Big weekend for visitors

[ufgator4ever]

Originally Posted by twodaparty

They (uk) steal money from the SEC in the sport that makes the money for the conference (football) and spend it disproportionately on the only sport they care about (basketball). I really wish we would kick kentucky out of the SEC as they are just leaches and have a slimeball cheating coach in the one sport they care about. I actually respected them when they had OTS who did it the right way without cheating.

If we kicked out all of the schools who have cheated in the past or are obviously cheaters at one sport or another, the SECwould be Vandebilt. One school is not a conference. And they exagerate their academic excellence, if that disqualifies them.

[themistocles]

Originally Posted by ufgator4ever

If we kicked out all of the schools who have cheated in the past or are obviously cheaters at one sport or another, the SECwould be Vandebilt. One school is not a conference. And they exagerate their academic excellence, if that disqualifies them.

When you say that Vanderbilt exaggerates their academic excellent, exactly what do you mean?

They are an elite private AAU member, which means they spend something like 3 times as much on instructional expenditures as do public AAU schools like UF, Texas, Virginia, Illinois, Michigan, and Cal-Berkeley. This means that their students are working in a far superior learning environment, which, in fact, is the major factor in Academic Excellence from any perspective.

Do you mean something stupid like UF has more National Merit Scholars, or some other idiotic rating think like US New Does in their Moronic America's Best Colleges. All of those sorts of ratings are utterly worthless. There really is only one worthwhile rating of colleges, and that is the National Research Council's docedeciennial rating of Doctoral Programs.

So, on what is your seemingly unsupportable statement based?

[phideltdj]

I believe there are many falsehoods with regards to academic reputations through our university systems. It starts with the elite private high schools that parents pay college like tuition for their kid to attend....I believe many of those private schools artificially inflate student grades to obtain higher grades and test scores. After all, it wouldn't make sense to spend 20K a year for your kids education and they end up with a C average when they can get a C average for free at a public school. The more students that attend a prestigious university, the more money that public school can charge for enrollment. It's all big business now and when money is involved things get corrupted. Is statistics at UF that much different than a statistics class at UCF or even Harvard? Every university has professors that are difficult and some that are easy. I'm quite sure an excellent student at UF would share the same success at an Ivy league school even if they didn't have the initial scores to get admission.

[StrangeGator]

Originally Posted by phideltdj

I believe there are many falsehoods with regards to academic reputations through our university systems. It starts with the elite private high schools that parents pay college like tuition for their kid to attend....I believe many of those private schools artificially inflate student grades to obtain higher grades and test scores. After all, it wouldn't make sense to spend 20K a year for your kids education and they end up with a C average when they can get a C average for free at a public school. The more students that attend a prestigious university, the more money that public school can charge for enrollment. It's all big business now and when money is involved things get corrupted. Is statistics at UF that much different than a statistics class at UCF or even Harvard? Every university has professors that are difficult and some that are easy. I'm quite sure an excellent student at UF would share the same success at an Ivy league school even if they didn't have the initial scores to get admission.

You can inflate grades, but you can't inflate test scores. Kids at private high schools on average do much better on standardized tests. Some of that is due to more rigorous academics and better preparation for those tests. Some of it is purely genetics and the environment their were raised in. FWIW, the majority of Vanderbilt students come from public high schools. They're in the enviable position of turning down about 75% of their applicants, most of whom are very high achievers. They don't have to cheat at anything to get those students. Vanderbilt deserves every bit of their reputation.

[InstiGATOR1]

Originally Posted by phideltdj

Is statistics at UF that much different than a statistics class at UCF or even Harvard? Every university has professors that are difficult and some that are easy. I'm quite sure an excellent student at UF would share the same success at an Ivy league school even if they didn't have the initial scores to get admission.

What college sell is credentials. The reason that students go to Harvard etc is:

1. To gain a credential that has more prestige or value than a UF credential which has more prestige than a UCF credential. Part of the prestige value is due to competing against higher level competition at various schools. Thus an SEC football championship ring brings more prestige than an ACC football championship ring which has more prestige than an Ivy League football championship ring. The pecking order in academics is different of course and more school than athletic conference oriented. That is not to say some Ivy league players don't make the NFL nor that some UF students don't make it at the highest level of their area of study.

2. To network with other likely high achievers. The better the degree the more likely soe of your colleagues or former alums are around to give you a boost. This until recently put the so called directional schools at a disadvantage, but that disadvantage goes away some each year as the USF or UCF alums move up organizational ladders. Still the network you get from an Ivy can be very helpful in your career and adds to the value of the degree.