<p>If you have gone to A&M, what made you choose it over other colleges? Feel free to comment on other aspects of A&M.</p>
<p>Chose A&M over every other school (including t.u.) due to the generous amount of financial aid and the minimal amount of red-tape at aTm.</p>
<p>Thanks for answering. What are some of your fav. traditions there? And what do you know about intramurals?</p>
<p>Ooo I love wildcats... and and Silver Taps.... and Aggie football.... and Midnight Yell....
:-P</p>
<p>Texas A&M is one of those schools that you either love it or you hate it. I like the traditions and all but I don't like the "Aggie cult." The latter attracts too many people with low self-esteem issues or whatever who want to come to A&M so they can be a part of something bigger in order to feel good about themselves. That's not everyone at the school, of course, but I met enough Aggies like that to notice it. I kind of wish that A&M would be more like a mainstream state university but that'll never happen.</p>
<p>What really gets me are the idiots at A&M like that one guy who put manure on some fans from another school. That kind of trailer park behavior doesn't make A&M look good at all. </p>
<p>My other major gripe about A&M is that it's a very cliquish school. A lot of the students just hang out with people they knew from high school or their surrounding area growing up. If you really want to meet people and make friends you really need to meet people in your major.</p>
<p>Mays is a prestigious business school but I can't say that about the undergrad students that I've met at Mays. Honestly, I haven't met very many of them that I've liked. Too many of them are overachievers that have this "holier than thou" mentality which is multiplied by their Aggie pride. </p>
<p>What's amusing to me are the ones with this attitude, yet they'll end up working in a cubicle for a faceless corporation in Houston the rest of their lives. I guess they expected their A&M degrees to do all the work for them because the ones that do not have this attitude are more successful in life. Then you got other Mays students who don't really fit in at A&M but go there because they're legacy students and they happened to have good transcripts from high school. They wouldn't be there if it wasn't for their parents pressuring them into going.</p>
<p>Of course, I'm only talking about some (well, too many) of the Mays students I have met; not all of them are like that. The rest of A&M seemed to have contempt for the business majors.</p>
<p>That said, a degree from Texas A&M carries A LOT of weight, especially in Texas. The Aggie network is pretty strong, too, but in my opinion, it's geared too strongly towards the Houston workforce. Of course, this doesn't really matter if you end up working for a large corporation out of DFW or a smaller corporation ran by Aggie alumni.</p>
<p>The engineering and architecture programs are arguably the best in the state. I think they have just a hair over the programs at UT.</p>
<p>It really just depends on what you're going for and what you like.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, I was in College Station today. A lot of my friends from high school go there now and yes, it could be called "high school part 2" simply because they don't branch out. </p>
<p>That said, I've met a lot of Aggies as I live only about 45 minutes away. Top 10% doesn't mean smart, let me tell you. However - and I've seen the same at UT, though Aggie pride is much worse and overbearing at times - quite a few students at the flagships definitely have a 'holier than thou' attitude in the sense that they think they've hit the big time and will be making a ton of money out of school. Many fail to realize that there are schools outside of Texas and that, when it comes to real prestige, they are all sitting in the shadow of the Rice nerds. :D </p>
<p>
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The engineering and architecture programs are arguably the best in the state. I think they have just a hair over the programs at UT
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<p>Definitely agree here. I have a lot of friends that turned down UT (top 10% rule) for PE and other types of Eng. at A&M, as well as Ag.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Brand, except for your Rice nerds comment. Rice does not have a large enough student body to be a threat to anyone else in Texas.</p>
<p>When I was referring to the legacy students at Mays who don't really fit in, I remember one girl in particular who, in behavior and attitude, was really more along the lines of Texas State material. But due to the top 10% rule and her parents (father was some sort of CPA and a former A&M student), she ended up at Mays. It's really not that hard to be in the top 10% of your HS class if you want to be in the top 10% and you work towards that goal starting as a freshman. A lot of the top 10% kids in my HS weren't particularly bright.</p>
<p>When you combine the small town cliquish atmosphere of A&M with the fact that a lot of majors, like biochem, are study intensive, there's not a lot of incentive for the kids to go out and meet a bunch of new people.</p>
<p>What really irritates me about the Aggie pride is that they will make themselves look like idiots at their own expense. I've heard of Aggies who actually go to Sixth Street in Austin just to start crap. The student body at UT could not care less about the rivalry between them and A&M. In a way, the whole Aggie pride thing hurts the academics of A&M a little. You're probably right about the "holier than thou" attitude being prevalent at a lot of big schools. I never quite considered that. But I think it's worse at A&M because of the whole Aggie pride issue.</p>
<p>I think A&M has an advantage over UT in engineering simply because A&M is closer to Houston, which is a MAJOR engineering powerhouse.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Brand, except for your Rice nerds comment. Rice does not have a large enough student body to be a threat to anyone else in Texas.</p>
<p>When I was referring to the legacy students at Mays who don't really fit in, I remember one girl in particular who, in behavior and attitude, was really more along the lines of Texas State material. But due to the top 10% rule and her parents (father was some sort of CPA and a former A&M student), she ended up at Mays. It's really not that hard to be in the top 10% of your HS class if you want to be in the top 10% and you work towards that goal starting as a freshman. A lot of the top 10% kids in my HS weren't particularly bright.</p>
<p>When you combine the small town cliquish atmosphere of A&M with the fact that a lot of majors, like biochem, are study intensive, there's not a lot of incentive for the kids to go out and meet a bunch of new people.</p>
<p>What really irritates me about the Aggie pride is that they will make themselves look like idiots at their own expense. I've heard of Aggies who actually go to Sixth Street in Austin just to start crap. The student body at UT could not care less about the rivalry between them and A&M. In a way, the whole Aggie pride thing hurts the academics of A&M a little. You're probably right about the "holier than thou" attitude being prevalent at a lot of big schools. I never quite considered that. But I think it's worse at A&M because of the whole Aggie pride issue.</p>
<p>I think A&M has an advantage over UT in engineering simply because A&M is closer to Houston, which is a MAJOR engineering powerhouse.</p>
<p>And another thing, UT has more good-looking chicks than A&M. The good-looking chicks at A&M drag their high school boyfriends with them to school and still talk to them even after they broke up.</p>
<p>A&M is said to have very large class size.Does it bother Aggies?</p>
<p>It really depends on your major, Jason, but for the most part, the class sizes are very large and they do suck. A&M is a school that doesn't really know you; you pay for your classes, register, sit in the class, and the professor probably won't know you from anyone else in the class. Then you graduate. Now, some unpopular majors like meteorology (or whatever the weather major is at A&M) will only have 20 people at any given time so for those majors, it's like going to a liberal arts school.</p>
<p>The graduate programs at A&M are usually not very crowded at all. One thing that I do like about A&M is that they have a wider array of majors than even UT.</p>
<p>Thanks,Hi-Power.
How about EE?I guess it's a hot major,right?</p>
<p>Meterology....huh,sounds fabulous but I'm not interested in it,lol.</p>
<p>Yeah,I have noticed that too.Almost every major ever invented is available on Texas A&M.</p>
<p>By the way,how do Texans feel about trinity?It seems that texans only care about Rice,UT and A&M.</p>
<p>Trinity, trinity what? lol--San Antonio isn't a city I would want to live in for four years (my opinion).</p>
<p>Hi-Power, I really hope what you typed wasn't true--about the attitudes. :(</p>
<p>The one thing I will say about A&M that I like is the vast amount of majors they offer. A lot of them you simply can't find at UT, and these aren't bulls*** majors I'm talking about. Plus, a lot of the programs at UT focus way too much on academics so you're talking a bunch of classes you really do not have any use for in real world applications.</p>
<p>If A&M didn't put itself into such a small town Texas niche, I think it would be ranked a bit better as a public university. If you combine the best aspects of both UT and A&M into one school, you would have a top 10, if not top 5, public university in America.</p>
<p>Trinity is probably the most well-respected private university in Texas. But since there's not much to do in San Antonio if you live there, I wouldn't go there personally.</p>
<p>I'll get back to you in a bit about EE; I knew a lot of EE majors.</p>
<p>Just2Fitz, the athmosphere at A&M does kind of suck if you aren't used to it, but once you get into a program there you enjoy, you can put up with it.</p>
<p>Okay, back to your question regarding EE. I think it's a major that you should go into fully expecting that you will need a MBA afterwards.</p>
<p>I used to know a guy who graduated from UT as an EE. He made about 50K a year starting out, which is good, but I wouldn't recommend taking less as a business or a EE major right out of college.</p>
<p>But the job he took sounded kinda crappy. I met some of his co-workers who had been in it for 10-15+ years and they seemed to be in the same boat as he was, maybe with a little more money. One of them would party all night after work and then sleep for one hour before going back to work.</p>
<p>If you work in EE for a couple of years, then go right back to school for your MBA, then you are as good as golden. A lot of doors will open for you and an engineering undergrad combined with a MBA is an excellent combo.</p>
<p>These attitudes at A&M don't sound very good. When I visited everyone seemed pretty friendly and helpful... And surely people try to acquire new friends rather than only hang with their highschool buddies...</p>
<p>A&M has a very friendly campus, but don't expect them to automatically become your friend just because they were nice to you in the hallway. Lots of high school cliques carry over to A&M and they are going to be friendlier to people they've known since kindergarten than someone they just met this semester. UT is an easier place to make friends because the admission standards are a little tougher, which breaks up high school cliques, and there's plenty of OOS students who know nobody.</p>
<p>I wouldn't recommend A&M for an undergrad if you don't already have friends there. But, of course, your mileage may vary. If A&M has your undergraduate program and there's no where else you're seriously considering, then go for it and forget what I've said.</p>
<p>Wow, there is so much misinformation and biased personal opinion in this thread it is difficult to know where to begin...</p>
<p>luv2travel:</p>
<p>I hope that you do not put too much stock in what Hi-Power and Brand_182 have to say about the attitudes at A&M. Aside from the fact that it appears neither of them actually went to school there (let alone graduated with a degree from A&M), what they are saying is rooted in their own superficial anecdotal experience and biased personal opinion. </p>
<p>Hi-Power & Brand_182:</p>
<p>In case you two forgot, there are over 45,000 students at Texas A&M. Its sad how comfortable you both seem to be flirting with attributing your individual experiences with the small group of people you know from A&M, to the entire student population. </p>
<p>Brand_182, Regarding your "high school part 2" comment, all I can say is that your high school is one of roughly 1,000 represented at A&M, and I would venture to guess it is in the minority. By your logic, if A&M students dont branch out then the 35,000+ undergraduates would leave College Station with exactly the same group of friends as they had entering into freshmen year. A bit ridiculous belief, dont you think? </p>
<p>Hi-Power, I have never heard about any A&M student putting manure on a fan from another school, but if its true then I share your disapproval. But you do know there are idiots at every school, not just at A&M, right? No school is immune to having a few bad apples, especially large state schools with tens of thousands of students. So it is probably best to keep your like that one guy type stories to yourself, because I can assure you that one guy is not representative of any university, including A&M.</p>
<p>Also, Hi-Power, what experience do you have with A&M that leads you to make statements like it is a very cliquish school and there's not a lot of incentive for the kids to go out and meet a bunch of new people? Did you actually attend A&M, let alone graduate from there? I dont want to assume because I dont know for sure, but you sure do write as someone who went somewhere else for college. If that is the case, then I have to ask: why you are writing about what student life is like at A&M when you dont actually know what youre talking about? </p>
<p>And finally, the statement UT is an easier place to make friends because the admission standards are a little tougher, which breaks up high school cliques, and there's plenty of OOS students who know nobody makes me laugh. First of all, the last time I checked UT was subject to the same top 10% rule as A&M, so I fail to see how the admission standards are a little tougher. Second, I do not understand how lots of high school cliques carry over to A&M, while UT breaks up high school cliques. That is quite an amazing feat that UT is pulling off, especially considering they draw virtually equal numbers of students from virtually the same group of high schools as A&M.</p>
<p>Actually roughtly 71% of UT's freshmen are from the top 10%, whereas A&M is closer to 50%.</p>
<p>Hi-Power is completely right,especially about it being high school 2...but what i especially don't like is their 77% admission rate...that's why you tend to run into a lot of people who aren't particularly bright...with that being said,engineering is the strongest or second strongest area in A&M</p>