Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, can you explain what your DS sees in Ole Miss that is attractive to him? We may be able to better advise you with this info.

As others have noted, there are several other big, southern flagship-style state schools that are more highly regarded than Ole Miss: Bama, Auburn, FSU, UF, UGA, etc. You might also look into LSU, which is on a similar level to Ole Miss, but doesn't have the antebellum South image. Mississippi State is there, too.

Interestingly, US News has Ole Miss rated the same as UMBC.

I think a lot of the invective here comes from Ole Miss's Deep South location, not the academic opportunities there or the lack thereof. I doubt you'd have so many posters working overtime to convince you a degree from UMBC is a worthless piece of paper.

Absolutely true. However, I think it's worth pointing out that there are schools that are fairly similar to Ole Miss in terms of culture, atmosphere, football, and selectivity that are better academically, most notably Alabama.

Consider this data taken off of Naviance for a school in Montgomery County:

Note - I know US News rank isn't perfect but I think it does a good job letting you do rough comparisons. It is the sum total of things like avg accepted SATs and GPAs, graduation rate and subjective professor quality and prestige. I don't think the difference between, say, 50 and 55 is significant, but large (20+) differences does mean actual differences in academic quality.

Ole Miss
US News rank: 149
Avg Accepted GPA (Weighted): 3.22
Avg Accepted SAT (1600): 1041
Avg Accepted SAT (2400): 1552
Avg Accepted ACT: 25
Acceptance Rate: 54%

Alabama
US News rank: 88
Avg Accepted GPA (Weighted): 3.28
Avg Accepted SAT (1600): 1063
Avg Accepted SAT (2400): 1594
Avg Accepted ACT: 23
Acceptance Rate: 70%

South Carolina, Clemson, Georgia, and Auburn also offer similar atmosphere to Ole Miss and better academics, though they are a little harder to get into.

South Carolina
US News rank: 113
Avg Accepted GPA (Weighted): 3.76
Avg Accepted SAT (1600): 1191
Avg Accepted SAT (2400): 1788
Avg Accepted ACT: 26
Acceptance Rate: 61%

Clemson
US News rank: 62
Avg Accepted GPA (Weighted): 4.03
Avg Accepted SAT (1600): 1273
Avg Accepted SAT (2400): 1911
Avg Accepted ACT: 29
Acceptance Rate: 52%

Georgia
US News rank: 62
Avg Accepted GPA (Weighted): 4.18
Avg Accepted SAT (1600): 1258
Avg Accepted SAT (2400): 1883
Avg Accepted ACT: 29
Acceptance Rate: 50%

Auburn
US News rank: 103
Avg Accepted GPA (Weighted): 3.59
Avg Accepted SAT (1600): 1196
Avg Accepted SAT (2400): 1814
Avg Accepted ACT: 26
Acceptance Rate: 67%

Anonymous wrote:If you want to get a professional job in the northeastern US, Ole Miss is probably not going to do you any favors.

Where did OP say this was important? I mean going to Brandeis probably won't help you if you want a job in Vatican City, either.

If you want to get a professional job in the northeastern US, Ole Miss is probably not going to do you any favors.

Anonymous wrote:OP, can you explain what your DS sees in Ole Miss that is attractive to him? We may be able to better advise you with this info.

As others have noted, there are several other big, southern flagship-style state schools that are more highly regarded than Ole Miss: Bama, Auburn, FSU, UF, UGA, etc. You might also look into LSU, which is on a similar level to Ole Miss, but doesn't have the antebellum South image. Mississippi State is there, too.

Who cares about the image? It provides quality degrees at a good price.

Anonymous wrote:OP, can you explain what your DS sees in Ole Miss that is attractive to him? We may be able to better advise you with this info.

As others have noted, there are several other big, southern flagship-style state schools that are more highly regarded than Ole Miss: Bama, Auburn, FSU, UF, UGA, etc. You might also look into LSU, which is on a similar level to Ole Miss, but doesn't have the antebellum South image. Mississippi State is there, too.

Interestingly, US News has Ole Miss rated the same as UMBC.

I think a lot of the invective here comes from Ole Miss's Deep South location, not the academic opportunities there or the lack thereof. I doubt you'd have so many posters working overtime to convince you a degree from UMBC is a worthless piece of paper.

OP, can you explain what your DS sees in Ole Miss that is attractive to him? We may be able to better advise you with this info.

As others have noted, there are several other big, southern flagship-style state schools that are more highly regarded than Ole Miss: Bama, Auburn, FSU, UF, UGA, etc. You might also look into LSU, which is on a similar level to Ole Miss, but doesn't have the antebellum South image. Mississippi State is there, too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't SEC not that good to begin with? Seems like they care about football more than education.

OP, if you kid wants to go to school in the South send them to Tulane or Georgia Tech.

Right because ACC schools such as UNC and now UVA are so much more enlightened than "those" schools from the SEC. PENN STATE is not even an academic institution. It's a cult of a school.

Penn state is not in the ACC.

OP, the other way to look at this is what does your child want to study, and where do you think they want to live after college?

If they like the south and want to pursue a program that is strong at Ole Miss, then it could be an option. However, if they want to be flexible about going to Chicago, New York, LA, Seattle, DC etc after school, then Ole Miss on the resume may not be the best bet. There are other state schools which have better national reputations (Indiana, Colorado) that might be on the easier side to get into than Ole Miss.

It is all relative, but the Ole Miss brand is not very strong nationally.

Fraternities and sororities are huge on campus. The parties are worse than UVA. One of my friends got shot by a BB gun when she passed a frat house on her bike. She took the jerk to court and won, but the school did not expel him.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The admission percentages say differently, PP. Both around 57% but Bama''s is a shade lower.

You can't just go by the admissions rate, as it depends on the applicant pool and admissions policies of the individual school.

In NoVa, Virginia Tech is a perfect example. It has a higher overall admissions rate than either Alabama or Clemson (around 70% vs. 55-60%) but the chances of a kid from the DC suburbs with a 3.44 GPA getting in are both slim and much lower than his chances of getting into Alabama or Clemson as an out-of-state student. The applicant pool is stronger and the school limits the number of admits from NoVa.

+1

I am constantly amazed at how often educated people take admission rates as a direct correlation with a school'is selectivity.

A school with a large number of low-quality applicants will have a "low" admission rate. Schools game this like crazy in order to reduce their rate. I wish USNews would stop publishing it because it is so misleading and leads to an unhealthy focus on a meaningless metric.

Anonymous wrote:Logistically Ole Miss is a nightmare. It is a 17 hour drive and the closest major airport is an hour away. The town itself is quite nice but if you end up living off campus you will need a car and will probably end up in one of the not so nice run down apt complexes on the outskirts of town.

Memphis is an easy drive from Oxford. We have several friends who work in Memphis and live in Oxford because the schools are so much better in Oxford. It's about 45 minutes depending on traffic.

Anonymous wrote:Based on what? At 57%, neither is overly competitive, so "much" is a stretch in any case.

I've seen Naviance data over a multi-year period for students at a local public HS with GPAs similar to OP's son and SATs around 1900 who applied to Alabama and Clemson. About half got into Clemson and almost all were accepted to Alabama. I assume that's the type of information that would be more relevant to OP than the overall admissions rates.

I'm just sharing what I saw. My kid doesn't plan to apply to either school, although we visited both and thought the campuses were nice. If you have information to suggest that there are a lot of kids with the profile of the OP's son who got into Clemson, but were turned down by Alabama, the OP would probably find that useful as well.

Based on what? At 57%, neither is overly competitive, so "much" is a stretch in any case.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The admission percentages say differently, PP. Both around 57% but Bama''s is a shade lower.

PP here. Fair point, I shouldn't have said Clemson is "much" harder to get in.

For a kid in the DC area with a 3.44 GPA, Clemson is, in fact, much harder to get into than Alabama.

Anonymous wrote:The admission percentages say differently, PP. Both around 57% but Bama''s is a shade lower.

PP here. Fair point, I shouldn't have said Clemson is "much" harder to get in.