren't scared. No, we didn't have a "Dixie Chicken" but we could buy beer and liquor anyplace we wanted at 18 y/o and drop by the "sweet house" for anything else. Houston has always gotten a bad rap about having "nothing to do" but a lot of us find that hilarious. You have no idea what's there for you if you're willing to drive and take a risk here and there. My parents didn't have to take out a single loan to put me through and I got my degree in four years (Class of '03). I was in the journalism school and when it was time to graduate the school found me an internship that led to a full-time job right off the bat. A lot of companies in Houston use UH as something of a talent farm because it's so easy to scoop up a few recent grads when you need them: They don't have to move and their dean was likely on your payroll anyway. Try netting a job in College Station or Austin right out of school and you may not have the same luck. UT and A&M definitely front like they're the only game in town, but in truth all the schools in the state have their own strengths and their own attitude. UH's no-bull**** attitude happened to appeal to me the most: "Sit down, shut up, we'll get you a couple of credits without making you late to work" should be the school motto. As others have said, it's more who you know and what have you done when you're looking for a job, not where you went to school. The biggest thing to look for when scouting colleges is to find a place where you're sure you can stick for five years to get your degree. You have no idea how many friends I had that went off to school only to get caught up in one party scene or another or couldn't handle being away from the girlfriend or whatever and head straight back home to community college. Figure out what it's going to take for you to be content for five years and scout schools accordingly.
To be fair Ziggy, if you want to discuss the "value" of grades from different schools, you must acknowledge some of the grade giving that goes on at some of these schools (to keep rankings high). It is well known that in the UT business school you have to be doing pretty bad to get under a B, and really horrible to fail something (I think the saying was "D" stood for dummy, or something like that). It may be like that at all schools but it wasn't that way at the other places I went (Morehouse and Texas Tech). I agree that UT and A&M are the most prestigious schools in the state, but AFTER Rice. You will probably get a hook-up from a graduate quicker by going to UT or A&M, but I believe most non-related parties (folks who went to neither school) would go with Rice instead. I definately don't think either one of those schools have more clout than Rice outside of the state. When I finished UT in 2001, if I mentioned "UT" to anyone not from Texas, OK or Louisiana (well half of em), they thought I was talking about the UT in TN.
I go to college in the Midwest and all the people I've talked to don't know much about any Texas schools(including Rice). My school is very diverse with mostly students from New York, California, Chicago, DC, and all the major metropolitan areas. On a national perspective, none of these schools are very prestigious except maybe Rice.
Going back to my previous post, I figure the reason our schools aren't as prestigious as some is because they are all regional schools with a very small out of state student body, meaning most of their alumni base are located in Texas.
U of H has been a public University since 1963. Not to be too cynical, but I don't think our alumni base could or would support U of H well enough for it be private and still have the same quality. Also from a career standpoint, as a former business undergrad, I remember more regional investment banks, commodity trading firms and money managers recruiting at Rice than at U of H (we only got Chase Global Banking, now known as JP Morgan). I used to sneak onto Rice's monstertrak website and career website, and Enron and Duke would advertise their Financial Analyst programs, whereas when they came to U of H career fairs they would claim they didn't know what positions they were recruiting for and just tell us to "go to their website." I think informal, locally-based, career-specific internships and entry-level job opportunities tend to be a little nicer and easier to come by at higher-end private universtites. At U of H you tend to get a lot of Retail Management Trainee or commision-based sales positions (not good for anyone with $20,000 in debt). Although, a good GPA and the right major will give you an advantage with any major corporation.
Our high schools might not be supplying the smartest students either. That was one of the employer comments about UT's business school in the Wall Street Journal MBA survey a few years back (their comments about Harvard kids were that they were too ambitious right out of the gate). Partially because we're still more energy and agriculture-driven than we realize, which historically don't require college educations for long-term success or even management positions. Oh, and too much football: $100,000/yr for a high school coach, for goodness sakes.
I think that's true. I know when I tried to apply to the UT-Austin graduate advertising program, their attitude certainly seemed like I wasn't worthy of entering their program having done my undergraduate advertising work at UT-Arlington (I have two undergraduate degrees - accounting from Texas Tech and Advertising from UTA, earned about 10 years apart), and I wasn't accepted either of the times I applied despite my GPA, test scores and glowing recommendations.
Haha Google Ads are nifty... my post totally skewed them... College Calculus Math Calculus Texas a&M Apparel Calculus Textbooks Edit: nm it changes on each reload...
Having attended Trinity for Undergrad and Tulane for Grad school, I really can't stress the difference in a smaller private school versus a larger state school. We had professors from UT at Trinity a few times and we blew them away as their students were used to larger settings and more scantron type testing versus the essay type work that is used more in these settings. I think many times in large schools where the professors ratings have more to do with research articles rather than education of the students, it adversely affects the students experience. They're usually taught by teacher's aides in many cases. I feel the environment helped me improve my oratory and written skills and my ability to deduce problems, and not simply choice elimination skills and having a right/wrong answer to every question.
F.D. Khan - I agree. I enjoyed the fact that I was taught by professors not TAs and the majority of my tests were far from scantron.
Rice at includes A+ in their grading system, and awards 4.33 for them. I know this because when I was interning at a small firm in Houston and they were taking in Rice resumes for newer interns, some of the kids were listing their GPAs as "4.2 on a 4.0 scale," or some ridiculous **** like that. Of course that wasn't as bad as when I was in high school, and the local newspaper would right a story about one of the football players and say he was getting a 3.4 on a 4.0 scale, even though every high school class used either a 5.0 or 6.0 scale.
This is the dumbest thread ever. If you want to be "cool" , check out this site. www.myspace.com/texanfan Every other TX school is for posers. Barry Manilow said so.
There might not be that much a difference between UT, A&M and some other schools, but the difference between those schools and schools like Harvard, Yale is more than just prestige. I'm going to the University of Pennsylvania (not PSU, btw), and the difference between that and some of the other colleges listed here is that I know most of the student body has been excellent academic achievers and such, taking AP credits and IB credits and whatever, so even during the intro classes, the profs wont have to spend as much time on the basics and can go more in-depth more quickly. While I think at some of the other schools listed, most of the students wont have the same intellectual background, so the profs will have to spend more time on the basic framework than they would at UPenn.
Bigtexxx left too early. he loves giving his opinion on UT. the whole "classes are too large" really only applies to the basics and really is a non factor when you get into your degree plan. I attended both ut and uh and its the same at both schools. I spent three years in austin and I was out of the large auditorium classes by the third year. i had a few basics that I needed to take when i transferred but when i finished I wasn't in any large classes and I got to know professors in both schools.
i was about to say this exact same thing. when i was looking at colleges coming out of high school, i found UT way too big. i decided between 3 schools: houston, miami (fl), and texas state. i'm glad i chose texas state (even though i was really close to chosing UH) because i've had a great time at a college not too big but not too small (27,000+ students). the education has been great and the girls are on completely different level than any of the 5,6 schools i visited. however, when it comes to grad school which i plan on going to after i graduate next summer, i have to make a really important decision because my professors have told me the same thing yours told you. undergrad is not extremely important but grad school is. texas state has a good grad school program, but the UT name recognition is important to employers.
