UT Austin vs IU Kelley vs SMU

Yes, SMU has wealthy students but there are still many students that are on merit scholarships and/or financial aid. My daughter has mentioned some crazy money stories but that doesn’t have much, if any, impact on study habits. She’s also mentioned lots of stories of bargain shopping, kids with campus jobs, “free” stuff, and the normal spending habits of students on a budget. If they go out on the weekends, etc. she is not spending a lot of money and there are plenty of opportunities on campus for entertainment that require no money.

Cost is an important factor for school choice. We even feel lucky that she was denied by her ED school (notoriously expensive private school). It seems to us IU, UT Austin or SMU (w/ scholarship) would be our best choice.
Thank you again for your suggestion. We’ll take it into consideration seriously.

@doschicos D was admitted into MHC with an FA package (including grant, loan and work). She thought it’s too rural. As a girl school, there might be few chances to interact with boys? (I guess). What can I do for her?

BTW, a smaller school (like SMU) may offer advantages when it comes to asking for prof recommendations for grad school.

She’ll have to be more of a go-getter at IU and UT-Austin.

@maplefall You and your daughter might know this already but Mount Holyoke is part of a 5 college consortium with Smith, Amherst, Hampshire, and the very large UMass Amherst campus. So, there will be some males who will take classes at MH and she could take classes on coed campuses. The town/small city of Amherst isn’t too far away as is Northampton and both are cool places with amenities for students.

https://www.fivecolleges.edu/consortium

@azmomof3 Pleased to know your daughter is studying in SMU. Which grade is she in? What major? How does she like the school? I personally like SMU very much.
Sorry for so many questions. I do hope my D will consider it seriously. Thank you so much.

@doschicos Thank you for sharing the info and link. Hopefully daughter will think it twice.

@PurpleTitan Your ranking is a great attempt. It’s a new approach to assess a school based on alumni achievements. I am an education professional and would agree with @Sue22 that you’d carefully frame your methodology: What factors to be addressed? How many schools to be assessed? What is your reliable data source? (Why Forbes?) How do you define your terms (e.g. “elite professional school”)? Do you think graduation rate and salary should be included in the factors of your metrics?
ARWU uses objective data (number of articles in “Science” and “Nature”), just for your inference.
You have done a great and interesting job. But it’s hard to make a ranking accepted universally.

@maplefall - my daughter is a freshman. She had some good choices, like your daughter, and I didn’t think SMU was going to make the top 3. After final visits to the other choices - and none of them feeling quite right - she made a trip to SMU by herself for an admitted student weekend. Within the first few hours, she knew she had found her place. She works hard at her studies (she is an engineering major) but has had the time and opportunity to be involved with a few campus organizations. Because she has been involved and met lots of different people, she has had a very good experience so far. Sounds like your daughter has some great options. Obviously there were more highly ranked options for engineering schools but we weren’t entirely sure she would enjoy engineering and hoped she would choose a school with lots of other options if she decided to change majors. Rankings are important, I guess, but we didn’t really care all that much. Factors like travel distance (she’s 1000 miles away but a short, relatively inexpensive direct flight), job / internship opportunities in large city (Dallas), active campus ministry (we are Catholic), affordability with merit scholarships, and a small, supportive engineering program played into her decision more than any ranking.

ARWU is completely research-based (so would only tell you about faculty research prowess in mostly STEM and some social sciences). Williams wouldn’t even be ranked and Dartmouth is ranked extremely lowly by ARWU, for instance. A school like IU who’s strengths are in business, music, and dance (and doesn’t even offer engineering) would not do well in that ranking. But how much does a heavily STEM-based research ranking tell you about Kelley undergrad?

I used the Forbes subrankings because they have a ranking of “American Leaders”, per capita student awards, and per capita PhDs. I can’t find those alumni achievement rankings elsewhere.

Graduation rate mostly tells you how strong (and wealthy) entering students are. Salary is heavily influenced by major (and the mix of majors differs a lot; IU doesn’t have engineering; RPI and GTech offer almost no majors outside of STEM).

The elite professional school ranking is from a WSJ Feeder ranking from years back. I’ll try to find it.

This ranking is similar:
http://beyondcollegerankings.com/?page_id=170

OK, here is the WSJ ranking:
http://collegematchus.com/ranking-the-colleges-top-colleges-that-feed-alumni-into-grad-school-programs/

The top professional schools are listed here:
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2007/08/wall-street-jou.html

Definitely an East-Coast bias (possibly because Stanford wasn’t willing to share data?)
I know that in business, the top MBA programs are the M7 (Stanford, HBS, Wharton, Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, Columbia, Northwestern Kellogg) while for law, YHS-CCN are the top 6.
Of those 13, the breakdown between East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast is 8-3-2.

But the WSJ ranking and numbers aren’t much different from this ranking/numbers assembled by Poets&Quants for feeders in to top MBA programs:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/16227829/#Comment_16227829

@azmomof3 What’s it like being from out of state? Is there any clickiness amongst the students from TX? A large percentage are from TX, right? Was it easy for your daughter to make friends? Anything else you can say about the social life would be great. Hope my questions help the OP too:)

@citymama9 - According to the SMU website:

“More than half of undergraduates come from outside Texas. With students from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the leading home states (after Texas) for first-year students are, in descending order, California, Florida, Connecticut, and Georgia.”

Plus, TX is so huge - the distance between El Paso and Houston is equivalent to a few states in the northeast. I know at our state schools, many kids head off to them and room with friends from their high school - that really doesn’t happen much at SMU because there aren’t (from what I can tell) many kids from the same high school, even if they are from Dallas or TX. My daughter has mentioned friends and acquaintances from many other places - and she does have some friends from Dallas but they don’t seem to go home very often. Of course, a few of them know each other from different activities, etc. but it sounds like if they are together they are very inclusive of anyone else and fold them into the group. I actually attended SMU in the 90’s and I found this to be pretty much my experience too. Two girls on my dorm floor were from the same high school and were roommates but we all hung out as a big group - and we were from about 6 different states.

As for other social life stuff - I think everyone can find their “people”… it might take some time and getting involved helps too. As you probably know, the greek rush week occurs at the start of the spring semester (they come back a few days early). I think that shakes things up quite a bit as some kids join a sorority or fraternity and others don’t. The first few days after all that happens can be hard on some but I think just about anyone would tell you that it all works out, everyone moves on with their lives, and just because some are in different houses - or not in one at all, they can all still be friends - their availability to each other just might be a bit changed up. So, that presents some challenges but also might open up some new opportunities for relationships too.

There are areas off campus that aren’t too far of an uber ride and I know they head there sometimes - Lower Greenville Ave. and Deep Ellum have clubs - some where underage kids can get in for dancing, etc. There are nice areas for shopping, hanging out, etc. and getting some good food not too far off campus as well. There is an on-campus burger/fry joint called Mac’s Place that is included in the dining plan and I know there are late night gathering / study sessions there. Program Council has on-campus movie nights with (free) food trucks or food from local restaurants that bring in crowds. There are sports, intra-mural sports, plays, concerts, speakers, etc. Also, the residential commons housing system is set up so that each dorm throws a themed party that all other dorms are invited to. One dorm did a big Halloween party, one does a Mardi Gras theme, etc. etc.

@azmomof3 Thanks so much for your thorough response. It was very helpful.

to clarify the out of state worries - the most recent data on the entering class was 62% out of state. 8% international and 30% Texas. That Texas stat is for people from Houston, austin, san antonio, el paso, etc. Texas is huge these folks may go home once or twice in a semester (think thanksgiving, birthdays for parents, special one off items), but it is a truly residential college experience.

@PurpleTitan It’s quite understandable that why rankings are east-coast biased. Yet I always feel there are so many quality and unique higher education institutions in US. Many people in my country were not familiar with LACs but now tend to send their kids to them.
@azmomof3 @jamesk2014 Thank you for sharing detailed info and data, very useful. It will be great if a campus is inclusive even if students like to connect more with their acquaintances, which is natural to me.

Time to summarize D’s admission results. Applied for 14 schools totally.
Denied: WFU (ED1), NYU (ED2), UW (Seattle), Wisconsin-Madison, Occidental College, W&M
Waitlisted: BU
Accepted: UT Austin (Economics), UC Irvine (major undeclared), SMU (pre-business) with $25k scholarship, IU Kelley with $6k scholarship, OSU (pre-business), MHC with FA package nearly $18k.
No results yet: GWU (probably not attending even if admitted)
D got admitted into UC Irvine this weekend. Thought it’s a great school too. Compared with UT, is it more worth to attend?
UT Austin is D’s first choice. Is this a good choice? Can anyone tell us how the study is on UT campus? Say, how hard to earn a GPA 3.8? How is the relationship among students? Do students look happy living there? We appreciate any of your inputs. Thanks.

It’s very very very hard to get a 3.8 GPA at UT. It requires intelligence, hard work, stress, and a lot of luck. A 3.8 is very rare and should NEVER be counted on. A very smart, very diligent student could ‘count’ on a 3.6. A very optimistic, very smart, very diligent, student would see a 3.7 as within the realm of possibility. Above that and it’s hubris.
Keep in mind she’s doing UT economics and should be at ease with that major. If not, she shouldn’t attend UT.
Her best choices are IU Kelley direct admission which guarantees a business major and tOSU pre business since almost all students are pre-majors and a business major is guaranteed if she meets some grade parameters.
MHC is probably the best undergraduate environment but it’s very different from the others.