SMU fall SAT info

[gostangs]

There may be other criteria that plays some role - but AAU membership is PRIMARILY a research ranking. That is really what it measures and rewards. So although i agree that is an important element - many fantastic schools - particularly those with an emphasis on liberal arts and also those without medical schools are virtually automatically eliminated from potential membership in AAU. Before people start throwing out the exceptions, this is generally true but there are exceptions.

For that reason i would disagree that it is a better measure of overall university quality. U.S. News is the universally used common measure for that. Not perfect but the best available option and it is used by virtually all Provosts to measure their University improvements (or lack thereof). Obviously any system that relies on self reporting can be manipulated, but punishment has been pretty harsh for those that are caught - and it is pretty rare.

Those that do not like U.S.NEWS are usually those that have high research but are still pretty poor on student quality (like Texas Tech and Nebraska for example). They always like to talk about AAU, even though it is totally divorced from quality in their case.

Also - no idea why this is still on the football board since it is morphed into an egg head discussion.

[GRGB]

Very very hard to achieve AAU status without a med school. We need to affiliate on that issue very quickly.

Never really understood why some conferences use AAU status as some sort of filter. It is not necessarily a quality thing, just a research level indicator. Many really strong universities are not AAU.

We really don't even need to talk about TCU and Baylor as it relates to student quality. Tulane and vandy are the targets for us, and I think we catch Tulane in the short term.

It's a bs status for b10. UNeb got kicked out. Iowa State is AAU == are they going to take ISU?

[rodrod5]

There may be other criteria that plays some role - but AAU membership is PRIMARILY a research ranking. That is really what it measures and rewards. So although i agree that is an important element - many fantastic schools - particularly those with an emphasis on liberal arts and also those without medical schools are virtually automatically eliminated from potential membership in AAU. Before people start throwing out the exceptions, this is generally true but there are exceptions.

For that reason i would disagree that it is a better measure of overall university quality. U.S. News is the universally used common measure for that. Not perfect but the best available option and it is used by virtually all Provosts to measure their University improvements (or lack thereof). Obviously any system that relies on self reporting can be manipulated, but punishment has been pretty harsh for those that are caught - and it is pretty rare.

Those that do not like U.S.NEWS are usually those that have high research but are still pretty poor on student quality (like Texas Tech and Nebraska for example). They always like to talk about AAU, even though it is totally divorced from quality in their case.

Also - no idea why this is still on the football board since it is morphed into an egg head discussion.

how can you make the claim that the AAU ignores the quality of a student when clearly they weight that for membership

4) Undergraduate education: The Committee assesses the institution’s undergraduate programs
to determine that the institution is meeting its commitment to undergraduate education.
Recognizing that differing institutional missions among research universities dictate different
ways of providing undergraduate education, the committee will be flexible in this
assessment. A number of measures have been suggested, including some that focus on input
and others that look primarily at output variables. These are at this time imperfect, but may
provide some guidance to the committee in making its judgments on this topic.

and attempting to say that they AAU is biased against schools with a strong liberal arts focus ignores that most all of the members of the Ivy League maintain a very strong focus on the liberal arts even if they conduct a high amount of research

again the AAU is not looking at singular criteria and more importantly unlike the US News the AAU evaluates universities independently for membership based on a broad range of areas instead of solely looking at a few that can be easily manipulated by small and large universities alike like class size and they realize that public universities can't always hold the same high admissions criteria like most private schools can and they rely on their own reviews of academic prestige instead of asking high school counselors (probably some of the least capable people on earth) to give an evaluation of universities when high school counselors (especially at public schools) have not had the job of helping kids get into college or keeping up with colleges for 3 decades or more, instead they function as social service providers and go betweens for state porverty and state social service providers

the reason that some are critical of the AAU is because the AAU is not going to allow themselves to grow for the sake of growth and they are not going to be overly impressed with single metrics or even a few metrics like class ranking or SAT for admissions or total research dollars or even graduation rate

they are going to evaluate all of that in the context of the size of the university and the mission that university is ask to and able to fulfill and make their choices based on the whole not just a few criteria

[gostangs]

Did you mean to say AAU instead of US News in your first sentence?

AAU has as their number one and most heavily weighted criteria a meaningful amount of research. To pretend it practices some broad criteria is fantasy, although i am sure their web site references that. And the Ivys that are members are members solely due to research. You prove my point. It is commonly known if you hit 50m in annual research you are likely to get in AAU.

US News is the metric for overall university quality. AAU is the metric for having reached a meaningful amount of research activity. It's really that simple.

[rodrod5]

Did you mean to say AAU instead of US News in your first sentence?

AAU has as their number one and most heavily weighted criteria a meaningful amount of research. To pretend it practices some broad criteria is fantasy, although i am sure their web site references that. And the Ivys that are members are members solely due to research. You prove my point. It is commonly known if you hit 50m in annual research you are likely to get in AAU.

US News is the metric for overall university quality. AAU is the metric for having reached a meaningful amount of research activity. It's really that simple.

yes I did mean AAU

and as for the 50 million in research claim that is ridiculous there are probably 175+ universities in the USA that do over 50 million in research

50 million in research barely gets you into the Carnegie Foundation RU/VH classification

hell here are the schools in Texas that should be in the AAU based on that claim and these are 2012 THECB verified numbers for total research

Texas Tech University $132,542,194

University of Houston $92,779,251

The University of Texas at Dallas $90,700,157

The University of Texas at El Paso $71,956,741

The University of Texas at Arlington $71,381,648

[mustangbill67]

As an FYI, while the University of Texas system has several medical schools, UT Austin has not had one until recently. The Dell Medical School will open I believe in 2016 as a part of UT Austin. Southwestern Medical School in Dallas is a part of the UT System.

[NavyCrimson]

Doesnt SMU 'work' w/ UT-Southwestern on funneling our grads over there?

[tristatecoog]

My wife (SMU prof) is on some committees and has the following thoughts on the increase in SAT in recent years.

1. Biggest factor is due to a larger scholarship pool and more strategic use of half tuition and other merit scholarships.
2. Increased exposure. Football (bowl games), Engineering school, Cox, US News bump (+10 pts to #3 in TX), Bush library and things parents like -- new curriculum, Big Ideas program and engaged learning programs.
3. Dallas and Texas are good places to send kids for future job prospects. SMU draws well from Calif and Illinois among other recently hard pressed states. Mexico may also be sending more students to SMU.

Pony Up!