Money and Banking with Hutchinson was BY FAR the most difficult class I ever took. He was still around in 1996 teaching, btw. If I recall correctly, his Exams were 30 questions and if you got 25 correct, you got 100%. Hutchinson knew he was hard! I somehow pulled off a B, and Money and Banking was the biggest threat to ever earning a C in my academic career.
I later ran into Hutchinson at Kroger with about 3 cases of beer in my shopping cart. He couldn’t have been nicer, but he certainly gave me a “look”.
I agree with pretty much everything that has been said here, especially with what Spanks said. Allow me a moment to say something from the College of Arts and Science side of things. Last year I had lunch with the Dean of the College of Arts and Science. I told him that I felt I was better prepared for graduate school at [insert name of renowned large research-oriented public Ivy university] than most of my graduate school peers, including those who had undergraduate Ivy League educations. He looked at me and said “Bash, you’re not telling me anything new. I hear this all the time from our College of Arts and Science graduates.” We talked at length about Miami’s rankings in U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, etc and how those rankings are somewhat biased against Miami given that we’re not a big research-oriented school compared to say Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, etc. He said the university is developing a narrative to counter those rankings by touting the large number of graduates Miami places in the top law schools, med schools, business schools, and other postgraduate programs in the country. He said Miami punches well above its weight class when it comes to this, which in my mind is far more telling of the kind of education you will receive at Miami than some ranking in a magazine.
To me that sounds like spin from an administrator who doesn’t want to address things head on. An 88% acceptance rate, 15% yield and big SAT/ACT gap below OSU and other Big Ten schools aren’t the result of not being a research university.
As for grad school placement, I dug around on the web and looked at top law schools that list their classes by undergraduate institution. Many (Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, Michigan and Berkeley) didn’t, but some did.
Harvard: No Miami alumni in the most recent class. OSU? Yes.
Yale: No Miami alumni in the last four law school classes. OSU? Yes.
Virginia: UVA is interesting in that they don’t list a full breakdown but only list schools that put four or more students into a law school class. Looking at the last five years, Miami is not listed once, and OSU is listed twice.
Miami’s administration needs to stop spinning things for alumni to feel better about the school and needs to start making the changes that will make the school better.
Well, you’ve found one right here. Can attest to what everyone else has said I’ve met a ton of great people in the athletic department. We also don’t have nearly as many staff as larger schools so some people work multiple sports. I’ve had a ton of experience in football, working games for other teams, issuing all of their gear, etc. Wouldn’t trade Miami for the world, but I will say you can be successful anywhere if you apply yourself.
Miami used to publish a talking point that touted an exceptional placement rate for gaining admission to prestigious graduate and professional schools.
If I recall correctly, at one point Miami published a statement saying it had preferred status matriculation agreements with a number of high quality medical schools and law schools throughout the Midwest.
I don’t recall when I stopped seeing that language but it’s been a while.
Perhaps in an OSU sized 100,000 student population your odds are good to have an Alum from Harvard’ s law or med school send their kid to OSU for undergrad then they have the inside track to the post graduate school?
Or your spleen venting that has blinded you to the fact that in any given year tOSU probably has 3x as many students taking the LSAT and applying to law schools than Miami.
No spleen venting. Just tired of the spin, and that’s what the Dean is proposing, a narrative…spin. Not an honest reflection of why we’re admitting so many students and why so few of them choose to attend.
Also, your post was clear that the Dean said Miami is a feeder school to elite graduate programs. So, it’s not a numbers game, and shouldn’t we at least be matching OSU regardless of their size (which if wikipedia is correct is 2.8x the undergraduate enrollment of Miami). When the university puts up some hard numbers of students who have gone on to top 10 or top 30 doctoral or professional programs, I’ll pay attention. I know they didn’t have anything of the sort at my daughter’s college fairs.
I said this in a thread about the AD. Miami is sorely in need of some outside perspective. It has an all-alumni board of trustees, and that is not conducive to taking a hard look at things that need to be addressed. Rather, it’s a recipe for feel good talk and spin.
All the points raised by @Hawk99 are very much valid, but let me introduce different data points and perspectives.
I often say that it must be very easy to educate Ivy League kids since almost all of them already come incredibly well-prepared for higher ed. The best universities on earth should be the ones that are able to receive struggling students and, after three to four years, drastically transform their lives in a positive way. That said, I tend to avoid discussions on acceptance rates, SATs, GPAs, etc., and focus on outcomes. I mentioned in a previous thread that when parents talk to me (full disclosure, I am affiliated with FSB), the very first question they ask — by far — is about career prospects. Here is the relevant data in that regard from my division:
It is not that Miami beats OSU here and there; Miami beats OSU in every single major.
Initial salary is a short-term metric. I can also talk about some interesting long-term metrics out there, like the best colleges for future leaders according to Time (Miami 35 vs. OSU 42) or the fact that Miami produces more partners at a Big 4 accounting firm than any other university on earth.
Finally, please let’s not forget that Miami has an annual budget of $773 million dollars (spending = revenue), whereas OSU has $9.59 billion in revenues and $9.02 billion in spending. We are really talking about David and Goliath here.
Interesting. Thank you. That’s the kind of hard data I’m looking for.
With regards to the budgets, is there a away to get it to an apples-to-apples comparison? Strip away things like their medical center, reaearch infrastructure and athletic budget and compare how much each is spending on academics? Undergrad academics in particular.
Chiming in with my anecdotal observations. I work for a large midwestern bank and deal with many other banks around the country, as well as company C-Suite and people in the finance world. My boss is out east, went to an east coast private school as did her kids. When we started working together I brought Miami and talked it up a bit. She knew of Miami, but hadn’t paid much attention. Since then, as we have meetings and get to know various contacts and mention I am in the Cincinnati office, a sizable amount will comment they went to school NEAR Cincinnati, or their child does. Which inevitably means Miami. Over time, it has happened so often, she now just rolls her eyes and says “Of course you did. Are there any other schools in the Midwest?” It’s gotten rather humorous over the years.
