re: Which school in the SEC would you send your children?

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First of all, I am from Arkansas. I attended Arkansas. I have season tickets, and my family are Broyles-Matthews Silver donors. Please do not call me an Aggie or act like I am somehow anti-Arkansas. I live in the real world. In this, some things are better than others. For example, Arkansas has a better football team than A&M. This can be measured via a ranking. It just so happens that when it comes to academics, A&M is superior. This can also be measured via a ranking. I would not trade my undergraduate education for anything, but I also realize that in some areas (and relative to A&M, Florida, Vandy) Arkansas has much room for improvement.

It is an assumption to assume that your so-called "hands-on" experience is somehow superior than everyone else's or the "arbitrary rankings."

You keep going on about how all educations are the same everywhere. Then you say that admissions don't matter. Then you say that knowledge is your metric for judging one's education or their job worthiness. As I explained, intellect when combined with knowledge and ability is better than any one of these alone. Taking 90% percentile students and giving them more knowledge yields better than taking 60th and giving them the same knowledge. This is not a difficult concept. Do you really think that students who make a 21 on the ACT are just as likely to grasp these laws of thermodynamics as those who make a 28? If you don't care who you learn with then I do not what else I can say. Having smart people around makes one smarter, this is quite supported through research.

I have maintained throughout this discussion that all the SEC schools are fine universities. But there are differences. To deny this is ridiculous.

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I'm sorry, but I just don't agree with you.

Let's say you were craving a pie. You go to the pie store and start browsing around. You find the top pie there...I mean this pie is highly ranked by a bunch of magazines, has a larger clientele than all of the other pies, and even looks to be better made. You excitedly purchase it and bite in...and you hate it. Are you still going to go off the reviews that this pie is the best pie or are you going to go with what YOU feel is the case in that it isn't the top pie in your opinion and from your experiences?

This is no different here. Texas A&M is more highly ranked, and most people will agree with you that it is a "better" school, but I have "bitten in" to both pies and they taste the same to me. And this conclusion isn't coming from a brief experience with Aggies. This is coming from literally years of working with them on all sorts of aspects of engineering, teamwork, communication skills, leadership, etc. If I told people I went to A&M and they told people they went to Arkansas, nobody would raise an eyebrow. You act like A&M is leaps and bounds ahead of Arkansas, but the end result in terms of knowledge gained is the same from my personal experience. I truly am sorry that bothers you so much.

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You keep going on about how all educations are the same everywhere.

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I never said that. I just said that they are very similar between A&M and Arkansas (and Georgia Tech up to this point). I haven't been to or worked enough with other schools to come to any conclusion about them. Up to this point, my opinion on teaching engineering classes is pretty straight forward. You show and explain the material, provide examples, and assign homework/projects to hone those skills. I have yet to find some "magical formula" that a higher-ranked school has that makes them teach the material better. One could argue the quality of teachers, but I literally can't tell the difference in teaching quality between petty ol' Arkysaw and a top 5 engineering school in Georgia Tech. And since Georgia Tech is significantly higher-ranked than A&M, and your beloved rankings are OBVIOUSLY valid, then that means that Georgia Tech produces a better education, right? So how does that work seeing how a school that is "better" than A&M and a school that is "worse" than A&M teach the exact same way?

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Then you say that admissions don't matter.

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Never said that, either. Higher ranked schools are going to have higher standards so they are, in turn, going to get more intelligent students. That's obvious. Does that mean that the education they get is better? I don't! I think you are making a ton of assumptions there that cannot be backed up.

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Taking 90% percentile students and giving them more knowledge yields better than taking 60th and giving them the same knowledge.

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Well no shite, Sherlock. They are more intelligent to begin with! That shouldn't fall back on the school. They only way one could really test this would be to get students of equal intelligence, have some go to a high-ranked school and have some go to a low-ranked school and be taught the same material. If both students are equally tenacious and are exposed to the same material, then I am confident that there would be very similar results.

You aren't going to change my mind on this. If that is what your goal is here then you are wasting your time.