I’ve been accepted at both universities and was wondering what you think SMU excels more at than BC. I am interested in business and have been selected for the Hillstop Scholars program. I really enjoy college sports, I enjoy having a vibrant social life and parties, while also going to a school with a good reputation that will give me many opportunities later in life. I am also posting this on the BC page to see what they say. Thanks!
Congrats! I highly recommend that you pick the college that makes you the happiest. Happy students are successful students. My son LOVED SMU and he has had a successful college experience and has an exceptional job as well. He loved the fact that he could wear shorts and t-shirts most of the time at SMU. Their summers last almost 9 months! 
The cultures are so different between these two universities - cold climate vs. warm climate, southern atmosphere vs. north eastern, etc. so it is a personal choice.
SMU’s business school is top ranked. Congrats for getting in. That wasn’t easy.
@newjersey17 I’ve heard that folks in Dallas think very highly of Cox. Do you know its reputation outside of Texas? Folks in California are not particularly aware of SMU. My son is debating between SMU, Brandeis and possibly Texas A&M (cheapest by far with out-of-state tuition waiver).
@cadave Congrats on your sons acceptances!! Yes SMU Cox is known outside of Dallas. It’s ranked the top 20 business universities which is impressive.
My son and his wife graduated from SMU with an engineering degree and they both were employed by Google and Microsoft in California and Seattle. My son had a great career advisor and was offered the world - co-ops, research, TA, internships and a job when he graduated.
My kids could never attend A&M. It’s just way too big for them. My D visited UT Austin and she ran away as fast as she could. It was way too big for her and it felt like a city. They have 50k students!
They love the smaller universities so they aren’t a number, have tons of access to their professors, the professors teach (TAs do not), can sign up for any class they’d like, etc. the list is endless.
My sons favorite thing was to talk to his professors for hours. My H graduated from UT and he said he had to go through two TAs to get permission to see the professor. Once he it took an hour of waiting in line for only five minutes of his time. These big universities are overcrowded and have huge classes. It’s just totally different than a smaller university. These big universities are constantly pushing you out (weed out). That’s the opposite at SMU.
If you take a look at Princeton, Harvard, WashU, Notre Dame, Rice, etc do you see a common theme? They are all Smaller universities with small class sizes. The average class of 1500-2000 or 4K-8k in total. That says it all.
My son wanted to take a Spanish class but it conflicted with his computer class on Friday so the professor offered to teach him in her office!
My son slept through a final and the professor called him and asked him to take it in his office. These things would never happen at UT.
My sons academic advisor lived in his dorm and they often walked together. He also became is TA.
He just loved SMU.
Just pick the college that fits your child. Everyone is different and fit in my opinion is the most important factor when choosing a college.
@cadave Another thing I heard about A&M is you have to take every single GEC before you can take any course in your major which means you cannot take anything in your major until @Junior year. That’s terrible! My son did the opposite and took two engineering courses his first semester. His college advisor told him to do this which was impressive. Because of this he was able to get an internship, research, co-op right away. Also he found out early on if that’s what he wanted to study.
Another nice thing about SMU is you can major in anything you’d like. Once you get accepted it’s easy to change majors.
Also SMU is big on making sure you graduate on time. I’ve heard it’s harder to graduate on time at a big university because they don’t have the space for their required classes. That’s something else to consider. If your son has AP courses that he can use that will help!
I know of a student that had a scholarship at A&M and he had to maintain a 3.5 GPA in order to keep it. That’s a tall order. So he got around it by taking only 12 credits a semester and used his AP courses too. He couldn’t get an internship until after his Junior year because he started taking his major courses junior year.
Again everyone is different. That’s why FIT is so important.
@newjersey17 Thank you for your thoughtful reply. We asked our son to apply to A&M because we had friends who had gone there. In talking with them, when they started, it had about 18K students which ballooned to 22k when they graduated. I do feel that A&E would be too big for our son and was also concerned about maintaining 3.5 gpa to keep his scholarship.
Our son received a nice scholarship from both SMU and COX, but it would still cost us almost $50k/year to attend, which we did not budget for. We plan to talk to them when they visit our city as well as visit Brandeis and SMU before deciding. Thanks for your input.