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I would think that's true-but then again the profile of recruits playing soccer, tennis, golf, swimming, Equestrian etc generally doesn't draw as many recruits from poor social-economic backgrounds and "unsatisfactory" high schools. I would think SMU would be MORE attractive to a lot of kids in these sports for the very fact that they have great academics. They should still be able to compete with kids who aren't in Category C (900 SAT or 2.5 GPA). I bet they can get kids in above Category C which is still well below SMU median standards

I don't know-are there examples of recruits committing to SMU in these sports but then being denied admission?

I would think PP is correct.
In fact, having scholarship D1 sports plus good academics is likely a draw to a top student who is also a top athlete in a non revenue sport. He or she might have Ivy academic qualifications but being able to play D1 and get scholarship money to do it could push them to SMU.

In this vein, I would support a D1 LAX team. It pulls from a strong academic demographic and could give us an advantage in student recruitment. Which is also consistent with the theme of using athletics to improve the student profile.

gostangs wrote:Your TCU board buddy is full of toad caca. "We look at the whole student" is what you say when you have low student quality. What is he supposed to say....we only get the UT rejects?

Think what you want. He wasn't trying to convince me of anything because I don't really care that much about the subject one way or the other. We were having a general conversation and he was merely telling me what their philosophy is on the kind of student body they are trying to create and why.

Stallion wrote:I would think that's true-but then again the profile of recruits playing soccer, tennis, golf, swimming, Equestrian etc generally doesn't draw as many recruits from poor social-economic backgrounds and "unsatisfactory" high schools. I would think SMU would be MORE attractive to a lot of kids in these sports for the very fact that they have great academics. They should still be able to compete with kids who aren't in Category C (900 SAT or 2.5 GPA). I bet they can get kids in above Category C which is still well below SMU median standards

I don't know-are there examples of recruits committing to SMU in these sports but then being denied admission?

I think you are right on in your observations that high academic kids are drawn to the minor sports and that academic schools benefit by being attractive to these kids. As we all know, the minor sports coaches can seldom offer a full athletic scholarship relying partial scholarships in order to have numbers and depth. Hence, SMU coaches must focus almost entirely on high academic kids who can also qualify for academic grants/scholarships and/or have affluent families who can afford the difference from available scholarships and the final bill. During my time at SMU I was aware of at least 7 minor sports athletes who thought they were on full scholarships, but in fact, their parents were paying the whole ride. Their parents wanted them to think they were worthy and earned a scholarship, but behind the scenes their parents wanted them to attend SMU and in collusion with the coaches insured that SMU was reimbursed for all of their costs thereby making the actual athletic scholarship $$$ available to other kids.

PK wrote:

gostangs wrote:Your TCU board buddy is full of toad caca. "We look at the whole student" is what you say when you have low student quality. What is he supposed to say....we only get the UT rejects?

Think what you want. He wasn't trying to convince me of anything because I don't really care that much about the subject one way or the other. We were having a general conversation and he was merely telling me what their philosophy is on the kind of student body they are trying to create and why.

Gostangs is totally right. What a bunch of malarkey. Tcu is an average school, with limited academic credentials and history to attract the top hs students. Good excuses are easy to find. We also don't have the same average sat scores as Rice because we seek students that are more well rounded.

Go tell that to the top 20 schools. There's a significant correlation between sat scores and quality of the students, and 100+ pt difference in average sat scores is substantial!

Sorry PK. It just isn't the case.

Re: AAU & Research, I am posting a portion of this article as it is instructive:

Quantifying a University's Research

It's not clear what prompted the special reviews of Nebraska and Syracuse last year, except that they ranked at the bottom of the AAU metrics.

What particularly hurt Nebraska in those metrics is that as a land-grant institution in a farming state, it gets a large share of its research dollars for agriculture. The entire University of Nebraska system had $13.2-million in federally financed farm-related research in 2008, or about 10 percent of its total federal research dollars, as compared with a nationwide average of about 3 percent.

The AAU, however, does not give such research the same weight in its membership criteria because much of federal support for agricultural work is awarded through formulas and earmarks rather than peer-reviewed grants. As a result, presidents of land-grant institutions say that the AAU metrics are stacked against them. They maintain that differences between states in climate, soil, and crops necessitate formula-driven funds.

Large public institutions like Nebraska are also hurt in the AAU rankings by a process the association calls "normalization," which seeks to determine per-faculty research rewards by dividing total research dollars by the number of faculty members at an institution.

For Nebraska, that means the total research dollars are divided by a significant portion of faculty devoted to agricultural research, even though their research rewards are not considered as valuable under AAU metrics. The normalization process tends to help smaller members with smaller overall research budgets, like Brandeis and Rice Universities.

Mr. Cohon stressed that the metrics are a product of years of discussion and analysis by the organization's membership. It is possible that a large number of faculty conducting agricultural research could penalize an institution, but "that's not the case here," he said.

"While there is no perfect set of metrics, I think there is a broad sense of satisfaction with the metrics we have," Mr. Cohon said.

In his e-mail to the campus and in interviews with The Chronicle, Mr. Perlman said what put Nebraska at a particular disadvantage was the lack of an on-campus medical school.

While other AAU members, such as Cornell and Pennsylvania State Universities, for instance, lack medical schools on their main campuses, Nebraska's medical school is also under a totally separate administrative structure from the Lincoln campus, an arrangement that is unlike the ones at those other institutions. As a result, its research dollars are not counted by the AAU, even though, as a medical school, it can't belong to the association on its own.

A medical school both improves an institution's absolute number of research dollars and improves its score on the ratio of research output to tenure-track faculty, since medical schools often rely heavily on researchers who are not tenure-track faculty, Mr. Perlman said.

I will also point out that AAU members such as MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Brandeis, and Rice do not have medical schools. The University of Texas probably does not have a medical school under AAU criteria (at least for now). On the other hand a school like Dartmouth, that has a medical school, is NOT an AAU member. Boston University is the latest school to become an AAU member, admitted in 2012.

In the end,

The AAU's two-phase membership criteria focus primarily on an institution's amount of competitive research funds and its share of faculty members who belong to the National Academies. Faculty awards and citations are also taken into account.

https://chronicle.com/article/Ouster-Opens-a-Painful-Debate/127364

Of course, the two biggest mistakes SMU has ever made (getting rid of Southwestern Medical School and the institute that became UT Dallas) negatively impact our ability to achieve AAU status, at least in the short term.

When the TCU folk boast about their football record lately with regard to SMU, the SMU folk can proudly hold up the SAT average scores and yell SCOREBOARD! Of course, this isn't the Academia but the football forum, but hey...

Oldmins wrote:When the TCU folk boast about their football record lately with regard to SMU, the SMU folk can proudly hold up the SAT average scores and yell SCOREBOARD! Of course, this isn't the Academia but the football forum, but hey...

As gostangs would put it, "We have a higher academic ranking" is what we say when we have lower level football program quality. What are we supposed to say....we only get the UT rejects? Oh wait...

we don't even get the UT rejects in football - but thats a different story.

I know this is not the academia forum - but the origins of this thread was a conversation about AAU and other factors that effect football - and i was just jumping in to correct some things.

By the way - we definitely cut the secondary sports participants some slick on admissions. Just ask the ones that get accepted and then choose not to play the sport - and then can't come to SMU. Happens to a handful every year. Their admission is based on their (secondary) sport - and they would not get in otherwise.

SMU1523 wrote:I just saw an episode of College Football Live where they talked about AAU members among each conference. I personally think the U.S. News and World Report rankings are better indicators than AAU status. Like someone stated earlier, AAU status is mainly about research.

nothing could be further from the truth the US News rankings are a joke for the most part and are easily manipulated in a number of ways and that manipulation has been exposed over and over

examples of this are universities ranking all other universities very low and then ranking their own very high in the surveys sent.....Clemson did just that as they rose through the US News rankings

another example of the US News being a joke is using acceptance % which is a totally and completely meaningless statistic because two of the main factors involved in it are 100% outside the control of the university

a university has zero control of the number of applicants and a university has zero control of the qualifications of applicants the only thing a university has control of is the quality of the applicants that are actually admitted

if a university had 4,000 students apply and those students all had a 3.95 GPA and a 1250 or higher SAT and that university accepted the top 3,000 of those students they would have a 75% acceptance rate while another university say 45 minutes up the road had 10,000 students apply and they accepted students with 5,000 a 3.0GPA average and a 1,050 SAT they would have a 50% acceptance rate which would appear to the statistically and logically challenged to mean that the university further north was harder to get into and accepted a better quality of student

one need only go to the US News website and look at the Texas schools and then rank them by acceptance % to see what a meaningless statistic it is

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandrevie ... ment-min=0

there are numerous other flaws with the US News as well

as for the AAU it is actually not totally about research and in fact total research dollars only plays a part in membership to the AAU

here is an example of that

here is a list showing the research funding of various AAU and non-AAU members

http://chronicle.com/article/Extended-L ... rch/65212/

so one can see it is not about total research dollars and far from it

this is a rough outline of what the AAU considers for membership (they do not publish formal criteria)

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... YzggmNgvqw

so while research plays a large part there is also quality of faculty and Academy membership and also awards to faculty from other areas besides the National Academies (that are often arts, liberal arts, social science and humanities based and thus less research focused than the National Academies) and then undergraduate education quality, faculty publications (not all publications are the result of pure or funded research again especially in the arts, liberal arts and soft and social sciences ) and they look at overall productivity per faculty member which helps cut down on large state schools that can just crank out a ton of overall research based mostly on faculty head count

there was a reason that Texas A&M (that actually does more total research than UT) was not admitted to the AAU until 2001 and it was because of the lack of arts, liberal arts and soft and social sciences

gostangs wrote:That's right - AAU schools are typically big state schools that have med school affiliations. Not correlated to great schools necessarily - hell even Nebraska was AAU for a period of time.

this is not true at all

of the 60 members of the AAU 34 are public and 26 are private....that is counting Cornell as fully private while parts of Cornell are actually "statutory" and publicly funded including their agricultural land grant portion of the university and labor relations and some other portions

also there are numerous AAU members without a medical school including several UC System schools, UT, Texas A&M, Rice, Cal Tech, Georgia Tech (one of the two newest members) MIT and others.....a medical school helps, but as the membership outline above points out medical school research is normalized

dcpony wrote:I believe Syracuse is another AAU school without a med school.

Syracuse does not have a medical school, but they volunteered to leave the AAU the same year Nebraska was voted out

orguy wrote:

SMUer wrote:Rice and its researchers are closely tied to the Baylor College of Medicine

Just to clarify since most people are not aware; Baylor College of Medicine is not affiliated with Baylor University other than symbolically. They charge in state tuition and are governed by a separate board of regents. Not a private institution as they rely on the state of Texas for funding. I've heard Baylor alums who are not physicians harp about what a great medical school the place has even though there is no affiliation with Waco whatsoever.

Rice also works with many other institutions besides BCM in the Texas Medical Center which is located right door. SMU is located very close to Southwestern yet has done little to foster this resource. Southwestern is a giant and SMU has very very small science departments (unlike Rice). Rice has rather large and elite Science and Engineering schools. SMU has good but not Rice level Science and Engineering schools.

Baylor College of Medicine is a fully private college of medicine, but they do receive money from The State of Texas for a certain number of teaching and residency slots

https://www.bcm.edu/about-us/overview/history

In 1969, by mutual agreement, the College separated from Baylor University to become an independent institution. This encouraged broader, nonsectarian support and provided access to federal research funding. The institution's name changed to Baylor College of Medicine.

That same year, the College entered into an agreement with the state legislature to double its class size in order to increase the number of physicians in Texas. The agreement remains in place today.

so while they do get some state funding by a contractual agreement they are still a private university that has a "statutory" mission just like parts of Cornell or Syracuse has with The State University of New York College of Forestry and Environmental Science which is located next door to Syracuse, but is a part of the SUNY system, but SUNY and Syracuse students can enroll as if the are at the same school

the state has no say so in the day to day operations of Cornell, Syracuse or Baylor......there are a few other "statutory" arrangements in higher ed, but they are overall rare and really Baylor is probably not even as "statutory" as Cornell and SUNYESF/Syracuse it is more contractual, but they are termed the same

rodrod5 wrote:

SMU1523 wrote:I just saw an episode of College Football Live where they talked about AAU members among each conference. I personally think the U.S. News and World Report rankings are better indicators than AAU status. Like someone stated earlier, AAU status is mainly about research.

nothing could be further from the truth the US News rankings are a joke for the most part and are easily manipulated in a number of ways and that manipulation has been exposed over and over

Well, that settles it, anyone admitted to Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College, Wake Forest, William and Mary, Williams, Amherst, Swathmore, etc. shouldn’t even consider their offers if they have the option to attend an AAU school such as, University of Buffalo, Iowa State, University of Iowa, University of Oregon, etc.

No system of evaluating the nation’s universities is perfect; however, it makes little sense to focus on a couple of criteria in isolation when criticizing the U.S. News rankings.

Texas A&M, Texarkana and Houston Baptist University do not appear ahead of the University of Texas and Texas A&M, College Station even though the former have lower acceptance rates -- the other criteria eliminate them. Acceptance rates do, however, provide a reasonable indication of student demand for universities that perform well on the other ranking criteria.

Likewise, the academic reputation of a school is also a relevant factor. If one school cheats in the manner that you suggest, it won’t have a large overall impact on the rankings.

Again, no system is perfect, but the U.S. News rankings provide a reasonable assessment of the nation’s universities, which is why so many people pay attention to them.

On the other hand, AAU membership, as an indicator of academic prestige, certainly has its critics too.

The Chronicle of Higher Education points out that:

Despite the stated importance of research as a criterion, some universities left out of the AAU outpace member institutions. According to a Chronicle analysis, at least 11 institutions received more federal money in 2008 than did 13 members, and six received more than 19.

The Chronicle also points out that, “Southern institutions seem particularly underrepresented in the AAU,” and indicated that Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, North Carolina State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Miami, among others, can make good arguments for membership.

Also, some feel that there is a bias against religious institutions since Catholic University, a founding member in 1900, left, or was asked to leave, in 2002. Do you think the AAU will ever invite Notre Dame, Georgetown or Boston College? Personally, I doubt it.

How do you think AAU members would feel about a school with the words “Southern” and “Methodist” in its name, irrespective of its research, number of members of the academies, or how nonsectarian the school?

I will leave you with this thought:

Not everybody buys the value of AAU membership. Daniel S. Greenberg is a journalist in Washington who covers science policy. He is skeptical of the association's influence and says the reason universities pay it so much attention is because of the stingy and slow admissions process.

"It runs like a restaurant that limits their reservations," Mr. Greenberg says. "People clamor to get in because they're told it's hard to get in."

Stallion wrote:I don't know-are there examples of recruits committing to SMU in these sports but then being denied admission?

I know there have been names listed in releases on signing day that did not end up at the school - whether it was admissions related or other reasons I'm not sure. The examples I can think of off the top of my head ended up at much lower academic schools.

Also, the sports have started to hold some of their signing day releases (sometimes even until July 30 like men's soccer last year) - which very well may be related to getting potential students cleared.

It's definitely an interesting topic and one I hadn't really thought about. As mentioned, potential students in these sports do typically come from really good educational backgrounds and they have to have money to keep up with the club system prevalent in sports like soccer and volleyball.

On the surface it seems very unfair to the other sports - where a player here or there could potentially make a huge difference in team performance, but I can understand why SMU does it.

PoconoPony wrote:During my time at SMU I was aware of at least 7 minor sports athletes who thought they were on full scholarships, but in fact, their parents were paying the whole ride. Their parents wanted them to think they were worthy and earned a scholarship, but behind the scenes their parents wanted them to attend SMU and in collusion with the coaches insured that SMU was reimbursed for all of their costs thereby making the actual athletic scholarship $$$ available to other kids.

That's one of the craziest things I have ever heard!

Pony^ wrote:

rodrod5 wrote:

SMU1523 wrote:I just saw an episode of College Football Live where they talked about AAU members among each conference. I personally think the U.S. News and World Report rankings are better indicators than AAU status. Like someone stated earlier, AAU status is mainly about research.

nothing could be further from the truth the US News rankings are a joke for the most part and are easily manipulated in a number of ways and that manipulation has been exposed over and over

Well, that settles it, anyone admitted to Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College, Wake Forest, William and Mary, Williams, Amherst, Swathmore, etc. shouldn’t even consider their offers if they have the option to attend an AAU school such as, University of Buffalo, Iowa State, University of Iowa, University of Oregon, etc.

No system of evaluating the nation’s universities is perfect; however, it makes little sense to focus on a couple of criteria in isolation when criticizing the U.S. News rankings.

Texas A&M, Texarkana and Houston Baptist University do not appear ahead of the University of Texas and Texas A&M, College Station even though the former have lower acceptance rates -- the other criteria eliminate them. Acceptance rates do, however, provide a reasonable indication of student demand for universities that perform well on the other ranking criteria.

Likewise, the academic reputation of a school is also a relevant factor. If one school cheats in the manner that you suggest, it won’t have a large overall impact on the rankings.

Again, no system is perfect, but the U.S. News rankings provide a reasonable assessment of the nation’s universities, which is why so many people pay attention to them.

On the other hand, AAU membership, as an indicator of academic prestige, certainly has its critics too.

The Chronicle of Higher Education points out that:

Despite the stated importance of research as a criterion, some universities left out of the AAU outpace member institutions. According to a Chronicle analysis, at least 11 institutions received more federal money in 2008 than did 13 members, and six received more than 19.

The Chronicle also points out that, “Southern institutions seem particularly underrepresented in the AAU,” and indicated that Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, North Carolina State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Miami, among others, can make good arguments for membership.

Also, some feel that there is a bias against religious institutions since Catholic University, a founding member in 1900, left, or was asked to leave, in 2002. Do you think the AAU will ever invite Notre Dame, Georgetown or Boston College? Personally, I doubt it.

How do you think AAU members would feel about a school with the words “Southern” and “Methodist” in its name, irrespective of its research, number of members of the academies, or how nonsectarian the school?

I will leave you with this thought:

Not everybody buys the value of AAU membership. Daniel S. Greenberg is a journalist in Washington who covers science policy. He is skeptical of the association's influence and says the reason universities pay it so much attention is because of the stingy and slow admissions process.

"It runs like a restaurant that limits their reservations," Mr. Greenberg says. "People clamor to get in because they're told it's hard to get in."

this is a very weak argument

1. nowhere did I say that any student should ignore an offer from any particular university in favor of an AAU university

2. nowhere did I claim that the members of the AAU were the only high quality universities in the USA

3. acceptance % is only an indicator of a single thing and that is the % of students that were accepted VS the number that applied and it is in no way, shape or form an indicator of the quality of the students that were accepted or the quality of education offered to them and acceptance rates only indicate a demand by students relative to the number accepted by those universities and number of applicants has little to do with overall quality of a university

4. if you "eliminate those other criteria" as you suggest the US News would have little to base their rankings on

here is the US News methodology

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-co ... ngs?page=2

high school class standing.....pretty meaningless overall because it makes the very broad assumption that you can believe that the education offered or received at all of the high schools in the USA is equal or near equal much less in a state, city or even a district

peer evaluation is 22.5%......while this should be a relevant criteria it assumes that academics are honest when in fact they are not especially when it comes to rankings (and often times just about anything else)

here is the link on how Clemson was exposed

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009 ... mson/?_r=0

as you can see there are other methods that Clemson used like manipulating class size to fit in with the US News criteria......again I believe class size is important that is what IMO makes a university like Rice or SMU a better fit for some students in various areas of study over UT or Texas A&M even if it is pretty clear that UT and Texas A&M have an overall stronger program in that area of study.......but when the US News does not analyze things in the full context of their importance and instead uses easy to manipulate and fool slots that means that it is easy to fool those rankings

5. as for research the notion was put forth that the AAU focused on research too much......I showed that while research was a criteria there were many more things they looked at besides research.......you replied with a quote that shows other schools have way more research funding (something I had pointed out and linked to in support of my argument that the AAU does not focus solely on research) and somehow believe that makes your point.....when in reality it makes mine.....that total research funding is not the sole criteria for AAU membership

6. as for the religious aspect Brandise certainly has a religious aspect to it, Emory is both in The South and was founded as a Methodist school, Duke was founded by the Methodist and Quakers (and last I checked is in The South), Princeton was founded by Presbyterians, the university of Rochester was founded by Baptist and the first president of Tulane was a priest even though both of those schools have moved well away from religion

really it says a lot more about the overall Godlessness on the "educated and open minded" in the USA vs the bias if the AAU especially since most of those universities were in the AAU back when they had stronger ties to religion and Clark University that is non-religious left the AAU before The Catholic University did and NU is certainly not religious and while Syracuse was founded by Methodist they have identified as non-sectarian since 1920 which is well before they left the AAU

the idea of the chronicle of higher education trying to point out religious bias by the AAU is laughable since the chronicle of higher education is make up of the same exact godless anti-religion bigots that much of higher education is made up with and again the lack of religious institutions in the AAU is a product of the godlessness of higher ed overall and the lack of ability of major religions to hold on to the educational institutions they founded in light of the godlessness of their faculty

and as for the Southern bias I suppose they have a Canadian bias as well since only two members are from Canada and an extreme Mexican bias since no members are from Mexico (and Mexico is part of America and North America specifically and don't let that one Spanish professor at SMU find out about this Mexican bias at the AAU or he will probably storm their headquarters)

as for NC State, Miami, LSU, Georgia and others I would imagine if you look at graduation rates, student admissions requirements (same with Nebraska), graduate student funding, number of graduate students produced as a % of undergrads, number of faculty in The National Academies and similar organizations you would see why those schools are not in the AAU

and as for schools wanting to be a member because of the small amount of members well lets be honest there are dozens if not more academic societies, research clusters, fraternal organizations (like PBK) and on and on that allow hundreds of members and that have some meaning because they uphold some standards for admission so just because the AAU upholds their very tightly that does not mean it is somehow biased nor does it mean all that are not members are not very high quality universities in their own right

but the truth is while AAU membership or lack there of does not solely determine how high quality a university is AAU membership is a much better criteria than the US News and much less easily manipulated than the US News and uses much more meaningful criteria than the US News and actually evaluates those criteria in a more meaningful way than the US News

and the last organizations or "journalist" that should be calling ANYONE out for religious or southern bias or for "exclusivity" is the chronicle of higher education or a "science writer" (more like science fiction I am sure) based in washington DC