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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]. 
Look IU is a fine school as is JMU - but I am not at all clear IU would be a “better choice” than JMU even if cheaper. The data actually suggests better overall outcomes at JMU. Sorry - whether a school ranks 78 or 124 is not super compelling.[/quote]

No, what’s not ‘super compelling’ is the personal opinion of someone who tries to dismiss the findings of all the experts who analyze the quality of different college experiences, and instead tries to substitute one obscure undocumented data point (obscure not because outcomes don’t matter, but because most of the available data show stronger outcomes for IU, so presumably you’ve cherry picked one frail data point or one dubious data set to try to back up your dubious assertion).

JMU is a fine school.   That though wasn’t the question (look at the title).  By most metrics, IU offers a stronger educational experience.   Eg, IU was recently ranked #27 on Time’s assessment of the top 100 US colleges and universities for turning out future leaders; JMU wasn’t on the list.  That’s a pattern that gets repeated over and over again in all the reputable surveys of colleges and universities.  You can say ‘I don’t care what all the experts say; I know people who really really like JMU’ but while both parts of that sentence are presumably correct, that’s not especially helpful, since one could easily say the same about IU, and just makes it sound like JMU’s advocates have a fact-denying chip on their shoulder (which is hardly an advertisement for the university).

College is a major investment of time and resources, most families want to get the greatest possible return on their investment, and for most that means absent some special non-academic reason to choose one school over another, picking of two situationally similar schools the one that is consistently assessed as providing a stronger educational experience.   That’s generally a large part of how comparisons are made on this site.  Just because VA schools have a lot of aggressive advocates lurking on DCUM doesn’t mean you can gaslight OP, browbeat commenters who cite the relevant facts, and deny the reality that in some head to head comparisons, the VA school is simply outranked.  [/quote]

Uh, not bashing IU here whatsoever, but the Time future leaders list? JMU is actually on it, #98.

Personally, I think most of the rankings by nearly-defunct news magazines are kind of dumb and irrelevant, but fact-checking for the win.[/quote]

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