<p>I agree, Ohio U is great for communications. S1 looked at it but chose to attend Marshall due to their sports journalism program (and in-state tuition.) But I have no idea how West Virginia University got on the underrated list. It’s not only a safety school for in-state kids, it’s a <em>national</em> safety school, both academically and financially. They probably named it because it’s the only school here that anyone’s ever heard of, that didn’t have a plane crash. </p>
<p>@Bestfriendsgirl
Are you saying WVA doesn’t fit this definition of underrated: “offer great value to students and are “rated” lower than might be if the “ratings” game was not based on less subjective criteria.”</p>
<p>If not, do you propose another school in West Virginia and if so why? Perhaps Marshall?</p>
<p>Re UNC: UNC admission is competitive, but UNC did admit slightly over 50% of NC applicants in 2014. UNC’s low over-all admit rate (less than 30% in 2014) is driven by the high number of out-of-state applicants–over 20,000 in 2014, compared to about10,000 in-state applicants. </p>
<p>On average, 25 students per year (about 4% of each class) go to UNC-CH from my son’s high school, a competitive public high school in a populous urban NC county. In addition to those 25, there are many other student in year who got admitted, but chose to go elsewhere. Justified or not, the top 2-3% of students at my son’s high school consider UNC a safety school, as does the guidance director (for those top students.) </p>
<p>I have to agree. There are more than a few students in NC for whom UNC is a safety. Does that mean they’re absolutely 100% guaranteed admission? No. But very few safeties are like that. I know that many of the top students at the local high schools in Chapel Hill see it as a safety (these kids are are competitive for Harvard, so not most kids).</p>
<p>About College of Staten Island in NY, I agree with its being not on the radar rather than underrated. My kid is at a private school in the NYC burbs and students apply to all the SUNYs and CUNYs. According to Naviance, CSI has among the fewest applicants from our school, 4 in 3 years as opposed to say Queens College or Hunter which get a dozen to 20 a year, or Stony Brook which gets 50 applicants a year.
Another fact that makes me wonder at the “underrated” designation is the average scores for applicants from our school to CSI: 1580 SAT. I mean, it doesn’t sound like a challenging academic environment.</p>
<p>About Virginia Tech, surely that’s known to be a very good school? Unless “underrated” means that it’s not just very good, it’s excellent? </p>
<p>I think Florida’s most underrated school is Miami Dade College. Miami Dade is America’s largest and most diverse college with more than 175,000 students. Miami Dade has educated more Floridians than any other college.</p>
<p><a href=“Official Miami Dade College Homepage”>http://www.mdc.edu/main/</a></p>
<p>ethelouise and keepittoyourself – I’ve no doubt that you’re right that some NC students “see” UNC as a safety. They would be wise not to. I know, and know of, a number of top of their class students who thought of UNC as a sure thing and were rejected. In recent years, those students included: 1) a double legacy, straight A student from a very good high school; 2) a minority student who spoke three languages, was near the top of the high school class, and whose parents immigrated from a very poor country, and 3) the valedictorian of one of the most competitive high schools in the state, a student with several Ivy acceptances. All of these students were active in extracurricular activities and all were highly regarded by their teachers and counselors. These are just three examples from one person. I know people all over the state who could give you similar examples.</p>
<p>So, while I don’t dispute what you know personally, I have a different perspective from having known of a number of “sure thing” UNC rejections.</p>
<p>I also hear of this more and more with NC State, especially with the engineering program. Other UNC system schools like UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Asheville, and Appalachian are becoming more difficult to get into because they are getting a lot of students like the above (#3 went to one of the Ivies) who didn’t get in UNC or NC State. Also, they get a number of top students who choose not even to apply to State or Carolina.</p>
<p>One thing I appreciate about North Carolina is that, in general, people are not elitist when it comes to education. Most of our top students want to go to public universities, and many students who would have a good shot at UNC decide to apply to other UNC system schools instead. That strengthens our system as a whole and means that we have a lot of underrated public universities.</p>
<p>UNC has 17 campuses and I would venture that some of those other than NCSU and UNC-CH are underrated. Like NCSU NC A&T has an ABET accredited engineering college, along with Duke and UNC Charlotte. There are people OOS who do not realize that UNC-CH has no engineering school, rather that is at NCSU and A&T. Three of my kiddos have STEM degrees from NCSU and A&T so we as a family have enjoyed the benefit of an in-state tuition rate and education at the “underrated” schools! One of them is now at med school and b-school at UNC-CH.</p>
<p>ECU has a new dental school while A&T and UNC Greensboro has a new School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, again for the low in-state tuition rates. And the different campuses all have different tuition rates. They are all very different and unique campuses many holding onto their unique charcteristics they has before becoming absorbed by the UNC system. UNC Asheville is nestled in the mountains and is a small public LAC, Wilmington is on the beach with a fabulous marine biology program. NCSU and UNC-Charlotte have great architecture schools and NCSU has the vet school which provides undergraduate training and DVM degrees. NCSU also has a textile school along with a plastics department that is cutting edge.</p>
<p>UNC OOS tuition is reasonable compared to other states in-state tuition. We moved here as a family 10+ years ago from northern CA (Bay area) for the UNC system, both undergrad and grad school. With a terrific vet school, med schools, RTP research and b-schools + the undergrad system we could not have chosen better!! My children have all benefited from it greatly, son in med school at Chapel Thrill could not agree more.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>I think it’s worth considering the source. Slate is more like a gossipy tabloid than a respected news source. </p>
<p>@Gator88NE - I will say WVU is a “good value” as are all the schools here in bargain-basement West Virginia. Our OOS tuition is lower than in-state in a lot of places. But there’s really nothing special about it aside from its party-school status and I think even that isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Of the gazillion kids I know or know of who have gone there, only a couple have really gone off the rails. </p>
<p>I’m from Arizona, and I have to agree with ASU-- it has a reputation as a party school, so most people ignore the top-notch academics in many programs.</p>
<p>The knock against ASU is it’s rankings. It’s a huge school (almost 60K undergrads), with about 1/3 of the students from out of state, so it’s a well known school. Would be a case where the rankings really don’t match up to the academics? or at least the academics in several programs, such as business, engineering, the fine arts, etc. </p>
<p>When you get a school as large as ASU, I think you really have a number of universities rolled up into one. The Barrett Honors college probably has as many bright students as many a selective private university, the stronger departments probably have as many students as many good mid sized state universities (I’m thinking U of Pitts.), and there are still enough students that need help and remedial education to fill a couple of good sized community colleges. The academics are there, however, being one of just three state universities in Arizona it has to to serve multiple functions. </p>
<p>Update:</p>
<p>Arizona: ASU
Florida: New College of Florida
Georgia: Georgia College & State University and/or Oxford College of Emory (Not the main Emory campus)
Illinois: Illinois Institute of Technology
MA: UMASS Lowell
Michigan: Michigan Tech
NC: The UNC System (other than NC State, UNC-CH)
NJ: Montclair State
Ohio: Wright-State (or other Ohio mid-size schools) and/or University of Cincinnati
Utah: Snow College
Virginia: Virginia Tech
West Virginia: WVA or Marshall</p>
<p>Lets look at some additional states, what about the following?</p>
<p>Alabama: University of Alabama at Huntsville or Birmingham
Texas: University of Houston or Texas Tech University
Louisiana: Louisiana Tech University
Missouri: Missouri S&T
Maryland: University of Maryland–Baltimore County
New Jersey: NJIT or Rutgers</p>
<p>How is Virginia Tech underrated? It has the 15th ranked undergraduate engineering school in the country. It is ranked higher overall than many flagship colleges in other states.</p>
<p>Ops…cut and pasted VTech from the last list and forgot to removing it…I’ll remove it next time. Any thoughts on other schools in Virginia? How about George Mason University?</p>
<p>I’m not sure but maybe George Mason and/or VCU. They tend to get overshadowed by UVa, Wm & M, and Virginia Tech. </p>
<p>New page, so here is the list again…</p>
<p>Arizona: ASU
Florida: New College of Florida
Georgia: Georgia College & State University and/or Oxford College of Emory (Not the main Emory campus)
Illinois: Illinois Institute of Technology
MA: UMASS Lowell
Michigan: Michigan Tech
NC: The UNC System (other than NC State, UNC-CH)
NJ: Montclair State
Ohio: Wright-State (or other Ohio mid-size schools) and/or University of Cincinnati
Utah: Snow College
Virginia: George Mason and/or VCU
West Virginia: WVA and/or Marshall</p>
Any valedictorian in NC can get into UNC. I can confidently say that UNC is in fact my safety school.