USNews 2019 Best Colleges in Texas (Houston, Dallas: schools, community college, cost)

[Fisherman99]

Originally Posted by jiping

National Rankings 2018->2019

Rice University
#14->#16

University of Texas--Austin
#56->#49

Southern Methodist University
#61->#59

Texas A&M University--College Station
#69->#66

Baylor University
#75->#78

Texas Christian University
#78->#80

University of Texas--Dallas
#145->#129

University of Houston
#192->#171

Texas Tech University
#176->#187

Interesting seeing the Texas rankings here in California where almost all of the UC Schools (Public) went way up. Not sure how the situation is in Texas, but demand is completely outstripping supply at all 9 UC locations in California.

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by EDS_

I wish Texas had adopted a strict California style set of systems ergo - University of California schools, California State schools and then city/county/community schools and also a separate Cal Poly and Cal-Tech (sort of a sub-system).

UT-Austin and A&M CS, UT-Arlington, UT-San Antonio and probably Texas Tech, UH and UT-Dallas should have been set up like the UC system..............grades + test scores are all that matters, more or less, earn your way in or go somewhere else.

And then fill in a state system, all lower tiered and there you go.

Cal Berkeley's fairly strict meritocracy in terms of admittance is why it is probably a better school than all Ivies save Harvard and that may not apply in a few years.

Texas will never put up the money to accomplish that.

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by EDS_

I wish Texas had adopted a strict California style set of systems ergo - University of California schools, California State schools and then city/county/community schools and also a separate Cal Poly and Cal-Tech (sort of a sub-system).

UT-Austin and A&M CS, UT-Arlington, UT-San Antonio and probably Texas Tech, UH and UT-Dallas should have been set up like the UC system..............grades + test scores are all that matters, more or less, earn your way in or go somewhere else.

And then fill in a state system, all lower tiered and there you go.

Cal Berkeley's fairly strict meritocracy in terms of admittance is why it is probably a better school than all Ivies save Harvard and that may not apply in a few years.

Texas will never cough up the money to accomplish that.

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by EDS_

1. Keeping tuition low for everyone is more fair to the group/cadre.

2. So far as I know no schools but UT and A&M are so broadly damaged by auto-admit rules.

3. Texas is an extreme overproducer of strong college bound high schools students.........every year many thousands of TX kids who can't get into their program(s) of choice at UT and A&M (and others) at all earn legit scholarships to Alabama, Kansas, OU, OSU, Kansas State, Colorado and others or are otherwise enticed to leave. Look at Alabama's out of state scholarship offerings. They are tuned to bring in kids from Texas. The best anecdotal example of this is the kid from St. Marks of Texas (Dallas) (top 4/5/6 or so boys K-12 in the country) couldn't get into UT so he had to settle for Yale. Remember 75% of UT students are auto-admits, most of that group are great students, unfortunately many are not. The group that is not crowds out thousands of better students who must go elsewhere. Further, UT-Austin is stuck to a degree by geography.....it can't get much bigger easily. Speaking about main campuses A&M has, just a guess, 30X - maybe 50X, more land than UT. The yield is A&M will have 25,000 engineering students by ~2025 or 2026 and maybe 85,000 total students at CS. So UT is in a real jam/meaning A&M can grow through the its autoadmit problems, UT really can't - at least not easily.

3A. I believe you are commingling merit based scholarships and need based scholarships. Ohio State imports TX kids based on merit based scholarships because it needs the intellectual talent - trust me I'm right but the details are a discussion for another day. Texas schools from undergrad to law school to medical school are scorching good deals.

The answer to #3 would be for the UT system to improve its branches. As the list shows, there is a massive drop off in quality between the flagships and everything else - 100 spots before you see any UT branches. No A&M branch is even on the list even though it has several branches.

In California there is more gradation below the flagships. Ie: Berkeley is #22, UC Santa Barbara is #30, UC Irvine, Davis, etc.. not that far behind. The better Texas branches are probably equivalent to the worst of the Cal-States. It's no wonder why sharp TX hs graduates look to out of state.

[GoodHombre]

Did they change methodology? weights?

[Rocko20]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Let's go ahead and throw at-large rankings in the trash........please? In the academic world it does not work like this.

Thank you. Jesus I hate these “rankings.” In the real world it depends on your major, minor, whether you’re an undergrad or graduate, whether you’re going to a business/engineering/law/etc school, your GPA, etc.

These rankings are just trash, used by schools to justify outrageous tuition.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Fisherman99

Interesting seeing the Texas rankings here in California where almost all of the UC Schools (Public) went way up. Not sure how the situation is in Texas, but demand is completely outstripping supply at all 9 UC locations in California.

Makes sense to me......University of California system schools admit almost exclusively on legitimate academic merit (melange of grades/test scores/awards/recs.). In the end very few, actually almost no, weak students are admitted to UC schools. Given how US News and Newsweek etc. compile and weight data with a very heavy emphasis on inbound grades and test scores it makes perfect sense UC System schools would shine.

Elsewhere, I mentioned that TX produces more top notch college bound students than our top universities can deal with.......exactly the same applies to CA for different reasons.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by redguard57

Texas will never put up the money to accomplish that.

The gap is already closing.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by redguard57

The answer to #3 would be for the UT system to improve its branches. As the list shows, there is a massive drop off in quality between the flagships and everything else - 100 spots before you see any UT branches. No A&M branch is even on the list even though it has several branches.

In California there is more gradation below the flagships. Ie: Berkeley is #22, UC Santa Barbara is #30, UC Irvine, Davis, etc.. not that far behind. The better Texas branches are probably equivalent to the worst of the Cal-States. It's no wonder why sharp TX hs graduates look to out of state.

Sharp graduates leave CA too, last time I looked proportionally fewer but nominally more than TX.


So far as UT and A&M "system" schools.

A&M College Station main campus sits on piece of land more than 1/3 the size of Manhattan. Much of it undeveloped. My guess is in great part due to that A&M's intellectual hub remains very concentrated on the CS campus. With the branches (excluding ag, law, medical, dental, pharmacy, research branches, out of state efforts and international campuses) being more like four year community college campuses. It's more like social/economic outreach than an effort to field exceptionally good schools.

UT - System, UT - Dallas and UT - Arlington are both Carnegie "Tier 1/R1" intensive research universities. With UT-Dallas making a legit push for an invite into the AAU. No Cal-State school is Carnegie "Tier 1/R1". Also that ranking is changing significantly this year. I'd expect it to have as many as 9 maybe even 10 more Texas schools ranked next go round with 5 or 6 of those being UT branches. There will probably still be no Cal-State schools on that list. UC Merced might make the list within a few years.

Given all of that your claim that the best branch schools here are equal to the worst Cal State schools is simply wrong. Way wrong. For context UT - Dallas was formed as a graduate school for Texas Instruments engineers and math wonks in the late '60s. A guy, can't recalled his name, who was the de-facto chair of the physics department for many years was a Nobel Prize winner, the school has at least one Nobel Prize winning alum. UTD is not a lightweight school in any way but its undergrad in particular is so new it hasn't had a chance to grow up it is now.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Rocko20

Thank you. Jesus I hate these “rankings.” In the real world it depends on your major, minor, whether you’re an undergrad or graduate, whether you’re going to a business/engineering/law/etc school, your GPA, etc.

These rankings are just trash, used by schools to justify outrageous tuition.

It's interesting the US based magazine undergraduate rankings regarding entire schools really are pretty awful. However, the same outfits rank individual programs, say electrical engineering at Ohio State, or departments, say math at Kent State, with methodologies that actually make sense. I'm not claiming these rankings are particularly valuable to most students but at least they are rational and fairly specific.