<p>[To</a> BYU or Not To BYU](<a href=“http://thebyudecision.blogspot.com/]To”>http://thebyudecision.blogspot.com/)</p>
<p>^a good article that compares choosing BYU vs. choosing a highly-prestigious university.</p>
<p>Tags: Harvard, BYU, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Stanford, Columbia, Vanderbilt, MIT, CalTech.</p>
<p>This is a good article… and one of the realities of the article is that there are smart kids at BYU, but at the same time, one can distinguish themselves from the others in research venues, grad applications, etc. more easily because NOT EVERYONE has impressive credentials. This has helped both of my kids get into GREAT grad schools in the East … because not many kids from BYU want to go East, and when they do, their grad application sticks out as being unusual.</p>
<p>Having said all that, there is a certain element that is missing at BYU. A good chunk of the kids that go there are attending that school to meet a potential marriage partner first and foremost, and their education becomes secondary to that. Granted, they get a quality education, professors are fairly top-notch, etc. But that kind of mindset where marriage is of primary importance can have the effect of diminishing the importance of research and education and mixing with students who of equal intellectual quality.</p>
<p>For this reason, BYU is a great choice for those within the Mormon church, or for those who enjoy the same moral standards as the Mormon church. For those outside of the Mormon church, it may not be the best choice of schools – those outside of the church are not as intense in their pursuit of a marriage companion at the age of 21.</p>
<p>Just as a non Mormon may feel out of place socially at BYU, a Mormon at another college may have a small Mormon population to socialize with. No matter what your culture or beliefs are, choosing a spouse is a major life decision. If you don’t like your college or career, you can change that easier than if you don’t like your spouse! I am not Mormon, but if I was, I would want to be in a situation that would be supportive of my personal as well as professional goals. It seems that what BYU offers would be incomparable to other schools. The article states the average ACT is 28, which indicates that the school can offer a solid education to high performing students.</p>
<p>While I agree that BYU can offer a good education to students who decide to attend there, and that if finding a spouse is important to you then it’s a good place to go – the statistic that an average student ACT score of 28 is an indicator that you will receive a solid education doesn’t necessarily make sense. The fact that there is an average ACT score of 28 does indicate high-performing students, for sure. Unfortunately, though, the culture shifts some of that information a bit – both Mormon culture, and BYU culture, and just big huge university culture. For example, sometimes Mormon culture influences high-achieving women who may have had an ACT score of 28 to, in spite of their intelligence, choose to go into programs such as elementary education, psychology, english, or family life in relatively high numbers – even though the chance of getting work in those areas are slim currently. This is partially due to the fact that often these young women don’t plan on working. Their plan is to marry and raise a family – end of story. While that can be a commendable choice in life, when it happens in large numbers, I personally think that it diminishes some of the competitive and diversity aspects of college life.</p>
<p>With BYU culture, there is a tendency to have less respect for women who choose to go into more demanding majors such as engineering, math, or science. This is because the culture expects women to raise a family, not to work. If you’re REALLY LUCKY, you’ll get a professor who encourages some women to pursue a graduate degree – but while not discouraged, it’s not exactly culturally ENCOURAGED. </p>
<p>With just regular old big, huge university culture, there is a tendency towards research being more important to the professors than teaching. That’s a common thing with any big university. Often, classes are 200+ in the lower undergraduate level, and even when they get smaller, the professors aren’t all that interested in teaching sometimes. Probably the best professors are the religion professors, because they are invested. The other guys, well, they have a responsibility to bring in money, thus they need to concentrate on research. Having had kids go to BYU, and then to smaller schools, they’ve received more personal attention at smaller schools, and received a quality education. It may have cost more money, but I kinda think that sometimes you get what you pay for.</p>
<p>I definitely think that the students at BYU are bright, and some are motivated, as is the case in any university. But a solid education at BYU depends upon the program you go into more than the high scores of the incoming freshmen on their entrance exams. Programs such as engineering and business are top-notch at BYU. The music school is great. But BYU gets a lot of students going there NOT because any particular program is good – but rather because the cost is inexpensive for members, and because the likelihood they’ll find a marriage partner is high. The fact that a ton of mormons want to go there drives up the ACT scores, because you can really weed out a lot of people when you have thousands more applying than you can take in.</p>