re: With the 2 new schools, whats the academic order in the SEC

AAU is a good measure, better than US News, but it is certainly not the end all/be all. It's all about research spending. If a school spends a lot of money on research they are almost certainly a "good" school. That said there are some members of the AAU that joined long ago and really aren't that big in the research world anymore.

A&M is a monster in research and is unusual because we have a relatively new Med School. We are a monster because of Engineering, especially because we are the premier Petroleum Engineering school in the world. We have a lot of spend because of our Vet school as well. Last time I looked A&M actually had the largest research spend in the area South of North Carolina to California. That spend along with our Endowment make us elite by themselves.

The AAU also misses some great schools that don't have a research mission. In Georgia that research is at GT and Emory, not UGA. Another notable is Notre Dame which by any accounts is an outstanding school but is not in the AAU because they don't have a research mission. Those are rare though outside of lots of small but excellent private schools that will never be in the AAU.

US News puts lots of value on graduation rates, class size, etc. Why? They know that private schools will spend a LOT of money in advertising with them to get a higher rating. A&M and many publics spend very little on advertising because they don't need to, they are already a quality education at a greatly reduced cost.

Every school has its mission and even within schools there is great disparity. For instance LSU isn't overall highly rated but their Accounting Department is elite. A degree in Psychology from A&M is not the same as a degree in Petroleum Engineering. It's just very hard to put these hard ratings on schools.