Which states have the best state schools?

Student Lounge College Life
1

In my mind, it goes in this order:
California - the UCs. All of them are at least good, with two five star schools (UCB & UCLA) in the same system. UCSD, UCSB, and UCD are also excellent, and UCSC is also very good (although potentially cutting sports may see them drop down a bit). In the CSUs, Cal Poly SLO and SDSU are highly respectable.

Virginia - UVA, W&M, VTech, JMU, CNU, GMU, VCU. Awesome system.

North Carolina - UNC, NC State, UNCW, App State, UNC Asheville are all excellent/terrific schools.

Michigan - UMichigan and Michigan State? Pretty great tandem in my book. I don’t know much about the directionals, though.

Ohio - tOSU, Miami Ohio, Ohio U, UCincy. Quite a formidable tandem.

Florida - UF, FSU and UCF are all very good universities, and USF is rising fast as well.

Texas - UT Austin, UT Dallas, TAMU are all great schools, with Austin being the cream of the crop.

Feel free to add your own comments.

2

By and large, you got this one right. Might want to add Georgia (GT is as good as it gets, UGA and GA State are well regarded in several fields). Also New York, which has quite a few excellent schools (Binghamton, Buffalo, Stony Brook, Geneseo, FIT) and plenty other decent ones. New York is hurt by lack of a true flagship with major sports presence.

3

Why does it matter which states have the best schools?

4

Define best. Your list seems to indicate volume over quality. It also seems to be heavily influenced by rankings.

The problem with generic lists is that schools are not really good at everything. North Texas is certainly not considered a great school by many, but it has an excellent music program. TAMU is in many ways superior to UT, but because it is in a less expensive city, it falls a bit in the rankings.

Minnesota is an outstanding flagship and the subordinate schools all fill important niches in their communities and the system as a whole. Ditto the Wisconsin system.

Smaller states are not going to have as many ‘top’ schools as larger states. Some states choose to have a few mega-campuses with feeder schools while others have similar system school spread across the state.

I think the best state school is the one you can get in and afford that has your choice of major. The real results are up to the student.

5

@Chardo I agree with adding Georgia. But outside of Bing, Buff, Stony Brook, Geneseo, and New Paltz, I don’t really view the SUNY system as all that good. And is FIT part of the SUNY system?

@“aunt bea” because someone posted a thread about the states with the worst state schools, so this thread is aimed at countering that.

@Torveaux you’re half-right. Yes, it is based on volume, but it is also based on quality. It’s based on the volume of quality schools in the state. I agree with adding Minnesota and Wisconsin to the equation, and I would also add Washington State and Maryland as well. But why would the cost of living in the city be a factor in any rankings (in reference to UT vs TAMU)?

6

It’s funny that you would add Georgia for Georgia Tech, UGA, and GA State. But say no to NY and name Bing, Buff, Stony Brook, Geneseo, and New Paltz. Even with your count GA only has 3 and NY has 5.

And yes FIT is SUNY. Schools like FIT is the reason why rankings really suck ass(excuse my language). It’s not rank national but if you are in the fashion industry you know that FIT is the go to school.

It’s not about where the US News rank schools. It’s about where employers rank schools and IMO that is largely base on your major and your location.

7

@sensation723 that’s because GTech can legitimately be counted as world-class. None of the SUNYs are world-class. And if employer rankings are largely based on location, then this would be ridiculously biased in favor of Northern schools.

8

While I don’t disagree those are great schools, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those are all states with high population which leads to stronger flagships because of the large pool of highly talente students. It also lead room for stronger second schools such as CA with the UC system vs CSU system. Every state listed is in top 12 with VA being the one outside top ten.

Top states by population

  1. CA
  2. TX
  3. FL
  4. NY
  5. IL
  6. PA
  7. OH
  8. GA
  9. NC
  10. MI
  11. NJ
  12. VA
9

LOL No

What I mean is employers larger recruit from schools that are close to them. With the exception of companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and companies equal in size. Also in the Fashion Industry FIT is consider world class. The top fashion houses are not going to GA Tech to recruit.

10

@auntbea it’s an interesting topic. People are interested and responding.

The best state schools can be variable depending upon your major. My D applied OOS because of much higher quality music programs elsewhere. I also feel it’s important for my D to go OOS for her own personal growth.

11

Don’t the UCs have problems with impacted majors?

12

@sensation723 well, it has a very singular focus on just one specific area. To me, that disqualifies it from the discussion.

13

For Texas, UH and Texas Tech should be added

And, you mentioned 5 SUNY schools (Bing, Buff, Stony Brook, Geneseo, and New Paltz) being pretty good. New York has more “good” state schools than a few of your initial listed states (Ohio has 4, Texas has 3, Florida has 4, Michigan has 2). New York should be added to your list of states.

14

I like the Solid State schools. Liquids and Gasses really don’t jive with me.

15

Yes, but the problem is not unique to UCs – lots of other state universities in various states have impacted majors that require high college GPA or competitive admission to change into and higher frosh admission standards than the school overall for direct frosh admission.

It is true that if a student’s intended or possible majors are impacted, or the student is undecided on major, that can be a negative factor on the educational experience, or make rejection from the major equivalent to rejection from the school in some cases. But that tends to be a rather individual concern, since what may be an impacted major at one school (e.g. CS at UIUC or UCSD) may not be at another school (e.g. CS at Wisconsin or UCI).

16

@GreenTeaFanatic Assuming you’re talking about the University of Houston, its grad rates and commuter campus reputation are iffy.

17

Yeah, I’m talking about University of Houston. The UH school of music is amazing and the engineering school is pretty good. The commuter reputation is a bit over-hypered to be honest. Houston is a huge city and the greater Houston area is very large, so you’re bound to have more students live at home and commute to UH.
The University of Texas only has 19% of students living on campus. Technically, UT is a commuter school. But, most people wouldn’t say there reputation is iffy due to that fact.

18

If you mean UT Austin, http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg05_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=788 lists 19% overall live on campus, but 63% of frosh live on campus.

It is likely that many of the non-frosh living off-campus are resident students living on nearby off-campus housing, not with their parents or otherwise where they lived before attending school there (the latter is what people usually mean by “commuter”). Percentage of frosh living on campus tends to be a better proxy of how residential a school is, although UT Austin seems to be lower than many flagships and other state universities even by this measure.

Of course, whether a school has many “commuter” students may or may not matter to a given student trying to find out what the best school for him/her is.

19

@ucbalumnus “Of course, whether a school has many “commuter” students may or may not matter to a given student trying to find out what the best school for him/her is.”

Yeah, I agree with you. That was the point I was going for in my last comment. UH has about 40,000 students. They report that 50% of first year freshman students live on-campus and 18% overall are on-campus. I personally don’t perceive a school having commuters to be a negative thing.

20

On the cost of living…the rankings use spending as part of the equation. It actually comes into play on a number of different fronts from ‘resources’, professor pay, endowment, etc. If the cost of living is lower in one community over another, the dollars spent are not really comparable. The differences are more pronounced between states, but when you are talking millions and billions of dollars, small differences in pay become large differences in spending.