[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

The University of Vermont just dropped to #121 in the US News and World Report national university rankings. If you rank by average SAT scores, it should be somewhere in the 60s. US News changed their ranking system to weight diversity heavily. Vermont is the 2nd whitest state in the country. A small state of 630,000 struggles enough with needs-based scholarships for (white) Vermont lower income families. There's pretty much no money to offer needs-based scholarships to out-of-state ghetto kids to game the US News rankings. Personally, I think it's really unfortunate that UVM has tumbled from "public ivy" status when I went there to a very mediocre ranking that is all about political correctness. The college is more academically rigorous than when I attended.


UVM has an average SAT score of 1259. The other US News schools that are rank near UVM at #121 are Iowa State at 1196 SAT score and Arizona at 1182 SAT score. Significantly weaker schools.

OK, I gotta ask. If you are college educated, why are you concerned about the rankings of UVM in a diminishing for-profit news weekly that is trying to make a buck by "ranking" places based upon its own in-house criteria??? Are the opinions of that poorly paid statistician and junior editor that important to you?

SAT scores... back in the day, I was in the 99th+ percentile everywhere but math usage, which was only in the high 80s. My combined score was (ahem) above what you cite. I also understand the SAT was dumbed down at some point after I took it. Whatever. Schools in Vermont were good back then and I was a fast learner. I benefited and appreciated it. UVM didn't interest me as much as RISD, Pratt, Syracuse (which all willingly wanted to accept my financial servitude). I did eventually come back to UVM... I still have my old faculty/staff ID card; it was fun hanging with a couple of the profs., getting free night classes, and I later had an assistant prof working for me on his part time job.

Bluntly, if someone wants to succeed and knows WHICH school will further that goal in the area they desire, staying in university/college and making connections will accomplish that. A UVM diploma in Alabama simply means that toilet paper is expensive. A UAT diploma in Vermont means, at best, an offer of an extra winter coat. Learning how to schmooze with the big boys is what gets the paycheck. Period.

There are some professions that require extraordinary skills in certain areas. The rest is just social climbing and social engineering and a willingness to bend over. Best to admit that and move on. As far as magazine "ratings"? Those are, like Trix, for kids.

[GeoffD]

No. Where you went to college shows up on your resume. That influences hiring decisions for the rest of your life. It matters if the school is ranked 60-something versus 130. If you rank based on SAT scores, UVM looks like it’s 60-something. Since professors teach to the level of the students sitting in their classroom, the academics are what you’d expect given the intellectual capabilities of the students. Using US News and World Report criteria that weights racial and socioeconomic diversity heavily, the ranking is far below that. The finances of the university rely on affluent flatlanders to pay the bills.

[Riley.]

uuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....the re's that term 'flatlanders' again. This weeks' Seven Days has an article (it's a humor piece, actually) for 'flatlanders' who are spending their first winter here after escaping whatever madness they came from. I thought we agreed this was a derogatory term? LOL

And the guy writing it calls himself a 'Vermonter' when he has been here less than two years.

I remember I referred to myself as a Vermonter to an older gentleman who was here fixing an engine for us. Years ago. He schooled me right then and there. I would never be a real Vermonter because I didn't come from generations of natives. For some reason, that stiill stings......18 years later.

[Boston_Burbs]

Uvm is sneaky good for medicine if you are in state. Their in state acceptance into their med school is the highest in the country. Teaching also seems good due to their connections with local schools.

Not sure about engineering though, seems small without an alumni base in the immediate area. Plus I bet a decent student would get a scholarship at WPI or Clarkson that matched UVM tuition.

Probably totally circumstantial because I am in the upper valley but I see more Vermont Tech grads working locally in engineering than UVM.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by Boston_Burbs

Uvm is sneaky good for medicine if you are in state. Their in state acceptance into their med school is the highest in the country. Teaching also seems good due to their connections with local schools.

Not sure about engineering though, seems small without an alumni base in the immediate area. Plus I bet a decent student would get a scholarship at WPI or Clarkson that matched UVM tuition.

Probably totally circumstantial because I am in the upper valley but I see more Vermont Tech grads working locally in engineering than UVM.

It’s probably not like that now but when I was in the electrical engineering department, the place was stuffed full of IBMers from the Essex Junction plant. The Computer Science department had a bunch of Bell Labs projects. Bell Labs was paying tuitions of a bunch of grad students. Those were considered strong departments. Campus recruiting and grad school placement aligned with that reputation. I can’t think of any of my classmates who stuck around Vermont. An awful lot of them landed in the Bay Area glancing through my LinkedIn database. Boston a close #2. I doubt you have FAANG companies on campus now doing recruiting but I could be wrong about that.

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

No. Where you went to college shows up on your resume. That influences hiring decisions for the rest of your life. It matters if the school is ranked 60-something versus 130. If you rank based on SAT scores, UVM looks like it’s 60-something. Since professors teach to the level of the students sitting in their classroom, the academics are what you’d expect given the intellectual capabilities of the students. Using US News and World Report criteria that weights racial and socioeconomic diversity heavily, the ranking is far below that. The finances of the university rely on affluent flatlanders to pay the bills.

I thought of this thread and your response when I read this:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opini...cid=spartandhp

Paraphrasing my earlier post, it seems "It ain't WHAT you know, but WHO you know that is important" (As if anyone over the age of 15 hasn't figured that out to some degree.)

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

No. Where you went to college shows up on your resume. That influences hiring decisions for the rest of your life. It matters if the school is ranked 60-something versus 130. If you rank based on SAT scores, UVM looks like it’s 60-something. Since professors teach to the level of the students sitting in their classroom, the academics are what you’d expect given the intellectual capabilities of the students. Using US News and World Report criteria that weights racial and socioeconomic diversity heavily, the ranking is far below that. The finances of the university rely on affluent flatlanders to pay the bills.

Yeah. I was a terrible student as an undergrad, didn't know why I was there... that influenced my grad school future... so I went to a state university for both undergrad (Rutgers) and grad school (UNH). On the one hand, you can look at my results, and say it didn't matter - I did an NRC fellowship post-doc at NIST, was invited to write a grad monograph by Elsevier, and have worked at top companies in science and technology. But my grad school advisor actually told me on my arrival "It won't hurt you that you came here, but it won't help you either, so you'd better do well". I made sure that I was the top student in my dept in grad school... My postdoctoral mentor said - "we don't get many people out of UNH here, you know"... and many times in my career, the talk at work or even on interview visits has turned to "Where did you go to school?"... and I have usually been the only person in the circle who didn't go to an Ivy League school. I absolutely think the "name brand" on your sheepskin matters.

[skeddy]

sorry, UVM is not going to raise any eyebrows by recruiters or employers. So many northeastern schools have much better reputations.

[Remy11]

Originally Posted by skeddy

sorry, UVM is not going to raise any eyebrows by recruiters or employers. So many northeastern schools have much better reputations.

Funny, I’ve had multiple recruiters and managers tell me it’s a great school when they see it on my resume. The CEO at my current company got his from MBA there. It's obviously not Harvard, but it has an excellent reputation in the Boston area.

[Reilly1017]

Originally Posted by Remy11

Funny, I’ve had multiple recruiters and managers tell me it’s a great school when they see it on my resume. The CEO at my current company got his from MBA there. It's obviously not Harvard, but it has an excellent reputation in the Boston area.

UVM has a feel good association of skiing, foliage, maple syrup and Lake Champlain, in NE, it is associated with those things and therefore has a good vibe.

Recruiters and hiring managers don’t care if someone went to a public 4 year university like UVM, it literally doesn’t matter.