Is Utah anything more than a commuter school w/ a good med school?

[Jarid in Cedar]

BYU is in the top five in the nation each year in terms of the number of grads that go on to med school. Utah couldn't possibly take all of BYU students that apply without severely impacting their demographics. I can't really fault the way they do admissions. And like you say, it is good to have them fan out around the country anyway.

Yep. The year I applied(and during the time I was there), they git hammered by Princeton review and others for the lack of women and minorities. Given that the demographics of the state, and that 85% of the slots were instate students, getting more diverse requires some creativity.

[TripletDaddy]

They have a terrific computer science department, especially in the area of computer graphics and visualization. Very solid in all areas of engineering.

They have a very up and coming video game design program, which I believe is part of their CS dept, if not engineering.

Many studios are opening satellites here in SLC to take advantage of U grads that are willing to work for less and remain local. It doesnt hurt that BYU has a fantastic animation/design program that churns out artists that also populate the game studios.

[mUUser]

All I know is its treated us well. We certainly don't require it, but I'd be surprised if my kids didn't choose it -- unless Stanford is in the picture, of course.

[doctorcoug]

US News? I thought we had cleared this subject already.

This stuff is important IFF you want to do clinical research for the rest of your life. Perceived perception? That really is part of their formula? How about things that really matter, such as PBL, hands on-training, board pass rates, early introduction to clinical experience, number of students per attending on clinical rotations, number of students to residents, etc...

I went to a way below average med school and paid way too much tuition. Where it counted, though, was experience. My last year of medical school I was treated like a resident. I personally performed enough colonoscopies to get privileges at most hospitals. I delivered more babies than I needed to get during residency. I 1st assisted on well over 50 c-sections, which prepared me well to do the operative management as an FM resident. I put in enough central lines for credentials. I managed critically ill patients with very close direct supervision. All this during my medical school training.

Financially, I kinda wish my parents had stayed in Texas. Professionally, going to this crappy, lowly rated, no-name DO school was one of the best things I could have done for my patients.

[SeattleUte]

Sorry for being an ass to our awesome U. Med grads on this board (and a lot of my family members), but it's mostly people who live in Utah who think the U. has a good medical school.

A quick perusal of US News shows the U. to be #54 out of 91 -- right between the well-known and prestigious medical institutions of U. Mass-Worcester and SUNY-Stony Brook.

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsa...ankings/page+3

For you lawyers, this is like saying that Columbia is a good law school and BYU is a crappy law school. (BTW, Utah and BYU were almost on top of each other in the lates U.S. News law school rankings.) I've heard medical faculty say for years that all med schools are good (unlike law schools), but, yes, they have mostly been Utah faculty. Cardiac got into a truly elite med school. Bully for him, but unlke Viking he had some natural advantages like excellent genes.

This thread is depressingly fixated on a university as a vocational school, which I suppose shouldn't surprise me coming from a bunch of BYU graduates. A big university like Utah is multifacted and does many things quietly that take many years to bear fruit in a multitude of disciplines. Even Woot has said Utah has done a lot more for humanity than BYU.

[MarkGrace]

When I was coming out of high school and considering three in-state schools, this is mostly how I viewed as I went through the college admissions stuff...

Academics
1. BYU was going to take competitive test and grades to get in.
2. Weber St was everyone who has graduated high school will get in.
3. Utah was some combination of the above - not everyone gets in, so there is some competitive aspect to it, but most do.

Campus life
1. BYU was a campus-based experience
2. Weber St was a mostly commuter-based experienced
3. Utah was some combination of the above.

I think my impression is still mostly the same. FTR, I attended Weber State.

[UtahDan]

[SeattleUte]

Sorry for the threadjack.

US News puts it #129 for undergraduate national universities and BYU is #75.

Yeah, I think it's a commuter school.

That is not a big difference. They are both "first tier". I could make a case that a selective private school at #75 is demonstrably crappy. BYU gets its stats juiced by all the zombie squeaky clean kids who did their homework and marched off to BYU like little robots not considering another option. One thing Mormonism does right is work ethic and keeping an eye on becoming a bread winner or marrying someone with good potential for being one (the former males the latter females), and not letting grades slide for a while due to experimentation with alchohol, sex, etc. It's not anyone's ideal student body except maybe Mark E. Peterson or Nephi. BYU gets points of having a very earnest student body, which helps this ranking.

Boy, you guys are bitter.

[Pheidippides]

Good. So far the thread has established that the U has a average-to-above-average med school.

What else?

I don't wish to sound like a broken record here, but this is the exact question that got me involved in the train of questioning, and why should I care about it? In other words, as MRD pointed out, I live 1400 miles away - why would I even bother caring about the U for better or worse as compared to any other school out there. The argument that inclusion in the Pac-12 somehow makes it more attractive - the real genesis to the discussion - means zilch to me. I'm not exactly lining up to send my kid to Arizona, ASU, Washington State, etc., and they've been PAC-# members for much longer.

SeattleUte may now feel free to again tell me how he hates BYU, except this time in a new way - I was of course unaware of his feelings on the matter until he pointed them out this very afternoon.

[MarkGrace]

Is this you disagreeing? I figured most of the Ute fans here would agree since the majority attended BYU at some point. I don't see anything wrong with it -- I'm guessing most kids who went through HS the same time I did had roughly the same view. I did not have very good grades or test scores and knew my options were basically Weber and the U.

[LA Ute]

You know, ox, maybe I am just in a cantankerous mood today, but this board is supposed to be a place for intelligent discussion that's a few cuts above what we might see on other Utah/BYU related boards. This thread seems like something we might see in those places, however. Basically, you've set up a thread on a board that is already 75% BYU partisans so that they can crap on the U. of U.'s academic reputation.

OK, now I have let my inner curmudgeon speak. I'll repeat what I said in the other thread:

I like to think Utah is a rising university, and there's plenty of data supporting that view. PAC-12 membership will help, as is discussed here. But we don't need to spend any more time bashing the U's academic strength. Utah boosters know we have a ways to go when measured against truly elite universities, and you don't need to prove anything.

No, even SU agrees that the UofU is a poor man's UW. If you think about it that way, it's probably a homeless man's UW to most people.

This raises a question. Is BYU a poor man's Notre Dame, Boston College, Baylor, or Oral Roberts? There are so many parallels, it's hard to pick the most fitting ones.

[Pheidippides]

Yeah, isn't that strange? I've seen the Ohio State phenomenon as well. Columbia is another school with a collection of BYU guys. It seems like there are a few schools who have discovered BYU grads, who are often married, hard working, and more responsible than their peers, and they have a special door in. It seems like your school even had more than its share, although to a lesser extent, IIRC.

There are several law schools like this too, or at least they were a decade ago when I paid attention. Both Columbia and Chicago had a significant number of BYU grads. At Columbia, the number was significant enough that BYU was the number 5 "feeder" school into Columbia law school in terms of number of admits (behind Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth and NYU, I think, but don't quote me - this was in 2001). Michael Young is to thank for that in large part.

[SeattleUte]

Utah is not really in bad company on that med school list as it is. SUNY, Sonybrook, Illinois, and the University of Texas (various campuses), George Washington, which follow it in the rankings, are all great schools in many disciplines. Utah is seventeen places above the Arizona and Kansas med schools. Two places below Tufts, an elite private school. Georgetown and Wake Forest, both private schools WAY ahead of BYU in the college rankings, are only a few places ahead of Utah. Utah is within spitting distance of Brown, Dartmouth and Southern Cal (closer to these schools than to Arizona).

Calling Utah a bad medical school evinces its own kind of ignorance.

[SeattleUte]

SeattleUte may now feel free to again tell me how he hates BYU, except this time in a new way - I was of course unaware of his feelings on the matter until he pointed them out this very afternoon.

Don't take it personally. There are many BYU students who are amazing and good people. I count you one of them. Clearly you survived BYU.

[SeattleUte]

US News? I thought we had cleared this subject already.

This stuff is important IFF you want to do clinical research for the rest of your life. Perceived perception? That really is part of their formula? How about things that really matter, such as PBL, hands on-training, board pass rates, early introduction to clinical experience, number of students per attending on clinical rotations, number of students to residents, etc...

I went to a way below average med school and paid way too much tuition. Where it counted, though, was experience. My last year of medical school I was treated like a resident. I personally performed enough colonoscopies to get privileges at most hospitals. I delivered more babies than I needed to get during residency. I 1st assisted on well over 50 c-sections, which prepared me well to do the operative management as an FM resident. I put in enough central lines for credentials. I managed critically ill patients with very close direct supervision. All this during my medical school training.

Financially, I kinda wish my parents had stayed in Texas. Professionally, going to this crappy, lowly rated, no-name DO school was one of the best things I could have done for my patients.

You're fine if you went to a U.S. med school. Don't listen to Cardiac. I'm sure he hurt his brother's feelings bad. Utah is 33 places ahead of Oklahoma on those rankings (OK and TAMU tied, btw).