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aggressor
Ranking the SEC schools academically?

Mizzou gets the "upper echelon" cred because of the AAU status. Fair or unfair, the AAU is considered the gold standard of "Tier 1" status. There are a few elite private schools that are Tier 1 and Non AAU (Notre Dame, Wake Forest, etc.) but that is because they put no emphasis on research.

I also completely agree that most of this stuff is meaningless to the average grad. It comes in to play if you are applying for grad school or for jobs out of state or with prominent companies. In the end though you can get a great education at any school and the mission of a lot of these schools is about serving their state and not academic rankings.

The reason schools care about this stuff though is money. A higher rated school gets more research dollars. AAU membership means more research dollars. Research dollars equals jobs.

They must have missed this....

•LSU currently ranks among the top 30 public universities in total research awards. The University’s total federal funding; from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Homeland Security; has increased more than $90 million over the last five years.

•LSU is designated as having very high research programs and activity (RU/VH) by the prestigious Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the highest ranking awarded to doctorate-granting institutions.

*LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Institute is one of the leading research facilities in the world for disease research.

That's all very nice and good PR by LSU but in the end every school can come up with certain areas to brag about. LSU is an excellent school in several areas, if you are going into Petroleum Engineering A&M and LSU are both fantastic. The number that really matters though is Total Research and this is how that ranks out, LSU is respectable as are most of the SEC schools (these are 2010 numbers):

Florida-18th Overall at $584 Million
Texas A&M-19th Overall at $582 Million
Vandy-36th Overall at $422 Million
Georgia-48th Overall at $350 Million
Kentucky-50th Overall at $336 Million
LSU-63rd Overall at $272 Million
Missouri-76th Overall at $244 Million
Tennessee-77th Overall at $242 Million
Miss State-82nd Overall at $210 Million
South Carolina-99th Overall at $172 Million
Auburn-109th Overall at $146 Million

Bama and Arkie don't rank because most of their money is at their off campus Med Schools. This particularly hurts Bama because UAB ends up with over $400 million due to that and likely keeps Bama out of the AAU. Ole Miss doesn't rank because they don't emphasize research and have an off campus Med School.

Federal funding also is big as is Endowment and both of those hurt LSU in the rankings as most of LSU's money is in private research dollars and the endowment is small.