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.

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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.

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Thank you for sharing this, I had no idea. Quite interesting.

Academics

Elite: Vanderbilt

Big 4: A&M, UF, UGA, Texas

The rest are the same difference. What matters is what you major in as each school specializes in some field of study another may not. Such as:

OU - Meteorology
UT - Nuclear Engineering
Mizzou - Journalism
LSU - Marine Biology

Et cetera.

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Tier One - Vanderbilt

Tier Two - Florida, Georgia, A&M (maybe?)

Tier Two (B) - Everyone else

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I like your general idea, Vol, but t.u. and Mizzou are also AAU, so, maybe:

Tier One - Vanderbilt

Tier Two - Florida, Georgia, t.u., Mizzou, A&M

Most also have specialization areas of excellence.

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Agree.

Unless you graduate from a top 10 &/or very specialized field of studies it very likely won't make a lot of difference.

Look at how many graduates don't even go into a profession that reflects their degree.

Dropped a couple of hundred grand on our youngests education (Big10 school), but unlike his siblings he was the standard business degree grad. Moved out of the region & started the company he could have founded at 18 with the same resources.

I.e., spent the $ for him to mature & develop personal skills & received the same valuable lessons he could have appreciated from 200+ universities. Possibly chilling in the basement & shadowing his parents @ work as well.

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Not really, getting into and finishing the workload for a high level University is why he ended up being successful. Sure, he COULD have done that without the education, but it taught him some valuable work ethic about setting big goals and achieving them.

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no one is claiming Mizzou is Harvard, just better than the 10 schools below it.

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I'm a little amazed that you think "they look only at academics" is a thing and constitutes some objective standard that doesn't require subjective weight/categorization in the exact same manner as USNWR. For example, determining a school's academic quality based on the subsequent academic awards won by alumni in later life is, needless to say, a pretty narrow (at best) way to gauge that category. Are you under the impression they're auditing courses at these schools and reviewing CVs? Spoiler alert - they are not.

And for your premise about Mizzou to be true, of course, we'll need to ignore admission standards, productivity and jobs upon graduation, starting salaries, respect in the various industries for which it serves as a pipeline, etc. Things that are apparently not in your oddly defined "academics" category, but which nonetheless matter to...well, everyone but you.

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Not really, getting into and finishing the workload for a high level University is why he ended up being successful. Sure, he COULD have done that without the education, but it taught him some valuable work ethic about setting big goals and achieving them.

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Depends on the parents, what’s being taught in the home & what opportunities/challenges are put in front of them. Keep in mind we are talking BA/BS degrees. You can sleep walk through that & pull a 3.5 if you’ve been prepped & have an above avg IQ.

Not going to lie... This reads like bottom-half school sour grapes.

Just for giggles…..Mercer University in little old Macon, Ga could run with Vandy.

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