re: Arden Key commits to SC because of classes where ‘you have to try to fail"

After our med center is finished, we'll apparently be an AAU member...which is big.

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Has anyone in an HR dept outside of Georgia ever given preference to a UGA grad?

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I’m glad you asked, because this scenario applies to myself. Got a job in South Charlotte right out of college, the hiring manager was impressed my school of choice. She was a graduate of the University of Virginia herself. So what’s my point? There is a big difference between UoVA and UGA, just as there is a big difference between UGA & SCAR. Just from living in the area, SCAR is know for easy academics.

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After our med center is finished, we'll apparently be an AAU member...which is big.

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This is actually part of the problem: universities are far too research oriented and not teaching oriented. Every state university in the country is pouring millions of dollars into shite like this while simultaneously destroying the tenure track for professors. AAU is a gold star to tout for its members but it doesn't do shite for the avg enrollee.

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I’m glad you asked, because this scenario applies to myself. Got a job in South Charlotte right out of college, the hiring manager was impressed my school of choice. She was a graduate of the University of Virginia herself. So what’s my point? There is a big difference between UoVA and UGA, just as there is a big difference between UGA & SCAR. Just from living in the area, SCAR is know for easy academics.

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There is literally zero difference b/w UGA and USC in teaching. My father taught at both (in addition to Clemson, W&L), my family has attended both. It's not like UGA stumbled upon some new academic model that they're not sharing w/ the rest of the SEC: your business classes or journalism classes or whatever were no different than a kid at LSU's or UT's or USC's.

The actual difference b/w schools is the quality of the students themselves that are brought in. It's much like football. Larger, wealthier states produce better secondary-school educated students (and more of them). State's offer a raft of incentives--reduced tuition, proximity to home, etc--to keep their college-able students in-state for the purpose of working the jobs that they require. UGA, buoyed by the ATL market, enjoys a competitive advantage here relative to other SEC schools in attracting out of state kids, too. But the point remains: UGA (and UF) draw from a larger, typically better educated pool of applicants. If UGA can be said to produce better students than other SEC schools, it can be traced to this reason. Not because UGA has some stellar faculty or an inherent commitment to learning (we know THAT'S not true) or super selective application process (UGA admits students at the EXACT same rate as USC). The same goes for high salaries: it's a function of UGA's connection to ATL, not UGA grads' innate ability to land higher paying jobs or the market bestowing a premium on them b/c of their amazing education.

But to act like it has anything to do w/ the actual academics is laughable. The true difference in academics comes from very basic stuff: smaller class size, a smaller university w/ a dedicated faculty and staff, resources per student, etc. Your avg private school--rankings be damned--kicks the shite out of every state school in the country. in this regard.

You could also write an entire essay on how the culture of a school shapes its students. UGA's culture is no different from the rest of the SEC, either... it's basically a party school (and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense). But if you have friends from say, Boston College, ask them to compare what your avg week was like. You'd be shocked at the difference.

TL;DR: If you moved ATL to Mississippi, in 20 years Ole Miss would be UGA and UGA would be Ole Miss.

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This whole conversation reminds me of this scene from The Simpsons

But I don't want to be a Gamecock

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If it had come in the first 10 seasons of the show it'd have been canonical. Anything after that, though, is inadmissible.

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CHSgc

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Pretty smart guy. You'd think he was educated at UGA or something.

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Fair points across the board CHS. My point was, I went into a market (Charlotte) full of SC, Clemson, UNC, Winthrop, Wake grads and the hiring manager was impressed with Terry College of Business. I have no idea who else applied for the job, much less know their school affiliation

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I don't doubt it. For the record, by statistical measures, the Moore School of Business is very good. My own experience w/ Charlotte is that your academic credentials are mostly for naught. Many of my friends have time and again run into a UNC/Wake block in their career paths.

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UGA is not an Ivy League institution, but removing all bias affiliations & the tuition, 9 out of 10 parents would send their kid to Athens over Columbia. I’m not sure how one could argue. But to each their own.

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This is simply untrue. 6 out of 10 MIGHT and that's simply b/c UGA is a more well known school vis a vis their sports imprint and their much larger graduate network. UGA's academic reputation isn't so substantially different. Up north, every SEC school is a big southern state school, much the same way you might look at the Pacific Northwest and see Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State, etc and not know much of a difference. (Or the Midwest: Iowa, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois, IUPUI... could you put those five in any meaningful order? If one was 30th and one was 45th would it matter to you?).

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Out of curiousity, what are the requirements to get into both schools?

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BOTH of our school's lie through their teeth on these stats and select the most favorable (to say nothing of the GPA inflation that does on at most high schools). I'll give you two examples, one from each:

1) UGA - they report the FULL SAT scores of their entering class (even though no one counts writing) but then on their Honor's class they report only the Math/Reading. Cherry-picking at its finest.

2) USC - They do not report a range on the GPA, presumably b/c there are some legacy admits, etc that really bring the range down. Average is all that's used.

What I can tell you is that there is zero accountability for numbers, and all schools (from Ivy League on down) fudge the shite out of these numbers. It says our avg GPA is 3.93. It says y'alls is 3.83. You believe either?

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Well, this is coming from my experience but the kids I see getting into UGA are on another level. Just from the kids I've taught or coached..

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Sure, but that doesn't mean UGA's educational experience is substantially different from another SEC school's.

For the record, I think UGA has some of the smarter kids in the SEC, generally. I don't think the divide is meaningful enough to make a distinction, but my own experience has borne this out. My point is just that once they're in college, they don't receive an education that differs materially from that offered at other SEC schools.*

* = exceptions for certain programs, at all schools, that are extremely competitive, for which an applicant may have specifically applied/enrolled in the hopes of obtaining a degree in that program (for USC this would be Int'l Business).

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My point is just that once they're in college, they don't receive an education that differs materially from that offered at other SEC schools.*

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This I agree with.

UGA is much tougher to get in to overall which creates the idea that it's superior academically. The academics once you get there are equal but the academic quality of student going there is higher at UGA.

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UGA is much tougher to get in to overall which creates the idea that it's superior academically. The academics once you get there are equal but the academic quality of student going there is higher at UGA.

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As far as liberal arts go, that describes the Ivy League as well.

Now, obviously, if you want to do some kind of technical research or something, going to Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, etc. gives you an advantage over TAMU, Auburn, etc. simply because they have a frickload of money devoted to those types of things (and those things are money intensive).

But yeah, the reason a place like Harvard is pristigious academically isn't because they have some magical secret to teaching or have access to information only they and their students are privy to. It's because they only accept the best students and have a powerful network and brand recognition, making getting a high profile job easier.