Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be reduced to department rankings. That is a bad proxy for the overall experience and value.

Top public institutions are very large and serve a broad population. It is absolutely important to prioritize departmental rankings! The variety, depth and quality of upper division courses is tied directly to the faculty and TAs. Your experience if you are serious about your field of study will greatly be determined by this. We know two kids at Purdue both top students. One is majoring in a humanities degree and miserable, hates the area, experience, area is boring and classes to easy. The other wants to engineer automobiles. He is over the moon with joy. Spends his time with kids who are just as passionate about engineering and auto industry as he is, has an internship already and loves it. Despite being NMSF finds the engineering and math courses challenging.

Departmental rankings are usually for graduate programs. Graduate study is very different from the undergraduate experience.

You cannot separate these things so cleanly. The professors will be the same (and, yes, the professors will teach the undergrads and write the recommendation letters). The strong departments will have research money and offer research courses or seminars to top/interested students. The reputation of the department will help with jobs in that field—including if there is on-campus recruiting—and grad school applications. Any ECs tied to the department will be influenced by the quality and size of the department. You cannot separate these two things into entirely different worlds.

I don't agree. Professors can spend their time on research, graduates, or undergraduates. At research universities they usually prioritize those areas in that order, yet undergraduate tuition is used to subsidize research and graduate education. Being strong in research and graduate rankings does not mean the school is a great choice for an undergraduate. The other thing that happens is that tuition for majors in areas like humanities and social sciences will be used to subsidize STEM fields. Many undergraduates get the short stick at many universities.

Sorry, but this is not how teaching assignments or university finances work. Most professors get undergrad teaching assignments and nearly all of your major’s courses will be taught by those professors. Do they all love those assignments? No, but they are still accessible to the students, and top students will generally find a receptive audience.

Undergraduate tuition does not subsidize grad programs. The funding comes from numerous other sources. Undergraduate tuition often doesn’t even cover the cost of the undergraduates. At large schools undergraduate tuition is often a very small portion of the school’s revenues.

This isn’t to say everything is great about being an undergrad. But if you aren’t looking into departments when you are looking at schools, I really don’t know what you’re doing.

I know how university finances work and it is largely a cross-subsidization shell game as previously described.

Subsidization from the endowment, grants, donations, fee-generating services, and expensive professional grad and money-churning certificate programs, yes. For publics, also from the state’s contribution, yes. From undergraduate tuition and fees? No. The undergrads don’t cover their costs and they certainly aren’t covering anyone else’s.

For publics, state contributions and undergraduate tuition both go into the general fund bucket, which is unrestricted. Once the funds are there, they are indistinguishable as to source. So when you say the state's contribution can fund research but not tuition, that makes no sense in the way higher ed does accounting.

Even if you do not agree with the above, would you agree that tuition can fund instruction? If so, did you know that a large percentage of research is actually accounted for as instruction (even though no one is being taught and the activity looks exactly like research)? At a large research university, "departmental research", which is any research not externally funded, can account for a very large percentage faculty time. You can see this manifested in lower teaching workloads (which are still funded by tuition and other unrestricted funds).

Except I never said the bolded.

What I was saying—and what you clearly know nothing about—is that undergrad tuition and fees are a small source of revenues and don’t even cover the costs associated with educating undergrads. At most large, top publics they make up 5-15% of (non-hospital) revenues (which matters because hospitals generate a lot of funds). They are usually dwarfed by state appropriations, endowment distributions, private gifts, and federal grants. They aren’t subsidizing anything.

You have this idea in mind of all of these segmented different buckets, with lots of money being moved from one to the next. As the other poster said, it just doesn’t work that way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Further trashing of the UC haters:

Acceptance rate for in-state applicants:

UCLA: 10.0%
Berkeley: 13.5%
UCSD: 26.5%
UVA: 25.5%
Michigan - Ann Ar
bor: 39.5%
UT - Austin: 41.0%
UNC - Chapel Hill: 41.5%

Compare those stone cold facts with the respective OOS acceptance rates.

We’re supposed to believe that the institutions accepting a higher percentage of their population are better than the more selective ones that are accepting a lower percentage of their population? Yeah, OK.

I'd gladly take the latter four schools over any of the UCs considering that they're all overrun by neurotic striver Asians.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be reduced to department rankings. That is a bad proxy for the overall experience and value.

Top public institutions are very large and serve a broad population. It is absolutely important to prioritize departmental rankings! The variety, depth and quality of upper division courses is tied directly to the faculty and TAs. Your experience if you are serious about your field of study will greatly be determined by this. We know two kids at Purdue both top students. One is majoring in a humanities degree and miserable, hates the area, experience, area is boring and classes to easy. The other wants to engineer automobiles. He is over the moon with joy. Spends his time with kids who are just as passionate about engineering and auto industry as he is, has an internship already and loves it. Despite being NMSF finds the engineering and math courses challenging.

Departmental rankings are usually for graduate programs. Graduate study is very different from the undergraduate experience.

You cannot separate these things so cleanly. The professors will be the same (and, yes, the professors will teach the undergrads and write the recommendation letters). The strong departments will have research money and offer research courses or seminars to top/interested students. The reputation of the department will help with jobs in that field—including if there is on-campus recruiting—and grad school applications. Any ECs tied to the department will be influenced by the quality and size of the department. You cannot separate these two things into entirely different worlds.

I don't agree. Professors can spend their time on research, graduates, or undergraduates. At research universities they usually prioritize those areas in that order, yet undergraduate tuition is used to subsidize research and graduate education. Being strong in research and graduate rankings does not mean the school is a great choice for an undergraduate. The other thing that happens is that tuition for majors in areas like humanities and social sciences will be used to subsidize STEM fields. Many undergraduates get the short stick at many universities.

Sorry, but this is not how teaching assignments or university finances work. Most professors get undergrad teaching assignments and nearly all of your major’s courses will be taught by those professors. Do they all love those assignments? No, but they are still accessible to the students, and top students will generally find a receptive audience.

Undergraduate tuition does not subsidize grad programs. The funding comes from numerous other sources. Undergraduate tuition often doesn’t even cover the cost of the undergraduates. At large schools undergraduate tuition is often a very small portion of the school’s revenues.

This isn’t to say everything is great about being an undergrad. But if you aren’t looking into departments when you are looking at schools, I really don’t know what you’re doing.

I know how university finances work and it is largely a cross-subsidization shell game as previously described.

Subsidization from the endowment, grants, donations, fee-generating services, and expensive professional grad and money-churning certificate programs, yes. For publics, also from the state’s contribution, yes. From undergraduate tuition and fees? No. The undergrads don’t cover their costs and they certainly aren’t covering anyone else’s.

For publics, state contributions and undergraduate tuition both go into the general fund bucket, which is unrestricted. Once the funds are there, they are indistinguishable as to source. So when you say the state's contribution can fund research but not tuition, that makes no sense in the way higher ed does accounting.

Even if you do not agree with the above, would you agree that tuition can fund instruction? If so, did you know that a large percentage of research is actually accounted for as instruction (even though no one is being taught and the activity looks exactly like research)? At a large research university, "departmental research", which is any research not externally funded, can account for a very large percentage faculty time. You can see this manifested in lower teaching workloads (which are still funded by tuition and other unrestricted funds).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be reduced to department rankings. That is a bad proxy for the overall experience and value.

Top public institutions are very large and serve a broad population. It is absolutely important to prioritize departmental rankings! The variety, depth and quality of upper division courses is tied directly to the faculty and TAs. Your experience if you are serious about your field of study will greatly be determined by this. We know two kids at Purdue both top students. One is majoring in a humanities degree and miserable, hates the area, experience, area is boring and classes to easy. The other wants to engineer automobiles. He is over the moon with joy. Spends his time with kids who are just as passionate about engineering and auto industry as he is, has an internship already and loves it. Despite being NMSF finds the engineering and math courses challenging.

Departmental rankings are usually for graduate programs. Graduate study is very different from the undergraduate experience.

You cannot separate these things so cleanly. The professors will be the same (and, yes, the professors will teach the undergrads and write the recommendation letters). The strong departments will have research money and offer research courses or seminars to top/interested students. The reputation of the department will help with jobs in that field—including if there is on-campus recruiting—and grad school applications. Any ECs tied to the department will be influenced by the quality and size of the department. You cannot separate these two things into entirely different worlds.

I don't agree. Professors can spend their time on research, graduates, or undergraduates. At research universities they usually prioritize those areas in that order, yet undergraduate tuition is used to subsidize research and graduate education. Being strong in research and graduate rankings does not mean the school is a great choice for an undergraduate. The other thing that happens is that tuition for majors in areas like humanities and social sciences will be used to subsidize STEM fields. Many undergraduates get the short stick at many universities.

Sorry, but this is not how teaching assignments or university finances work. Most professors get undergrad teaching assignments and nearly all of your major’s courses will be taught by those professors. Do they all love those assignments? No, but they are still accessible to the students, and top students will generally find a receptive audience.

Undergraduate tuition does not subsidize grad programs. The funding comes from numerous other sources. Undergraduate tuition often doesn’t even cover the cost of the undergraduates. At large schools undergraduate tuition is often a very small portion of the school’s revenues.

This isn’t to say everything is great about being an undergrad. But if you aren’t looking into departments when you are looking at schools, I really don’t know what you’re doing.

I know how university finances work and it is largely a cross-subsidization shell game as previously described.

Subsidization from the endowment, grants, donations, fee-generating services, and expensive professional grad and money-churning certificate programs, yes. For publics, also from the state’s contribution, yes. From undergraduate tuition and fees? No. The undergrads don’t cover their costs and they certainly aren’t covering anyone else’s.

For publics, state contributions and undergraduate tuition both go into the general fund bucket, which is unrestricted. Once the funds are there, they are indistinguishable as to source. So when you say the state's contribution can fund research but not tuition, that makes no sense in the way higher ed does accounting.

Even if you do not agree with the above, would you agree that tuition can fund instruction? If so, did you know that a large percentage of research is actually accounted for as instruction (even though no one is being taught and the activity looks exactly like research)? At a large research university, "departmental research", which is any research not externally funded, can account for a very large percentage faculty time. You can see this manifested in lower teaching workloads (which are still funded by tuition and other unrestricted funds).

This isn’t how it works. There is no big bucket slush fund. There are clear revenue sources and clear operating and cap ex expenses. At top public universities, the research departments pay their own way plus overhead. They carry TAs and PhD students on their grants. Humanities brings in almost zero revenue. It’s historically been covered by tuition, endowment and advancement (alumni donors).

The only scenario where research is being subsidized by other funding streams would be schools looking to build new expertise. For example a top 25 may get a donation to start a new research oriented program. However, the multimillion dollar donation doesn’t cover the full operating costs. If it’s a strategic direction, the institution will then likely re-allocate money from another stream usually advancement to grow the program.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish the anti UC poster whining about test blind would stop derailing the thread.

When looking at top public schools you should be looking at the strength of the field of study you are interested in pursing. The top 10 public institutions which yes includes Cal, UCLA, Davis, Irvine and San Diego are in the top 10 because they have achieved top status in multiple fields of study but this doesn’t mean that they have achieved top status in every field of study. When an institution invests and attracts top faculty it then is a magnet to attract more top faculty who are more competitive winning grants. Graduate students and top undergraduates want to be part of that research and gravitate there. Strength is built over decades and in STEM requires institutional investment. It truly does not matter what the SAT scores were for communication or sociology majors in another college and program.

You also need to be aware that several fields are more specialized particularly engineering. The upper division courses are important for landing a job or graduate admission. For example, don’t look at general engineering ranking, look at strength in your field..aero, EECS, civil/environmental, mechanical, chemical or biomechanical etc. The top schools shift around depending on program and some are much weaker in some fields. If you want to be an engineer in the automotive or aerospace industry then Purdue, Georgia Tech are better than Cal. If you want to work in Silicon Valley tech then Cal, and this will drive the VA poster crazy SJSU will place you better than any east coast school. Physics - Cal or UCSB (which isn’t in the top 10 overall). Civil, environmental or aero with agri focus, UCDavis. Biomedical go to UCSD. You want to work in the defense industry? UIUC, Georgia Tech. Etc etc.

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-tech/

Reported. College transitions bot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be reduced to department rankings. That is a bad proxy for the overall experience and value.

Top public institutions are very large and serve a broad population. It is absolutely important to prioritize departmental rankings! The variety, depth and quality of upper division courses is tied directly to the faculty and TAs. Your experience if you are serious about your field of study will greatly be determined by this. We know two kids at Purdue both top students. One is majoring in a humanities degree and miserable, hates the area, experience, area is boring and classes to easy. The other wants to engineer automobiles. He is over the moon with joy. Spends his time with kids who are just as passionate about engineering and auto industry as he is, has an internship already and loves it. Despite being NMSF finds the engineering and math courses challenging.

Departmental rankings are usually for graduate programs. Graduate study is very different from the undergraduate experience.

You cannot separate these things so cleanly. The professors will be the same (and, yes, the professors will teach the undergrads and write the recommendation letters). The strong departments will have research money and offer research courses or seminars to top/interested students. The reputation of the department will help with jobs in that field—including if there is on-campus recruiting—and grad school applications. Any ECs tied to the department will be influenced by the quality and size of the department. You cannot separate these two things into entirely different worlds.

I don't agree. Professors can spend their time on research, graduates, or undergraduates. At research universities they usually prioritize those areas in that order, yet undergraduate tuition is used to subsidize research and graduate education. Being strong in research and graduate rankings does not mean the school is a great choice for an undergraduate. The other thing that happens is that tuition for majors in areas like humanities and social sciences will be used to subsidize STEM fields. Many undergraduates get the short stick at many universities.

Sorry, but this is not how teaching assignments or university finances work. Most professors get undergrad teaching assignments and nearly all of your major’s courses will be taught by those professors. Do they all love those assignments? No, but they are still accessible to the students, and top students will generally find a receptive audience.

Undergraduate tuition does not subsidize grad programs. The funding comes from numerous other sources. Undergraduate tuition often doesn’t even cover the cost of the undergraduates. At large schools undergraduate tuition is often a very small portion of the school’s revenues.

This isn’t to say everything is great about being an undergrad. But if you aren’t looking into departments when you are looking at schools, I really don’t know what you’re doing.

I know how university finances work and it is largely a cross-subsidization shell game as previously described.

Subsidization from the endowment, grants, donations, fee-generating services, and expensive professional grad and money-churning certificate programs, yes. For publics, also from the state’s contribution, yes. From undergraduate tuition and fees? No. The undergrads don’t cover their costs and they certainly aren’t covering anyone else’s.

For publics, state contributions and undergraduate tuition both go into the general fund bucket, which is unrestricted. Once the funds are there, they are indistinguishable as to source. So when you say the state's contribution can fund research but not tuition, that makes no sense in the way higher ed does accounting.

Even if you do not agree with the above, would you agree that tuition can fund instruction? If so, did you know that a large percentage of research is actually accounted for as instruction (even though no one is being taught and the activity looks exactly like research)? At a large research university, "departmental research", which is any research not externally funded, can account for a very large percentage faculty time. You can see this manifested in lower teaching workloads (which are still funded by tuition and other unrestricted funds).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish the anti UC poster whining about test blind would stop derailing the thread.

When looking at top public schools you should be looking at the strength of the field of study you are interested in pursing. The top 10 public institutions which yes includes Cal, UCLA, Davis, Irvine and San Diego are in the top 10 because they have achieved top status in multiple fields of study but this doesn’t mean that they have achieved top status in every field of study. When an institution invests and attracts top faculty it then is a magnet to attract more top faculty who are more competitive winning grants. Graduate students and top undergraduates want to be part of that research and gravitate there. Strength is built over decades and in STEM requires institutional investment. It truly does not matter what the SAT scores were for communication or sociology majors in another college and program.

You also need to be aware that several fields are more specialized particularly engineering. The upper division courses are important for landing a job or graduate admission. For example, don’t look at general engineering ranking, look at strength in your field..aero, EECS, civil/environmental, mechanical, chemical or biomechanical etc. The top schools shift around depending on program and some are much weaker in some fields. If you want to be an engineer in the automotive or aerospace industry then Purdue, Georgia Tech are better than Cal. If you want to work in Silicon Valley tech then Cal, and this will drive the VA poster crazy SJSU will place you better than any east coast school. Physics - Cal or UCSB (which isn’t in the top 10 overall). Civil, environmental or aero with agri focus, UCDavis. Biomedical go to UCSD. You want to work in the defense industry? UIUC, Georgia Tech. Etc etc.

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-tech/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be reduced to department rankings. That is a bad proxy for the overall experience and value.

Top public institutions are very large and serve a broad population. It is absolutely important to prioritize departmental rankings! The variety, depth and quality of upper division courses is tied directly to the faculty and TAs. Your experience if you are serious about your field of study will greatly be determined by this. We know two kids at Purdue both top students. One is majoring in a humanities degree and miserable, hates the area, experience, area is boring and classes to easy. The other wants to engineer automobiles. He is over the moon with joy. Spends his time with kids who are just as passionate about engineering and auto industry as he is, has an internship already and loves it. Despite being NMSF finds the engineering and math courses challenging.

Departmental rankings are usually for graduate programs. Graduate study is very different from the undergraduate experience.

You cannot separate these things so cleanly. The professors will be the same (and, yes, the professors will teach the undergrads and write the recommendation letters). The strong departments will have research money and offer research courses or seminars to top/interested students. The reputation of the department will help with jobs in that field—including if there is on-campus recruiting—and grad school applications. Any ECs tied to the department will be influenced by the quality and size of the department. You cannot separate these two things into entirely different worlds.

I don't agree. Professors can spend their time on research, graduates, or undergraduates. At research universities they usually prioritize those areas in that order, yet undergraduate tuition is used to subsidize research and graduate education. Being strong in research and graduate rankings does not mean the school is a great choice for an undergraduate. The other thing that happens is that tuition for majors in areas like humanities and social sciences will be used to subsidize STEM fields. Many undergraduates get the short stick at many universities.

Sorry, but this is not how teaching assignments or university finances work. Most professors get undergrad teaching assignments and nearly all of your major’s courses will be taught by those professors. Do they all love those assignments? No, but they are still accessible to the students, and top students will generally find a receptive audience.

Undergraduate tuition does not subsidize grad programs. The funding comes from numerous other sources. Undergraduate tuition often doesn’t even cover the cost of the undergraduates. At large schools undergraduate tuition is often a very small portion of the school’s revenues.

This isn’t to say everything is great about being an undergrad. But if you aren’t looking into departments when you are looking at schools, I really don’t know what you’re doing.

I know how university finances work and it is largely a cross-subsidization shell game as previously described.

Subsidization from the endowment, grants, donations, fee-generating services, and expensive professional grad and money-churning certificate programs, yes. For publics, also from the state’s contribution, yes. From undergraduate tuition and fees? No. The undergrads don’t cover their costs and they certainly aren’t covering anyone else’s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Further trashing of the UC haters:

Acceptance rate for in-state applicants:

UCLA: 10.0%
Berkeley: 13.5%
UCSD: 26.5%

UVA: 25.5%
Michigan - Ann Arbor: 39.5%
UT - Austin: 41.0%
UNC - Chapel Hill: 41.5%

Compare those stone cold facts with the respective OOS acceptance rates.


We’re supposed to believe that the institutions accepting a higher percentage of their population are better than the more selective ones that are accepting a lower percentage of their population? Yeah, OK.

True! Schools like UMD, UIUC, Wisconsin, Purdue, Ohio St, VT are peer schools to the ones listed above.