<p>I want to major in communications, with an emphasis in media, does it really matter if my degree is from a 4th-tier school?
I want to attend the University of Houston, I have visited the university, and I love it, and the city as well.
I could get into UT, but I don't like Austin.</p>
<p>Does it matter? I think it depends on who.
I think most people see UT > Houston in general, but I think it only really matters the farther you go away from Houston to work right out of college. I think you should go with the better fit personally. However, you say you can get into Texas… are you Top 10%? I just think with a statement like that you should maybe be shooting for better than Houston.</p>
<p>Tier as defined by whom? Only kids in HS and their parents read USNWR…in fact people in the read world and in academia (I’m a professor) don’t use the language of Cc about “first tier” and “second tier” as if this is a measure of something. </p>
<p>There are many many alternative ways by which people judge the reputation and quality of a university, and frankly, a magazine is hardly the definitive source (at all!). Some of that depends entirely on the industry, the general region one is looking for employment, particular academic fields and so forth. Houston could easily be MUCH more highly regarded for say X major, and unknow for another; and vice versa.</p>
<p>I spent 15 years in TV news .In that business,it does not matter where you go, more what you can do and what you look and sound like. Go where ever, study whatever, just make sure you do as many internships as possible.They will hire you if you can hit the ground running, they don’t want to train you. Be willing to go to a small town to do an internship to get the hands on experience you need to land your first job.</p>
<p>
I disagree. Fit is important, but only when comparing colleges of roughly equal caliber. That’s not the case here.</p>
<p>I attended a “first tier” private university for undergrad and am working on a MA degree at a “fourth tier” public university. Although it is trumped only by Chicago in my field, I would not recommend it even to others in my field for the following reasons:</p>
<p>[ul][<em>]Students are operating at approximately high school level.
[</em>]Faculty generally view their posts as a stepping stone to better universities.
[<em>]It’s a commuter school.
[</em>]The facilities are woefully outdated.
[<em>]The library is small and inadequate.
[</em>]The school is poor, and this shows in facilities and resources.
[<em>]Campus organizations are poorly funded and forced to spend most of their time fundraising.
[</em>]It lacks name recognition.
[<em>]Recruiting on campus is extremely limited except for a few groups like the Army.
[</em>]Classes are very large.
[li]TAs (of which I am one) teach too many classes on top of having their own coursework.[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>I probably sound negative, but really, the difference is like night and day. I have nothing against public universities. In fact, I have said nothing but good things about UNC Chapel Hill…but really, a fourth tier public is not your best option. If you have the stats to get into UT Austin but don’t like it, there are many universities of comparable quality that would be happy to admit you.</p>
<p>The University of Houston is very focused on becoming a Tier 1 university, and has actively lobbied the state legislature for funding to support their efforts to do so. This goal is also routinely communicated by Pres. Khator and emphasized throughout the university. Obviously the USNWR rankings matter to others besides HS kids and their parents.</p>
<p>Did you consider Rice?</p>
<p>I agree with warblersrule. I mean it’s one thing if you’re comparing the ivies to one another but…</p>
<p>I think you will get a skewed answer on Cc. The group here seems to be very brand concious when it comes to college. I attended a 4th tier school. It was strong in the business school, particularly accounting. I was lucky because I was an accounting student. I would have had a more rounded education elsewhere but from a technical standpoint I learned my craft and have never lacked for employment opportunities. In reality, the school only mattered for the first job, thereafter opportunity was based on my previous job performance.</p>
<p>If I (or my children) were majoring in a particular field I would want to know who was recruiting on campus and where graduates from the past five years had ended up. I would want this information no matter how the school was ranked or what kind of reputation it had. If you like the school and communication majors seem to find employment then the USNWR ranking doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Tier is everything. Do you think Jesus would have become the Messiah if he had passed up URome to go to Nazareth State? The connections you make at college can make the difference in how far you go, regardless of whether you want to be an engineer or the lord of the cosmos.</p>
<p>^ This is just silly. Really silly. Again how is one defining ‘tier’ exactly? World famous in a field as determined by those in academia? By a particular magazine, so which one? By those in your HS? State employers? It entirely depends! I understand people have to rationalize their choices, but seriously, the difference between schools: student body, job opps, ‘connections’ is grossly overrated. It very very much depends on the school, the major, the career goals. If you want to work in some cities or states, going to the Flagship U will give you wayyyy more connections to the business world than say going to an Ivy. Those on the westcoast have never heard of some of the top LACs on the east…east coasters dont’ even know about Stanford…and on and on and on.</p>
<p>I thought it would be obvious that I was being sarcastic when I suggested that Jesus went to the University of Rome and that’s the reason why he is the Messiah of the Christian faith. Wait, you thought that was actually true?</p>
<p>Of course it was sarcasm…everyone knows Naz State is every bit the school U Rome is.</p>
<p>Let’s look. </p>
<p>The main difference between UT-Austin Communications and UH Communications will be the recruiting. Simply put, with the recession and all the economic turmoil, companies are looking to hire the best students, if any at all. And they will look at the best students from the best schools first. </p>
<p>If you are a top student at UH, you might get a shot at the opportunities the middle students at UT get. But if you are a middling student at UH, life is not going to be good. </p>
<p>I’m generalizing, and there are plenty of exceptions to what I am stating above. But this is the general picture. </p>
<p>If you are well connected, then it won’t matter a bit.</p>
<p>But seriously, while UH is improving as a University, UT is still much better.</p>
<p>Well I overlooked the Jesus bit…:)</p>
<p>Getting a full-time faculty job in most fields is amazingly competitive these days, and often depends on who you know, what your specific sub-field is, and how you fit into their diversity requirements. Given all of that, it’s kind of unlikely that the profs at UT know something the UH profs don’t know, ESPECIALLY as it applies to teaching at the undergrad level (where even in the upper-level courses the profs aren’t going to be laying out the cutting-edge stuff).</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s too huge of a deal as long as you’re OK with living in the area for your first job or going to graduate school. We have a third tier LAC locally, but it has a very good reputation around here and graduates don’t have a hard time finding a job. There are actually quite a few that are in really prominent positions. But outside of our part of the state, it’s not very well known. But where you went to school for undergrad doesn’t matter after you’ve worked anyway.</p>
<p>the only real factor that should matter between your two picks should be your personal satisfaction with the campus/students. Prestige only makes a (quite small) difference if you’re looking at gigantic gaps between the schools</p>
<p>original501,</p>
<p>Have you investigated Trinity? Their radio station is the flagship of jazz in SA, all digital, and their TV station/studio was totally renovated and just dedicated on January 29, HD, everything literally SOA. They are generous w/merit money for those with the right stats. You might want to look into it.</p>
<p>
I’m not really sure what your point is. I think we can all agree that UT Austin would outperform Houston everywhere except possibly in Houston itself.</p>
<p>After all, it is the Flagship U and has a stronger communications program to boot. That’s not to insinuate that one could not get a job with a Houston degree, of course, because I’m sure you certainly could. I simply disagree with waffling about the definitions of “better” when there is a clear-cut difference. </p>
<p>
My university has five professors in the field in which I work, which is far more than any other university in the US except Chicago. UCLA, Brown, Penn, and NYU have three each; Johns Hopkins, Michigan, and Yale have two each; Berkeley has one. I would still recommend any of those universities over my own – even for graduate studies – because they have the resources, academic strength, and name recognition that is so lacking at my own. It is extraordinarily frustrating to have a large and supposedly good program that is starved from lack of funds and resources. </p>
<p>Furthermore, most of the professors are there because they’re happy to get a tenure-track job in my extremely esoteric field. One of them secured the position, in fact, because his graduate mentor stepped down and left the position open. If, say, Brown or Penn made a job offer, their offices would be cleaned out by the end of the day, just as the head of the same department at Brown (recently hired!) just applied for the newly created job in the field at Harvard. Most faculty members, though admittedly not everyone, want to move up for precisely many of the reasons I’ve been stressing.</p>
<p>(I should hasten to add that I’m quite fond of my own university. I merely harbor no delusions about its quality.)</p>
<p>
This has nothing to do with prestige. There is a clear, quantifiable difference between top schools and the so-called fourth tier schools. I listed some of the differences in my earlier post.</p>
<p>Furthermore, your view only holds if college is only a stepping stone to a job, which is a view with which I strongly disagree. College is about getting a good education, and if you learn useful skills along the way, all the better. After all, all you really need to be employed is a ADN degree in nursing from a community college, or something similar. </p>
<p>
Again, this has nothing to do with prestige and everything to do with the quality of the school. The “fourth tier” schools tend to be decidedly lacking in academic strength, resources, and student body cohesiveness due to their commuter school natures. </p>
<p>To be blunt, I think you’d find that 99% of the people at Houston are there because they couldn’t get into UT. I find it a bit pointless and limiting to surround yourself with peers both less intelligent and less driven than you (generally), considering that at least as much of your college education comes from your peers. I did my homework and just compared the SAT scores, ACT scores, class ranks, and acceptance rates at Houston and my own graduate university, and they’re quite similar – so I would run in the opposite direction. I’ve taught these kids and have seen their performance in the classroom, and it is simply not nearly up to par with what one would see at a flagship public.</p>
<p>I guess I’m not being politically correct and seem to be gunning for these schools, but unlike most of the naive posters on this thread, I’ve seen both sides of this coin. There are other choices besides Houston that the OP can aim for if UT Austin is not a good fit; Rice and Trinity are two excellent suggestions already mentioned.</p>