I have the opportunity to attend both universities. Obviously Texas a&m is a more respected college on the face value, but what about the Tech honors college? Does that change the ‘prestige’ and chance of graduate school admissions?
Also, Is it better to have a higher GPA at a less prestigious institution or vice versa?
Thanks!
What major? Do you qualify for honors at A&M?
@Jdriii have you visited yet? The city of Lubbock would be a HUGE deal-breaker for me. What are your stats / major?
Just curious why would the city of Lubbock be a “HUGE” dealbreaker?
I encourage people to go there and experience Lubbock themselves, form their own opinions. For me, after visiting Lubbock, I rapidly found out it was not for me. TTU is pretty great, though.
One very objective way to compare schools is the ROI (return on investment) measure.
http://www.payscale.com/college-roi/
The basic idea is to look at the difference between median pay a graduate of the school makes 20 years after graduation minus the cost of attendance at the school and the median pay a high school graduate would make after 24 years.
As the website says “Some schools do a better job of setting their alumni up for success in the job market.”
If you click on With Financial Aid and Annual % then A&M (in-state) is 4th in the nation UT is #67 and Texas Tech is #97.
Without Financial Aid and total ROI then A&M (in-state) is #39 A&M (out-state) is #68 and Texas Tech (in-state) is #178.
A&M goes down nationally because the total salary commanded by ivy league schools graduates is so much higher. But so are their costs which is why A&M does better on the ROI %.
It’s an interesting website to play with to compare schools. I was really surprised how poorly UT stacks up.
If you want to compare the different majors at each school for salary after attending then you can try the new government website.
Be careful with the government graduate pay statistics. They are based solely on tax return data for students who received federal financial aid- not all students. Payscale is self reported data. But it is all better than nothing.
Also schools with a lot of engineers who have high starting salaries and level off will always look better than schools that have less engineers. A&M has one of the largest engineering schools in the country.
sorry I haven’t been able to reply! I will be majoring in physics.
I do not qualify for the A&M honors because i do not meet the top 10% of my graduating class requirement. I more than have the test scores.
It honestly depends on what type of physics youre interested in. Both tech and A&M have decent physics departments.
With that major, you will almost certainly have to go to graduate school. If you are someone who enjoys proofbased thinking, undergraduate school will be rigorous but enjoyable. If you arent, you likely wont have too much fun.
TAMU is one of the best schools in the nation if you would like to pursue some sort of solid state electronics/physics. Alternately, we are also one of the best in the world for any sort of black hole/astonomy type research (disclaimer: neither of these are my expertise but I know this from discussion with students and faculty). I would weigh your specialization interests against respective departments. Emailing a professor or two to ask their input would likely be an excellent idea.
Honestly, I was part of A&M honors. Don’t worry too much about this program, as its nice to have honors registration but overall not very impactful outside of making friends freshman year.
Have you applied for honors at the college of science?
http://www.science.tamu.edu/academics/honors.php
Do you qualify? Because if you do, you will have an easier time finding a professor to take you as a research assistant if you choose to go to grad school. (which would mean you could go to grad school tuition free with a job and stipend)