Texas Tech University positives and negatives?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Texas Tech University
1

<p>I'm going to be a senior in highschool this fall and am considering applying to Texas Tech because of the nurse anesthesiology program they have. Iv also looked into Texas Christian University and love everything about it except it's 40k pricetag and lack of diversity. Iv done plenty of research on TCU but I'd like to know more about what Texas Tech has to offer and it's pro and cons. I have many questions and very much appreciate any insight u can give!</p>

<p>-education quality?
-helpfulness of teachers?
-nurse program?
-city life/enviorment?
-difficulty to be accepted?
-school social life?
-dorm life
-people?(diversity? Friendliness?)
-tuition and financial aid<br>
- compared to TCU, how are job oprutunities straight after college?
-anything else you think is important for me to take into consideration???
-does it have a decent photography program?</p>

2

<p>I can’t answer your questions about nursing, photography, or helpfulness of teachers in those departments.</p>

<p>However, I can tell you that Tech is a great place to go to college. Social life is as good as it gets in a college atmosphere. Friendliest people in the world. Much more diversity than TCU simply due to the demographics (TCU limits diversity by it’s price tag).</p>

<p>Tech is fairly easy to get accepted into if you are a decent student. Last time I looked the 50% SAT scores were about 1000 - 1210 for CR+M. Also, if you score above 1250 on the SAT and have decent HS GPA, you qualify for merit aid scholarship money.</p>

<p>Plus, Tech has one of the nicest campuses you will ever see. Lots of new like TCU, but much nicer athletic facilities.</p>

3

<p>Good point about how the price tag limiting the diversity. thats the reason why im having second thoughts about TCU, even though its my dream school and ranked #5 in Nation for best Nurse Anesthetist program i don’t know if its worth taking out so many loans and ending up in debt? also it seems pretty hard to get into TCU as well.</p>

<p>About TTU, I’d really like to know more about the city life, Dallas seems to be similar to Houston with many things to do,What does Lubbock have to offer what is it like? and also im curious about your source of credibility? please</p>

4

<p>My source of credibility? I’m a proud graduate of Tech from the dark ages. I live two hours away and still return to campus for home football games and basketball games. I donote to the scholarship fund, the athletic department, my engineering department, and my fraternity. I have numerous friends with kids that currently attend Tech, and keep up with it as much as feasible.</p>

<p>For lack of better description, I am a self-professed cheeleader for Tech, and espouse it’s virtues every chance I get.</p>

<p>Tech has a huge contingent of kids from all the big cities in Texas. The common perception is that Lubbock is a small town, but it’s over 200,000 population, and I think it’s the second or third largest city in the Big 12 conference. It offers pretty much all the same things that a suburb of Houston offers, sans bugs and humidity. (Lubbock is notorious for a few scary sandstorms every spring, but other than that has a great climate with all four season.)</p>

<p>If you haven’t done so, I highly recommend a visit to the campus and to your desired college. Lubbock has a large medical community, including Tech’s medical school. </p>

<p>If you are hung up on living in a larger city, there’s probably not much I can do to make you feel better about Lubbock. But you might be pleasantly surprised if you come to visit.</p>

<p>Good luck with your search!</p>

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<p>Thank you arrdad I appreciate the insight(: I’d love to go visit and see for myself but I can’t. If done so more research and definetly will be applying(hopefully if im accepted ill be able to visit b4 makind final desicion to attend)
but I’d still like to know alot more about the eduaction and teacher quality, the nurse or photography program and after college how easy does texas tech’s name sell in the job market compared to tcu, UofH, and possibly utarlington? Anybody???</p>

6

<p>Currently Texas has three tier 1 schools: UT, AandM, and Rice. Texas Tech and UofH are both on track to become top tier schools by 2015.</p>

<p>It’s hard to find a prettier campus than Tech and the climate is WAY nicer than Houston. I lived in Houston when I was in my 20’s and it was fun but the climate SUCKS big time, I hated coming home from Christmas shopping all sweaty and hot because it was still 85 degrees outside. If that sounds good to you (in addition to it being as steamy as a sauna) then you’ll be with the over 3 million other people who put up with it somehow. But Lubbock is dry and mild, cooler in the summer than Houston and warmer in the winter than Amarillo to the north which almost ended up being Tech’s home instead of Lubbock. Lubbock is a bigger town than Amarillo on account of being home to the school.</p>

<p>I’m going to bring my daughter to look at it because even though it’s not famous in particular for theater, (her major) I was impressed with the selection of drama majors and the program, and it has a special fine arts dorm that sounds really cool!</p>

<p>According to collegedata.com, foreign students are one percent of the population from 103 countries, 80 percent of graduates report finding a job within six months (that’s a pretty good figure) and 20 percent of males and 15 percent of females are greek.</p>

<p>I know you aren’t asking about Tech compared to UT or AM, but I’d take it over either one, personally, because AM is too conservative for me (Tech will be more conservative than someplace like Oberlin or UT though, for sure) and UT is just kind of brutal to undergrads as it has more kids than it wants due to the Texas guaranteed admissions rules and does not especially make much effort to acquire or keep freshmen, it has too many. It won’t (can’t) guarantee freshman housing, they just have too many.</p>

<p>UTArlington is of a completely different character than UT Austin, though, btw.</p>

<p>I don’t have any info on the nursing programs, sorry. But my step dad and his sister are both alums (one a lawyer and one a musician) and they loved Tech.</p>

<p>As far as job market recognition, that’s going to depend almost more on the department itself than the school; but Tech is probably the more recognized in general of all those you mention.</p>

<p>The mural I have been working on lately is in a house owned by a lady whose son is going there this fall as an English professor and he’s been staying there over the summer: I couldn’t tell you how he is as a professor as I haven’t been a student! But from knowing him personally I would have no reservations at all if my daughter were to end up in his class. He is very pleased with his new position and the school. I’m looking forward to taking D there to visit; it’s a safety for my daughter (she’s well above the guaranteed admission stats) and it would probably end up financially feasible. I don’t think the theater program is an audition only admission program yet, so it might possibly qualify as a true likely for her in all three areas, so I hope she likes it because true likelies are hard for us to find.</p>

7

<p>Snapdragonfly, I’ve seen your posts on the MT forums. We seem to be in a similar situation with our daughters.</p>

<p>My daughter loves Tech as she has been there a hundred times over the years tagging along with me to ball games, etc.</p>

<p>Tech has a BFA Acting program that you gain admission to by audition after your third semester in college. On paper, the curriculum looks good. And they seem to have a decent production schedule each year, including a musical.</p>

<p>We went to see this spring’s musical, “Curtains”, and I was fairly impressed. It was a notch below TCU’s and Texas State’s musicals that we attended last fall, but still plenty of talent on stage.</p>

<p>The biggest drawbacks for my daughter were (1) they cast grad students liberally, although there were plenty of undergrads in the production, and (2) the unknowns involved with auditioning for the BFA program after the third semester.</p>

<p>FWIW, Tech told us that the BFA Acting program only has about 10 students in it. The vast majority of theatre kids go down the BA path for whatever reason.</p>

<p>So for now, she is considering Tech more as a safety and very possible grad school destination.</p>

8

<p>SL Coug, Go visit Tech. Southwest Airlines has plenty of flights to Lubbock. It will answer many of your questions. My son is a Tech grad in business from a couple years ago and really enjoyed the whole Tech experience. We are from a north Dallas suburb with tons of shopping and amenities. Before his first visit to Tech in his senior year of high school, he had bought into the “Lubbock is a hick town” reputation. During the visit he liked the Tech campus straight-off but was leery of what Lubbock had to offer. After driving around town by the shopping mall, restaurants, movie theatres, and seeing that a top rock band was scheduled to play in Tech’s basketball arena, etc. he concluded that Lubbock was similar in feel and offerings to our north Dallas suburb. He was glad he chose Tech.</p>

9

<p>lonestardad: How were the job prospects for you S after graduating from the business school and do you know how difficult it is to get admitted to the business school. S is a soph and is considering business options.</p>

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<p>spectrum2: Entrance requirements to Tech’s Business School are not difficult. (I tried to google undergraduate admissions but got nowhere.) A collegiate transfer needs a minimum 2.75 grade point average. Tech’s Business School does an excellent job of getting employers of all sizes to come to Tech and give on-campus interviews, internships, etc. A plus for Tech’s Business School is that it has its own career counseling and recruitment center apart from the job finding/employment services offered by the University. In 2008 the career fairs with employer interviews in particular were very helpful in my son’s job search. While looking for a job on his own he had come up with few prospects. The career fair was a comparative gold mine. He got several second interviews in a variety of industries and was hired by a Fortune 500 oil field services company. He got in by the skin of his teeth as the job market fell apart along with the U.S. economy in late 2008.</p>

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<p>Great to hear that and good for your S! I wasn’t very clear, S is actually arising junior in HS. Do students get admitted to the business program as a freshman or after being admitted to the school?</p>

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<p>You start off as Business-undecided when you start as a freshman (if you get in, which isn’t too hard but the standards are going to go up and up as the years go on. The university has a goal to grow to 40K in the next 10 years but from what I’ve heard for the higher ups in the business building is that the business school whats to stay pretty much at the amount of students they are at now (maybe a small % more but not a direct proportional increase with overall university increase).</p>

<p>After 2 years, you start doing the upper-level business classes. After another semester you pick if you want finance, acct, mgt, marketing, mis, or w/e. They do that so that there are not tons of finance and acct students as freshman that start running to change a major after taking the first acct or finance course.</p>

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<p>Thanks KBFM, do you have any gross idea what the admission requirements are to get into Business-undecided as a freshman? If a student isn’t admitted as a freshman can they be admitted to the business school as a Soph?</p>

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<p>I don’t know what the requirement are but I think if you get in by assured admission you can be a business major. If you were are admitted by review you have to make a certain GPA to get into business after a semester or year.</p>

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<p>I am a senior in finance at Tech. As far as I know there is no rolling requirement or application needed to join the business school other than keeping your college GPA above a 2.75.</p>

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<p>famafrench, hopefully I can catch you before you stop checking this thread for good…lol. I’ve started to look into Tech for the past couple of weeks and can you tell me is the B-school open to transfers, hopefully more than TAMU and UT? Plus, is there strong recruitment for Rawls, like are you worried about getting a job? lol, Thanks…</p>

17

<p>I’ll try to help the best I can.</p>

<p>I don’t know how the TAMU and UT B schools take transfers, but as far as I know the only requirement at Tech is to have that 2.75 GPA in order to transfer into the Rawls College of Business. If you call the business school, they could easily confirm this.</p>

<p>I am graduating in May and I have had about 5-6 interviews on campus through the career center this past fall. There is also a career fair that the business school puts on each semester. I would say that I am cautiously optimistic about job prospects, but still a little worried. It’s all about making connections and hopefully that will pay off. Another thing I will say is that most of the Tech alums that I have talked with are very anxious to help fellow Red Raiders, which is always a good thing!</p>

<p>Let me know if you have any other questions!</p>