<p>I was offered the full ride scholarship to UTD. I was also accepted to UT and the business school. (Engineering was my first choice). No money offered by UT other than the $2000 awarded to all 10%'ers by the state.</p>
<p>I made two visits to UTD. The last visit was on Scholar’s Day 2010. The opening was held in the gym with cheerleaders and a “pep” band. This gave the school more of a high school environment than a university. I also talked to many students working as advisers that day and found that many lived at home and most had attended local high schools and often went home on weekends. I didn’t get much of a feel for campus life on the campus or in the surrounding area.</p>
<p>I did like UTD’s progressive attitude and student focus. They are aggressive recruiters and are trying hard encourage student activities. I think it has huge potential. But it isn’t the level of A&M or UT Austin. </p>
<p>I ultimately choose UT Austin because of reputation, campus life, and overall environment. It also offered many more business and engineering majors.</p>
<p>It was hard to walk away from all that money but I felt UT Austin was still a good value considering the national reputation of the Business and Engineering schools.</p>
I agree that UT and A&M are both better institutions. But I don’t want anyone to reach negative conclusions about academics at any institution based on second-hand anecdotes that do not even prove anything about the quality of academics.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how you see a personal attack in anything I said, but if it’s there I apologize.</p>
<p>I just want to drop the argument is all I’m saying. No need to apologize. Basically, to sum up my anecdote, when you have multiple people tell you not to go to X university then there has to be some reasons behind why. They are not particularly happy there, but what is bad for some is good for others. Factors that they mentioned were:</p>
<p>We are 30 minutes from home.
There’s no school spirit.
It is a different demographic than we were used to in high school.</p>
<p>They never said the academics were bad. I should not have made the statement I did regarding their decisions on whether to attend class. This is a school that you will either love or hate, I haven’t heard much of an in between opinion. For me, personally, I would strongly dislike staying on a campus 30 minutes from home. I might as well just stay at home and commute to class in that case which would mean my only expenses would be books and gasoline.</p>