Went to Muster in our small town this week. Several multigenerational Aggie families there. Sickens me to see how the current admissions people literally penalize applicants from situations like these.

BoDog said:

---

aggie93 said:

---

BoDog said:

---

For those that are encountering these admissions road blocks, are you looking at any of the in state privates vs out of state publics?

SMU, Baylor, and TCU are still top 100 schools (TCU may be slightly outside of that) and often give handsome merit scholarships... Personally I would tend to believe that the in state alumni network of these schools, though smaller, is still considerably better than an NC State, Auburn, etc etc-though that is purely conjecture on my part.

---

I think a lot of that depends. I can definitely attest to being impressed with the NC State network for my son already at least in Engineering which is their feature. It's got a strong national reputation and my son had 3 internship offers after his first year to choose from and could have gotten more. It's especially strong in North Carolina. One thing about NC State and Auburn as well is they are very different in terms of setup than Alabama and UNC which have both have very small engineering programs. If you are attending a public school in those states (or in Georgia with UGA and GT or Virginia with UVA and VT) and are wanting to be an engineer those are the schools to go to. Obviously you have schools like Duke with Pratt but they are extremely selective and only have a few hundred grads per year.

If you aren't engineering that's a different ballgame. Those schools still have good alumni networks though overall but strongest regionally. As for in state Private schools they have their own networks as well for sure but are going to be strongest regionally as well. None of the Texas private schools outside of Rice (which is more like Duke) and maybe SMU for Business have a strong national reputation. They aren't bad of course but the main value would be living in Texas. If you want to be in Fort Worth then TCU is great. SMU for Dallas. Baylor is more Texas wide. Then you have some interesting ones like Trinity that have their own network as well.

The Non Engineering Publics from OOS (Arkansas, Ole Miss, Bama, etc) all have networks as well but not as strong as A&M's. Those schools also tend to have very big Greek programs.

---

Good read. My point is that if I plan to live in Texas post graduation (and not an engineering major) it would seem that the in-state privates would serve you better - assuming there was large merit aid included.

---

The Texas post grad and not engineering are definitely different variables. That said if you are looking at say Business and want to live in DFW then going to OU or Arkansas they both have significant networks there. In Houston it's LSU. Also, most of the private companies offer "merit" but it's kind of a mirage because they have such a big sticker price. If you are getting $15k merit but the cost if $60k that's nice but it's also a bit misleading, places like Baylor offer merit to most students of varying levels.

In the end though the most important thing is always going to be what you do when you get there over the school itself. I remember my son had an interview with MIT and one of their alums. Towards the end my son asked him about how the network from MIT had helped him in his career and he couldn't really point to anything. He said he knew a few guys from when he was in school that were friends but mostly had lost touch and had never really heard his MIT degree brought up as a big reason for him getting a job or promotion. Then ironically he said his son was at A&M (he didn't know about my son's A&M preferences btw) and he had seen some networking help for him and a comraderie among their grads. He also had a Stanford interview where the guy was similar, really only a few people he happened to know were helpful but never really went anywhere with it. The key is it's all about what you make of it and not the name brand. I think it's actually a real danger when people assume going to a school will open magical doors for them and they feel disappointed when that doesn't happen. It's going to be up to you and not the school I don't care if you go to Sam Houston, A&M, or Harvard.