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Congrats to BYU

Nice. And obviously if you're a local LDS and can get more cost friendly living arrangements , BYU's like $5000/year.

Some of those #'s are just mind boggling though. I wouldn't pay anywhere near $60,000 to go to any school. You better have rich parents or a lot of help from the mighty endowment funds if you go to those schools. It's cool to see little Ponoma college considered as being better than Harvard though.
 
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While it's good to see (for Utahns) that the expenses at BYU are moderate I wouldn't put too much weight in those pure university rankings...
The quality of different degrees within each school is significantly different and isn't captured in those pure rankings. Only the avg reputation of the schools.
Information way more interesting are ratio of enrolling student to those who finish each year, the reputation of professors at the top of a degree is, relation of avg income of graduates to the loan you take on.
So it's good for BYU to be relatively inexpensive while having a higher amount of schools with a good reputation.
 
BTP said:
While it's good to see (for Utahns) that the expenses at BYU are moderate I wouldn't put too much weight in those pure university rankings...
The quality of different degrees within each school is significantly different and isn't captured in those pure rankings. Only the avg reputation of the schools.
Information way more interesting are ratio of enrolling student to those who finish each year, the reputation of professors at the top of a degree is, relation of avg income of graduates to the loan you take on.
So it's good for BYU to be relatively inexpensive while having a higher amount of schools with a good reputation.
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need to be careful with enrollment:graduation as well
Poor schools will adjust their grading curves to pump this number.(not saying that BYU does)

I will probably consider bold^ when helping choose schools for my daughter.
 
BTP said:
relation of avg income of graduates to the loan you take on.
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For that number to even be interesting, you would also have to have extensive data on where every graduate ends up working and weigh it to the cost of living each year. What if every BYU grad chose to work in Los Angeles upon graduation? BYU's ratio would would be out of this world, but it wouldn't necessarily tell you anything meaningful about their ability to pay back the loans or their ability to live a better lifestyle in the future. All it would tell you is that they live in a more expensive market, where incomes are necessarily higher.
 
University rankings
University of Alberta

ARWU World: 101-150
ARWU Natural Science & Math: 151-200
ARWU Engineering & CS: 76-100
ARWU Life Sciences: 76-100
ARWU Clinical Medicine: 76-100
ARWU Social Sciences: 51-75
THE-WUR World: 121





for a school I pay a maximum of ~$7000 a year for, I could not be more content. The student-life factor is a little compromised, as a majority of the students drive to school from their parents' place (myself included)-- but otherwise I can't complain. I've always dreamed of maybe doing some sort of graduate degree in the states, but the only ones I'd consider moving to are far too expensive for me.
 
dalamon said:
University rankings
University of Alberta

ARWU World: 101-150
ARWU Natural Science & Math: 151-200
ARWU Engineering & CS: 76-100
ARWU Life Sciences: 76-100
ARWU Clinical Medicine: 76-100
ARWU Social Sciences: 51-75
THE-WUR World: 121





for a school I pay a maximum of ~$7000 a year for, I could not be more content. The student-life factor is a little compromised, as a majority of the students drive to school from their parents' place (myself included)-- but otherwise I can't complain. I've always dreamed of maybe doing some sort of graduate degree in the states, but the only ones I'd consider moving to are far too expensive for me.
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Obvi.
 
heyhey said:
need to be careful with enrollment:graduation as well
Poor schools will adjust their grading curves to pump this number.(not saying that BYU does)

I will probably consider bold^ when helping choose schools for my daughter.
Click to expand...

Duck Rodgers said:
For that number to even be interesting, you would also have to have extensive data on where every graduate ends up working and weigh it to the cost of living each year. What if every BYU grad chose to work in Los Angeles upon graduation? BYU's ratio would would be out of this world, but it wouldn't necessarily tell you anything meaningful about their ability to pay back the loans or their ability to live a better lifestyle in the future. All it would tell you is that they live in a more expensive market, where incomes are necessarily higher.
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Sorry guys. I think I expressed myself poorly due to that complexity of the topic and lack of familiarity of technical terms.
I'll try to make an example on my own situation to clarify how it's meant.
I'm studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with focus on communications engineering. In Germany the avg income/salary of graduates doesn't differ very much depending on where you live(max between 2 and 3 thousand Euros), while living expenses do of course. You suggest that it's different in the US so that changes it obv a lot to use statistics. Predicatability of suggested local salary's influence on amount of loan to take on is hard to do I guess. I mean that depends on where you get a job, where you want to live, maybe where your girlfriend lives...Lots of uncertainties. I'd go with best education in relation to the cost and prospects. You live in an expensive market, you take a little bit longer to pay back the loan.
And my statement was that the "overall rankings" are more averaged out. For example my field of study I know 3 schools in the states have a good reputation for their research...VT, Stanford and MIT. VT is ranked 110th for example but it's cream of the crop when it comes to communications engineering according to the head of my school. So why would I put myself deeper in debt and have lower chances for scholarships just to go to Harvard Engineering school, because they're higher (overall) ranking wise? Plus having worse job chances as a result of it? Of course it's not really easy to find out that kind of intel, but I just wanted to bring to attention how little specific information these rankings contain as the reputation/quality of a degree varies strongly within each and every university and even faculties.
One stat I found helpful when I researched where I wanted to enroll was the percentage of those who quitted.
From my POV now I'd suggest to simply try to contact guys who work in that sector. Over here there exist kind of "graduate unions". Part of their portfolio is advising students and graduates with certain things. If there's something similar in America I'd probably ask them about information too.
 
Good school and all, but nearly impossible to get accepted to anymore, I guess. My daughter applied and got rejected. She wasn't late applying, so it isn't a matter of not getting her stuff in on time. Not meaning to brag, but she had a great high school career. Following accolades:

* 3.86 GPA
* Student Government every year from Freshman on, Jr. Class Pres, Senior Year Student Body Pres.
* Leader of Yearbook and 2 other clubs
* State Honor Choir
* Documented (she got a plaque from the Am. Cancer Society) 1000 hours of community service with recognized charities including American Cancer Society (a nod to her dad) over her high school "career" - a goal she set for herself that came from doing her personal progress at church
* 28 overall on ACT
* Leadership roles in every year of Young Women's in her church callings, and completed her personal progress and achieved her Young Womanhood medallion.
* Senior year was nearly all AP course work
* Graduated from Seminary

They didn't respond for 3 months and when they did she was flatly turned down. Form letter.

Her boyfriend also applied and received an acceptance letter 1 week later. His accolades:

* 3.5 gpa
* State Honor Choir
* Debate team (team won state his jr year, he took 3rd in whatever category he competed in)
* No class offices
* No clubs other than debate
* 22 or 24 ACT (can't remember for sure but I think 22)
* Earned his Eagle Scout at age 17
* Also some leadership roles in church, graduated from Seminary
* No other community service than he did for his Eagle. Which is still good.

I am not taking anything away from him, he is a great kid. But the disparity makes no sense.

She did receive scholarship offers from other schools including U of U and Utah State. She ended up taking a full-ride to Univ. Nevada Reno, but she will only attend one semester at UNR then go on her mission.

So, I don't get it. We couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone as to why. I know they have a larger proportion of females to males, but with results like that I would have expected some kind of scholarship offer, but to flatly reject her application. Makes no sense.

So BYU is no longer on my "like" list, mostly because we couldn't get a real answer out of anyone.

Even if they had come clean and said "hey, we have WAY too many females here, she just didn't make the cut because we can't take any more females" or whatever, at least be straight about it and I would have been fine with that. Still a crappy answer, but at least it's an answer.

What we got was the run-around. They all gave the standard boiler-plate "we consider many factors when making acceptance decisions, including but not limited to high school transcripts, extra-curricular activities, blah blah blah, and it has been determined that you do not meet our acceptance standards...blah blah blah." We even repeated the basic application expectations back to them that they sent her when she submitted her inquiry, all of which she blew out of the water, and still got the same answer. Really? What a joke. The only thing they said was she could go to a jr. college for a year or 2 then transfer in as it was much easier to get in. What?

So yeah, not a BYU fan anymore.
 
The only thing colleges give a **** about are your ACT/SAT test scores.

All that extra curricular stuff your daughter did doesn't really matter that much.
 
Cyrone Torbin said:
The only thing colleges give a **** about are your ACT/SAT test scores.

All that extra curricular stuff your daughter did doesn't really matter that much.
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Not according to the admissions docs they sent us in the first place. And still a combo of nearly 3.9 gpa and 28 ACT is solid. Enough to get scholarship offers elsewhere. But not BYU.
 
LogGrad98 said:
Not according to the admissions docs they sent us in the first place. And still a combo of nearly 3.9 gpa and 28 ACT is solid. Enough to get scholarship offers elsewhere. But not BYU.
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Yeah, that part is weird, but just saying that is the main thing schools look at, from my experience.
 
Cyrone Torbin said:
Yeah, that part is weird, but just saying that is the main thing schools look at, from my experience.
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You're right. BYU must just be a different discriminatory animal, I guess. :)
 
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