halfastros81 said:

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My son was an auto qualifier and was raised right . He has known the War Hym, etc since jr high. He went to A & M for 2 semesters and transferred because he didn't like it. One of the factors he cited was too many people that didn't talk to one another or socialize normally or were not interested in outdoor activities like hunting, fishing , football fandom, etc. he also says the students and faculty are too focused on the school's academic reputation rather than learning and teaching. All of those things could fall in the description of nerdity imo. I didn't agree with all of his reasons for transferring but do I believe there Is some truth In what the op suggests.

Where he is now is significantly smaller and the one thing he has said is that the accessibility to profs, ta's, resources is much easier. He has also found it easier to make friends.

All of this has surprised me because my A & M experience was very, very different than his. No doubt in hindsight it was some of the best years of my life and that was what I expected him to experience. A & M has changed culturally imo. Some for the better and some for the worse.

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Good stuff here. My biggest fear is living in the past and thinking my experience will be the same for my offspring.......

gettingitdone said:

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Magneto,,,so the other 75% were at least in the top 10%? Another thing to consider is GPA perhaps? In some places,,,,at 3.8 gets you in the top 25% of a school, where as in other schools, 4.6 GPA only gets you in the 5-10% of other schools. I am not trying to knock any other school district by any means, but top 25% in a school like Gause, probably isn't equivalent to top 25% in College Station.

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Let me clarify after looking at the slides I took pics of:

Last year freshman class break down:
50% top 10.....auto admit
18% academic admit (top 25, minimum ACT/SAT)
32% holistic review (academic, extracurricular)

BRAVEAG said:

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Ol_Ag_02 said:

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Magneto said:

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Football related in that the majority of the ultra-smart haven't been around football in high school and therefore don't know how to conduct themselves at Kyle Field to make it loud (maybe things have changed per the Clemson game and a new coach). They are football stupid.

A&M is so popular right now, they are having to continually limit who gets in by academics. They will let you in if you are in the top 25% holistically but that top 25% from 25 years ago is a lot different than the top 25% from today.

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So I graduated in 2002. Trust me, they are not making it harder to get into A&M. In fact the vast majority of the idiots currently in attendance wouldn't have sniffed Blinn's jock in the late 90's.

We are a diploma mill. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, snowflakes.

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What are you even talking about? Competitiveness for the top 10% has only gone up. Highschools are getting harder/offering more challenging courses and colleges more competitive. You just enjoy thinking everyone younger than you must have the intellectual capacity of a fruit fly. All to feed your ego and believing that 2002 counts as old army or something.

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I don't think you understand how percentages work. The amount of people who qualify as top 10% literally increases at the same rate as the population growth, the competitiveness by default remains the same.

Ol_Ag_02 said:

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So I graduated in 2002. Trust me, they are not making it harder to get into A&M. In fact the vast majority of the idiots currently in attendance wouldn't have sniffed Blinn's jock in the late 90's.

We are a diploma mill. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, snowflakes.

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I would disagree strongly with this. When I graduated HS in 1993 a 1000 on the SAT would get you in. A&M was for die hard alumni kids and a back up school for many. I don't know anyone who was denied. When traveling it amazed me how many people had never heard of it around the nation. It is in the past 7 or 8 years that the schools national reputation and rankings have emerged and now it appears on just about any list you can find. A perfect example is Mays Business School and its reputation and the quality of student it produces now.

WTM said:

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searly66 said:

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Nobody said the Corps has the most commissioned officers (but they do commission the most of any ROTC) and West Point has a total enrollment of about 4,400 so there is no way they commission 10000 officers per year.

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Searly, above you stated "The Corps consistently commissions more ROTC officers than any institution in the country." I assumed you meant service academies as well as you stated any institution, not any non service academy ROTC program.

On the number I was off slightly. Westpoint commissioned 936 last year.

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Uhhh, the service academies are not ROTC. The Corps commissions more ROTC officers than any other institution. That is a fact. Plus, you said Wst Point commissions 10,000 officers a year. 936 is not real close to 10,000.

Sorry that was a typo. It was supposed to be 1000 not 10000.

I still am not certain about the highest number portion now (vs the past). A&M had 211 last year which is the highest since 1980. VMI strikes around 160 to 175 on average and Citadel is not too far off. So they may have them beat but it is close. In round a comparison for 2015 / 2016 of all and A&M was 3rd.

Either way to the original post it is better to be perceived as more academically challenging than not bit it is still not a nerd school.

It's pretty simple, as a state supported institution, A&M is considered a "formula" school. If you meet the academic formula for admission in any given year, you're admitted. It isn't like some of the elite privat schools that are obsessed with who you know and what volunteer work you did. A certain percentage of the pool is allocated to D&I admissions to ensure diversity, and a certain percentage to out of state students (who pay full tuition) to support the budget.

With a large engineering school, There will always be a lot of nerds. But with a large number of ag eco majors, plenty that are not.

Unfortunately, A&M does have a lot of dorks.

No, A&M is not a nerd school. Is it nerdier than 30 years ago? Sure.

Nerd school? Nope.