(10-25-2013 10:04 AM)SeaBlue Wrote:  There's a lot of speculation on what happened there, but one downside to Mizzou from a "brand" perspective is exactly what is happening now:

Cardinals are in the Series and Mizzou has a good team. From what I understand of Missouri, many more eyes are on the Cards.

On the flipside, unless Kurt Warner walks thru that door, I doubt they have to worry about that during November or December.

(10-25-2013 12:54 AM)Badger Wrote:  How many WVU fans are able to attend away games since joining the distant Big 12?

WVU's traveling fanbase still travels well. The number hasn't dropped that drastically in the B12. WVU still travels in bigger numbers than most university fanbases...

(10-25-2013 09:53 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 07:25 PM)bitcruncher Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 06:11 PM)bullet Wrote:  Times have changed now. You'll get as good of an education at a number of SEC schools as you will anything in the Big10.

Ain't that the truth? Somebody truly motivated will succeed, no matter the obstacles placed in his path. Genius is where you find it, and it can pop up anywhere.

While this is all true, what school you graduate from can most certainly dictate your starting point, give you a leg on up on upward mobility, and basically handicap your career ascension. So while I agree with you in theory, in practicality it does matter.

Being a WVU grad certainly didn't hinder Don Knotts any...

(10-24-2013 09:45 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 09:11 PM)10thMountain Wrote:  Well that was true, but as of this year A&M has brand spanking new Law and Medical school.

A&M bought a 3rd rate law school in Ft. Worth. Didn't hear anything about the medical school. Are you sure about that?

Yep! We bought one for a song from a tiny private school that couldn't afford to make their law school a good one and will turn it into a great one for the people of Texas with all our resources now going into it.

And yes, we are building a brand new HSC campus for the College of Medicine in Bryan and from now on, the A&M HSC System will not be a separate A&M system umbrella but will be a direct unit of A&M-CS.

So A&M now has both a School of Law and a School of Medicine!

(10-25-2013 10:27 AM)bitcruncher Wrote:  Being a WVU grad certainly didn't hinder Don Knotts any...

Sure it did. Otherwise his show would not have been cancelled when it was the highest rated show in the country.

I kid, I kid.

(10-25-2013 11:13 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 09:45 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 09:11 PM)10thMountain Wrote:  Well that was true, but as of this year A&M has brand spanking new Law and Medical school.

A&M bought a 3rd rate law school in Ft. Worth. Didn't hear anything about the medical school. Are you sure about that?

Yep! We bought one for a song from a tiny private school that couldn't afford to make their law school a good one and will turn it into a great one for the people of Texas with all our resources now going into it.

And yes, we are building a brand new HSC campus for the College of Medicine in Bryan and from now on, the A&M HSC System will not be a separate A&M system umbrella but will be a direct unit of A&M-CS.

So A&M now has both a School of Law and a School of Medicine!

Is it a "health science center" like Tyler and El Paso or actually a medical school? A&M has their biomedical research facility in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, but that's not a medical school.

(edit-looking up, El Paso has been converted to a medical school, so Texas in a few short years will go from 5 to 9 public medical schools-adding A&M, TT-El Paso, UT-Austin and UT-Rio Grande Valley (UT Pan Am has some silly new name-don't remember it). At a time of limited education $.

Actual school of medicine...which was the whole point of both the new campus and the merger. From now on all A&M MDs will get the A&M-CS diploma and all medical research will be counted there as well.

(10-25-2013 10:27 AM)bitcruncher Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 12:54 AM)Badger Wrote:  How many WVU fans are able to attend away games since joining the distant Big 12?

WVU's traveling fanbase still travels well. The number hasn't dropped that drastically in the B12. WVU still travels in bigger numbers than most university fanbases...

(10-25-2013 09:53 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 07:25 PM)bitcruncher Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 06:11 PM)bullet Wrote:  Times have changed now. You'll get as good of an education at a number of SEC schools as you will anything in the Big10.

Ain't that the truth? Somebody truly motivated will succeed, no matter the obstacles placed in his path. Genius is where you find it, and it can pop up anywhere.

While this is all true, what school you graduate from can most certainly dictate your starting point, give you a leg on up on upward mobility, and basically handicap your career ascension. So while I agree with you in theory, in practicality it does matter.

Being a WVU grad certainly didn't hinder Don Knotts any...

It also depends on what part of the country you plan to live in. Being a Big10 grad isn't going to give you the same kind if leg up you think it will outside of the Big10 footprint. For example, being a Michigan man in California is going to put you beneath a lot of schools in California even if the rankings are in your favour. Likewise, LSU may as well be Harvard in Louisiana and most state schools have a similar impact in their respective states.

They are just like law degrees, only Ivy League ones are truly national.

There is one incontrovertible truth though, anybody who relies on the name and brand of their school for their success or their self worth is a fool.

(10-25-2013 12:42 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 10:27 AM)bitcruncher Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 12:54 AM)Badger Wrote:  How many WVU fans are able to attend away games since joining the distant Big 12?

WVU's traveling fanbase still travels well. The number hasn't dropped that drastically in the B12. WVU still travels in bigger numbers than most university fanbases...

(10-25-2013 09:53 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 07:25 PM)bitcruncher Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 06:11 PM)bullet Wrote:  Times have changed now. You'll get as good of an education at a number of SEC schools as you will anything in the Big10.

Ain't that the truth? Somebody truly motivated will succeed, no matter the obstacles placed in his path. Genius is where you find it, and it can pop up anywhere.

While this is all true, what school you graduate from can most certainly dictate your starting point, give you a leg on up on upward mobility, and basically handicap your career ascension. So while I agree with you in theory, in practicality it does matter.

Being a WVU grad certainly didn't hinder Don Knotts any...

It also depends on what part of the country you plan to live in. Being a Big10 grad isn't going to give you the same kind if leg up you think it will outside of the Big10 footprint. For example, being a Michigan man in California is going to put you beneath a lot of schools in California even if the rankings are in your favour. Likewise, LSU may as well be Harvard in Louisiana and most state schools have a similar impact in their respective states.

They are just like law degrees, only Ivy League ones are truly national.

There is one incontrovertible truth though, anybody who relies on the name and brand of their school for their success or their self worth is a fool.

I'd actually very much disagree with that. In the fields where you get paid the best after undergrad (engineering and business), the Big Ten schools across the board (especially the top half of the conference) have a lot of national job placement, especially compared to most state schools. Rahm Emanuel actually went down to visit the engineering and business schools at Illinois to pitch them on coming back to Chicago after graduation since Silicon Valley firms were hiring them en masse (and remember that most students from Illinois are actually *from* the Chicago area, which isn't some tiny market). Same with Michigan and Wisconsin or the Kelley School at Indiana or the engineering school at Purdue.

So, yes, you're right about the standard platitudes about how your degree is only worth what you make of it. There are also certain alumni concentration advantages for flagship schools within their home states. However, there are definitely quite a few industries that hire a lot of college grads that are "snobby" (for lack of a better word) in where they recruit at. I worked for a firm that was one of the top 10 hirers of college grads in America. We would hire dozens of people from our "target schools", which consisted of the top 30 or so undergrad business programs in the country (which includes every Big Ten school except Northwestern, and that's only because they don't even have an undergrad business program, so we'd look for Econ grads from there instead). If you didn't go to a target school, it was nearly impossible to get hired. It does make a difference for your first job, which is increasingly more critical these days. College grads today don't have the margin for error in the same way past generations did.

(10-25-2013 09:15 AM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 07:46 AM)Badger Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 07:25 AM)SeaBlue Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 12:54 AM)Badger Wrote:  A good border battle is fun to watch, and often the lesser team will raise their game and win these. This doesn't happen when schools are far apart and rivalries are geographically disinclined to form.

Presumably, hypothetically (and just for discussion) Oklahoma would be brought on with Kansas. That gives you the boarder wars and brings in a new region. Of course, neither are geographically as central as Buffalo, but I just don't see the Buffalo thing happening unless perhaps if there's a coordinated effort to form 4 power conferences and Buffalo is the most "available" institution.

From a strategic standpoint that fortifies the western flank of the Big Ten and balances out conference strength...not to mention improves overall football and basketball standing of the conference...Oklahoma and Kansas coming on together is more than acceptable. Frankly, as a Big Ten fan...I would love to see this.

Kansas and Oklahoma would work, but the B1G should have been all over Mizzou a few years ago to make it ideal. If Oklahoma has been in the B1G's long term expansion plans (the last 5 years), Mizzou should have been a lock. I'm glad we have them in the SEC.

I bet Delany is kicking himself for not taking Mizzou. In Big Ten tradition, he was ultra conservative at that point in time. To now be discussing the worthiness (and "safeness") of Buffalo is, in part, because he did not make bold moves from the start.

(10-25-2013 01:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 12:42 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 10:27 AM)bitcruncher Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 12:54 AM)Badger Wrote:  How many WVU fans are able to attend away games since joining the distant Big 12?

WVU's traveling fanbase still travels well. The number hasn't dropped that drastically in the B12. WVU still travels in bigger numbers than most university fanbases...

(10-25-2013 09:53 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-24-2013 07:25 PM)bitcruncher Wrote:  Ain't that the truth? Somebody truly motivated will succeed, no matter the obstacles placed in his path. Genius is where you find it, and it can pop up anywhere.

While this is all true, what school you graduate from can most certainly dictate your starting point, give you a leg on up on upward mobility, and basically handicap your career ascension. So while I agree with you in theory, in practicality it does matter.

Being a WVU grad certainly didn't hinder Don Knotts any...

It also depends on what part of the country you plan to live in. Being a Big10 grad isn't going to give you the same kind if leg up you think it will outside of the Big10 footprint. For example, being a Michigan man in California is going to put you beneath a lot of schools in California even if the rankings are in your favour. Likewise, LSU may as well be Harvard in Louisiana and most state schools have a similar impact in their respective states.

They are just like law degrees, only Ivy League ones are truly national.

There is one incontrovertible truth though, anybody who relies on the name and brand of their school for their success or their self worth is a fool.

I'd actually very much disagree with that. In the fields where you get paid the best after undergrad (engineering and business), the Big Ten schools across the board (especially the top half of the conference) have a lot of national job placement, especially compared to most state schools. Rahm Emanuel actually went down to visit the engineering and business schools at Illinois to pitch them on coming back to Chicago after graduation since Silicon Valley firms were hiring them en masse (and remember that most students from Illinois are actually *from* the Chicago area, which isn't some tiny market). Same with Michigan and Wisconsin or the Kelley School at Indiana or the engineering school at Purdue.

So, yes, you're right about the standard platitudes about how your degree is only worth what you make of it. There are also certain alumni concentration advantages for flagship schools within their home states. However, there are definitely quite a few industries that hire a lot of college grads that are "snobby" (for lack of a better word) in where they recruit at. I worked for a firm that was one of the top 10 hirers of college grads in America. We would hire dozens of people from our "target schools", which consisted of the top 30 or so undergrad business programs in the country (which includes every Big Ten school except Northwestern, and that's only because they don't even have an undergrad business program, so we'd look for Econ grads from there instead). If you didn't go to a target school, it was nearly impossible to get hired. It does make a difference for your first job, which is increasingly more critical these days. College grads today don't have the margin for error in the same way past generations did.

Where is your company located?

If you look in to certain industries you'll find Big10 graduates are a minority. The energy sector is a good example of this. You'll find mostly Texas, SEC, smaller schools, and some California schools like Stanford make up the Lion's share of engineers there. At that point it's a boy's club and the Big10 folks just aren't in it.

In the industries that dominate down here in the South being a Big10 graduate is not giving you an advantage. You'd have to have an Ivy League education to reach that kind of level.

In my industry, here, holding a Big10 degree, and others, would mark you in a strongly negative light.

I hope this edit isn't too late... Still...

My firm is quite literally inundated with applicants of people desperate for jobs. The market has gotten so bad that even us, a small to middle sized firm of about 50, is garnering attention from people across the country. We recently had a starting associate position come available and we had almost 100 applicants, 97 of which came from California, the Mid-West, and the North-East. We had multiple University of Michigan folks, Ohio State, Iowa, and Minnesota graduates. All of those schools hold a fairly significant lead, in the rankings, over our two more local schools, except UA which is a ranking counterpart. We didn't even reply to those poor kids. Why would we?

Heart of Dixie your last post just illustrates his and my point. You just points four a sexier that had graduates from mostly a small sector of schools. I never said being bi Ten made your education better, just that the school you go to does have an affect on your career path. Even your retort seems to display this.

(10-25-2013 02:10 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  Heart of Dixie your last post just illustrates his and my point. You just points four a sexier that had graduates from mostly a small sector of schools. I never said being bi Ten made your education better, just that the school you go to does have an affect on your career path. Even your retort seems to display this.

I was under the impression that the point was the school you went to offered you some sort of natural advantage, for being Big10. My reply was to show that regionalism and where you live is more important than where you went to school. There is no advantage to going to the 46th best school in the nation if it is in the wrong place.

(10-25-2013 02:14 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 02:10 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  Heart of Dixie your last post just illustrates his and my point. You just points four a sexier that had graduates from mostly a small sector of schools. I never said being bi Ten made your education better, just that the school you go to does have an affect on your career path. Even your retort seems to display this.

I was under the impression that the point was the school you went to offered you some sort of natural advantage, for being Big10. My reply was to show that regionalism and where you live is more important than where you went to school. There is no advantage to going to the 46th best school in the nation if it is in the wrong place.

I've lived in all 4 regions of the country. It is the same everywhere. It's who you know and who knows you first, credentials, references, and experience second, and for first time job searchers it's academic credentials (including school) third and then if you are lucky one of your personal references or academic references knows someone who is looking at your resume. There is hubris here all the way around from you guys. Life and how it operates is pretty much the same everywhere.

(10-25-2013 02:14 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 02:10 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  Heart of Dixie your last post just illustrates his and my point. You just points four a sexier that had graduates from mostly a small sector of schools. I never said being bi Ten made your education better, just that the school you go to does have an affect on your career path. Even your retort seems to display this.

I was under the impression that the point was the school you went to offered you some sort of natural advantage, for being Big10. My reply was to show that regionalism and where you live is more important than where you went to school. There is no advantage to going to the 46th best school in the nation if it is in the wrong place.

Glad you could read thru my auto-corrected post there. My ooh teas simply that where you go to school matters. It was separate from being big ten, but for the most part, big ten schools fit the criteria. I attended two schools simultaneously, Towson university and the university if Maryland. Let's just say when I finished school, one opened a lot more doors than the other. Even though they are branches of the same university system, and I still took a majority if my classes at Towson. Being able to show my degree from Maryland was a big deal.

Case in point: look at the education credentials of every American president since around the turn of the century (20th) or so. You will find a few things in common with most.

Heart of Dixie - I work in finance, management and IT consulting. We recruited nationally hiring with offices coast-to-coast. Our competitors had the exact same type of recruiting practices. So, it wasn't just a matter of, say, the Chicago office hiring Big Ten grads based on geography. NYC, LA and San Francisco looked at Big Ten grads the same way.

I wouldn't doubt the energy industry has natural connections to Texas and Southern schools due to geography. However, when you look at the industries that have nationwide job searches, like top tier finance and engineering/computer science positions, the Big Ten schools are definitely competitive everywhere.

Like I've said, it also depends on when you graduated. It has honestly gotten more competitive in the job market, so academic prestige is weighted a lot more just to get an interview today. A generation or two ago, a college degree from anywhere plus work ethic to pay your dues was enough in the way that might be unrealistic now.

(10-25-2013 02:38 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 02:14 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 02:10 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  Heart of Dixie your last post just illustrates his and my point. You just points four a sexier that had graduates from mostly a small sector of schools. I never said being bi Ten made your education better, just that the school you go to does have an affect on your career path. Even your retort seems to display this.

I was under the impression that the point was the school you went to offered you some sort of natural advantage, for being Big10. My reply was to show that regionalism and where you live is more important than where you went to school. There is no advantage to going to the 46th best school in the nation if it is in the wrong place.

Glad you could read thru my auto-corrected post there. My ooh teas simply that where you go to school matters. It was separate from being big ten, but for the most part, big ten schools fit the criteria. I attended two schools simultaneously, Towson university and the university if Maryland. Let's just say when I finished school, one opened a lot more doors than the other. Even though they are branches of the same university system, and I still took a majority if my classes at Towson. Being able to show my degree from Maryland was a big deal.

I don't disagree. I just think there is a sort of cutoff. At the top you have your Ivy League national reputation type schools, then you have your major state schools, and then you have everybody else. Like I said, what advantage does the 46th best school have to open doors for you over the 63rd best one that's in the right state?

As for the typos, it reminded me of what my posts look like when I type on my iPad. LOL! No problem.

People think it's unfair to include the ivys in such a discussion, but they really prove the point. Where you go to school has a significant impact on your career path. But as stated above, where you live can affect it. Example having a Harvard degree here in Kentucky carries far more weight than in boston where ivy grads are a dime a dozen. Conversely if you live up east, a degree from southwest directions state will
Handicap your job prospects with the sheer number of college grads in the area, and the schools they went to. While 46 vs 64 might not be a big deal, being familiar with the school is. There are plenty of schools that are "better" than big name schools that carry more weight. The university of Chicago might be the best example, of a great, great school, that is lesser known and doesn't carry the weight if an ivy when it absolutely should.

And yeah, I'm typing on my iPhone right now.

(10-25-2013 02:41 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Heart of Dixie - I work in finance, management and IT consulting. We recruited nationally hiring with offices coast-to-coast. Our competitors had the exact same type of recruiting practices. So, it wasn't just a matter of, say, the Chicago office hiring Big Ten grads based on geography. NYC, LA and San Francisco looked at Big Ten grads the same way.

I wouldn't doubt the energy industry has natural connections to Texas and Southern schools due to geography. However, when you look at the industries that have nationwide job searches, like top tier finance and engineering/computer science positions, the Big Ten schools are definitely competitive everywhere.

Like I've said, it also depends on when you graduated. It has honestly gotten more competitive in the job market, so academic prestige is weighted a lot more just to get an interview today. A generation or two ago, a college degree from anywhere plus work ethic to pay your dues was enough in the way that might be unrealistic now.

I guess I just don't see the value in comparisons between schools that dominate certain industries based in certain regions and others that produce graduates primarily for other industries based in others.

For the most part these schools are throwing out, teachers, nurses, lawyers, and such which are not nationally recruited types, for the most part. Going to Iowa to become a teacher in Iowa is probably a sound bet. Going to Iowa to be a teacher in Alabama is probably a poor choice.

My experience is probably really coloring this since its huge in the legal world. Only Harvard, Stanford, and Yale are true national legal schools. The rest will run into limitations geographically. For instance, going to Minnesota for a law degree, which is a well ranked program, is probably pretty idiotic over going to St. Mary's in San Antonio if one plans to practice in Texas.

This seems like it may be degree specific. Big 10 schools programs probably don't focus on energy production whether it be engineering for energy or one of the sciences, where as in Texas and other Southern schools there would be science and engineering programs that specificlly focus on the energy industry. I doubt an investment firm in Houston, Atlanta or Pheonix would look down on a finance degree from a Big 10 School.

(10-25-2013 02:56 PM)Minutemen429 Wrote:  This seems like it may be degree specific. Big 10 schools programs probably don't focus on energy production whether it be engineering for energy or one of the sciences, where as in Texas and other Southern schools there would be science and engineering programs that specificlly focus on the energy industry. I doubt an investment firm in Houston, Atlanta or Pheonix would look down on a finance degree from a Big 10 School.

Maybe not looked down on but would it be an advantage over a University of Arizona, Texas A&M, or University of Georgia degree?

Granted, its probably an advantage over a kid from Northern Arizona U, Sam Houston State, or Georgia Southern University.