You guys do realize that the reason Texas only admits the top 7% is to be able to accept more students that are below the top 10%. It is easier to get into Texas than A&M if are not an automatic qualifier. They were able to do this because at top 10% it was killing their diversity statistics.

Had a regional meeting in Atlanta last week, and I can tell you that an A&M degree is looked upon with admiration and envy by others in industry. Mostly SEC and ACC colleagues, and even the Duke grads were complimenting me on what a great school A&M is.

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Academics and getting into TAMU is still harder that tu. I know the Texas A&M engineering school is trying to increase enrollment to 25000

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yeah keep telling yourself that

I wonder how this will impact admission for Post-Baccs. I've heard that especially in engineering it can be VERY difficult to get in, and that they may only admit a couple every year, or may not admit any at all.

I'm a recruiter at a very large O&G company and we make no distinction between A&M and UT. Or OSU, Oklahoma, and/or LSU for that matter. We grab intern candidates that look like they might succeed, are personable, and have the right GPAs. That's it. I'm also a supervisor and while I'd love to hire Aggies (and do have one on my team who continues to impress), I've also got folks from around and outside the country that are all well qualified. With regard to state universities, they are either recruited or they aren't. Much of this is regional and just doesn't matter in the end.

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I'm a recruiter at a very large O&G company and we make no distinction between A&M and UT. Or OSU, Oklahoma, and/or LSU for that matter. We grab intern candidates that look like they might succeed, are personable, and have the right GPAs. That's it. I'm also a supervisor and while I'd love to hire Aggies (and do have one on my team who continues to impress), I've also got folks from around and outside the country that are all well qualified. With regard to state universities, they are either recruited or they aren't. Much of this is regional and just doesn't matter in the end.

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So what you're saying is.... You got the hookup...

Boo people trying to get an education!

From just a few years ago:

-2nd in nation among public universities in "Great Schools, Great Prices" category (U.S. News and World Report, 2011)

-2nd in nation among all universities in survey of 500 of the country's largest corporations for graduates their recruiters prefer to hire (Wall Street Journal, 2010)

-22nd in nation among public universities (U.S. News and World Report, 2011)

-1st in Texas in student retention and 4 through 6-year graduation rates

-Conducts research valued at more than $630 million annually, placing it among the top 20 universities in the country for the second consecutive year and third among universities without medical schools, after University of California at Berkeley and M.I.T. the only Texas university included in top 20

-4th in nation among public universities for "Employment After Three Months" (Financial Times, 2010)

-9th in nation among public universities for earnings of graduates ten to twenty years after graduation (Forbes)

-Employers and recruiters like us.
-An article about why the U.S. News ranking shouldn't be the defining ranking for universities. (Most notably, 25% of the ranking comes from "reputation" gained from "peer assessments" at other schools and high school counselors).
-An article from 2 years ago that shows that the average Aggie graduate earns more than the average Longhorn, though it mentions the Top 1% at UT earns more and the average is probably weighted on the # of liberal arts majors there and engineering here. A good read on page 1 and 2.
-If you want to work with anecdotes, the professor I knew with experience at both schools said both schools had their share of good students but the Aggie students were more down to earth. I also know students that transferred between the two schools who thought their course difficulty was comparable between the two institutions. I think you're really reaching if you think a student at either school would struggle by taking their same major at the other institution.

This argument continues to come up from people that want to lower enrollment to increase the reputation of the school past what it was when they entered and to cater to a particular magazine's ranking system. The state is growing and A&M is growing with it. I'd agree that you can't bury your head in the sand when it comes to problems with academic rigor or student preparedness, and that there is a correct way to approach growth....but I don't see any recent evidence that A&M graduates aren't on par with their counterparts from a decade ago.

(What I also heard from professors at multiple institutions is that graduates from all universities are having a similar problem....they have terrible grammar, can't spell, and are terrible writers. If you've noticed an increased focus on written material in classes where you didn't see it before, it's because multiple departments at multiple schools were hearing from employers that all the new hires were terrible at anything they were supposed to learn in English class.)