Does a university's tier really matter?

[warblersrule]

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@starbright

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.

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>

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@Schmaltz

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).

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>

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@rhumbob

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.

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>

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@TaggartNY

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

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>