Can someone please explain AAU status - why it is significant to college sports &

[133743Hokie]

They are semi-autonomous for capital projects, tuition, etc so they can better manage their costs year to year.

[Telionis]

So I guess Tech will need to figure out a way to increase endowments from $452 million to $1 billion,

We're at 626.7 Million as of 12-31-12. Not a bad change in three years, but alumni must keep donating for it to increase.

VT's SAT and GPA scores are KILLED by the humanities and liberal arts programs we added in 1970. If VT had, as GT did, remained engineering, architecture, science and business only (plus ag) the average inbound GPA and SAT would be far higher (same with average professor pay). USNews would have favored that immensely (we'd probably be in the high 40s, low 50s) but the university would be quite a bit smaller and frankly, derelict in our duty. The primary mission of all land grant schools is not to kiss the ass of US News, but to bring a complete education to the masses. We make fun of WVU for having lax admissions standards, but they are doing their duty admirably. If we were to be anal about test scores, we'd be failing our core mission.

A real public land grant school should offer everything, from art history to zoology. We can be awesome at engineering (like Illinois at Urbana-Champagne), but not do that exclusively like GT.

I think we should aim at improving the quality of research and education, and let the test scores resolve themselves. The better we do, the more high caliber kids from VA will want to stay instead of going off to private schools.

It's interesting that GT is considered our peer. I wonder if Rambling Wreckers would take exception to this.

They would because they are the most arrogant fans I have ever encountered, far worse than UVA fans, which says a lot. Make no mistake about it, GT is new money.

I am in my early 30s, and even I am old enough to remember when VT and GT were nearly identically ranked (annually jockeying with TAMU and RPI for the last top 15 spot). GT had two back to back awesome presidents, John Patrick Crecine and G. Wayne Clough, the latter of which they stole from us (our dean of engineering). Both men restructured GT (Crecine did so drastically that the faculty almost revolted), got a lot more cash in, and heavily emphasized STEM. GT went from 14th in 1990 to 9th by 1995 when Crecine left, then down to where they are today (around 5th) by the time Clough left in 2008. Conversely, VT's rank has remained almost entirely static in that time (around 15), though our graduate engineering rank has fallen slightly.

GT fans like to pretend that they share a common history with MIT and Cal Tech, a hundred and fifty years of being exceptional, they even call themselves the MIT of the south (LOL), but in truth they've only been at the top for 15 years. Before that they were just another good engineering school like VT, RPI and TAMU.

We of course, took the opposite road. In 1970, T. Marshall Hahn restructured VPI with the intention of becoming the flagship of a new Virginia State University system (the Virginia State Hokies sounds a bit odd). Instead of emphasizing engineering and science, we added humanities and liberal arts, which drastically dropped our overall ranking (though did not harm our engineering). If he had done the opposite, our position with GT may have been changed. But Hahn wanted to be a complete university, an Ohio State or Penn State, rather than a public MIT.

In short, don't let GT pretend they're historic royalty, they're "new money" through and through.

[HokieEngineer]

[QUOTE=Calamitous;715648]That was what the original Long Range Plan stated. I never considered GT a peer institution from top to bottom. Maybe the plan was only considering engineering?

http://http://www.longrangeplan.vt.edu/strengths.pdf

The document you referenced was prepared by members of the long-range planning group. However, it was never "official."

The reason (I suspect) that GT is not a SCHEV peer institution is that it lacks the breadth of offerings that VT has. However, it is certainly used as a benchmark for VT's engineering program.

[HokieEngineer]

Only three (UVA, W&M & VT) in Virginia now, right? I remember seeing that announcement a year (or two) ago. Not sure if any other Virginia university has made that jump...

I think the original quote had more to do with the de facto state of post-secondary budgets: as state support has diminished, they've been forced to look for other funding sources (e.g. tuition, endowment income, sponsored research). As the state share of of the overall budget decreases, they lookmore private.

[HokieEngineer]

GT and UVa have the academic reputation and the endowment, no question. But they are small. The only B1G school with a smaller enrollment than those two is Northwestern. UMd and Rutgers are much closer in size to the mean and median student population in the B1G -- and almost twice the size of UVa and GT. UMd and Rutgers also more closely fit the B1G's mission profile. GT and UVa are also, well, elitist. Even the snobs among the B1G (Michigan and Indiana) see their role as more in the land-grant model than in the public ivy realm (even as they lay claim to the public ivy mantle).

My experience is that I would not consider GT to be elitist. I would be interested hear about your experiences in that regard.

I would consider Michigan and Northwestern to be elitist--even more so than UVa.

[Telionis]

My experience is that I would not consider GT to be elitist. I would be interested hear about your experiences in that regard.

I would consider Michigan and Northwestern to be elitist--even more so than UVa.

I have never met a GT alumni who didn't consider GT a rival to MIT, and the only "Tech" in the land. One guy I met honestly tried to argue that VT was more of a "technical college", than a polytechnic, because we had majors like fashion and interior design (a field in architecture which they also have).

If he knew his history, he'd know that until 1990 VT and GT were identically ranked (tied at around 15 for decades). GT had two awesome presidents, drastically restructured, then moved into the top 10 by 1995, and top 5 by the early 2000s (where they remain). Now they pretend they're the MIT of the south. Laughable.

[Old Line Hokie]

I have never met a GT alumni who didn't consider GT a rival to MIT, and the only "Tech" in the land. One guy I met honestly tried to argue that VT was more of a "technical college", than a polytechnic, because we had majors like fashion and interior design (a field in architecture which they also have).

If he knew his history, he'd know that until 1990 VT and GT were identically ranked (tied at around 15 for decades). GT had two awesome presidents, drastically restructured, then moved into the top 10 by 1995, and top 5 by the early 2000s (where they remain). Now they pretend they're the MIT of the south. Laughable.

A lot of business and money poured into Atlanta since 1990. There are a lot of high quality engineering schools besides MIT and GA Tech.

[VT_JustinGlass]

Good read.

[Freddyburg Hokie]

We're at 626.7 Million as of 12-31-12. Not a bad change in three years, but alumni must keep donating for it to increase.

VT's SAT and GPA scores are KILLED by the humanities and liberal arts programs we added in 1970. If VT had, as GT did, remained engineering, architecture, science and business only (plus ag) the average inbound GPA and SAT would be far higher (same with average professor pay). USNews would have favored that immensely (we'd probably be in the high 40s, low 50s) but the university would be quite a bit smaller and frankly, derelict in our duty. The primary mission of all land grant schools is not to kiss the ass of US News, but to bring a complete education to the masses. We make fun of WVU for having lax admissions standards, but they are doing their duty admirably. If we were to be anal about test scores, we'd be failing our core mission.

A real public land grant school should offer everything, from art history to zoology. We can be awesome at engineering (like Illinois at Urbana-Champagne), but not do that exclusively like GT.

I think we should aim at improving the quality of research and education, and let the test scores resolve themselves. The better we do, the more high caliber kids from VA will want to stay instead of going off to private schools.



They would because they are the most arrogant fans I have ever encountered, far worse than UVA fans, which says a lot. Make no mistake about it, GT is new money.

I am in my early 30s, and even I am old enough to remember when VT and GT were nearly identically ranked (annually jockeying with TAMU and RPI for the last top 15 spot). GT had two back to back awesome presidents, John Patrick Crecine and G. Wayne Clough, the latter of which they stole from us (our dean of engineering). Both men restructured GT (Crecine did so drastically that the faculty almost revolted), got a lot more cash in, and heavily emphasized STEM. GT went from 14th in 1990 to 9th by 1995 when Crecine left, then down to where they are today (around 5th) by the time Clough left in 2008. Conversely, VT's rank has remained almost entirely static in that time (around 15), though our graduate engineering rank has fallen slightly.

GT fans like to pretend that they share a common history with MIT and Cal Tech, a hundred and fifty years of being exceptional, they even call themselves the MIT of the south (LOL), but in truth they've only been at the top for 15 years. Before that they were just another good engineering school like VT, RPI and TAMU.

We of course, took the opposite road. In 1970, T. Marshall Hahn restructured VPI with the intention of becoming the flagship of a new Virginia State University system (the Virginia State Hokies sounds a bit odd). Instead of emphasizing engineering and science, we added humanities and liberal arts, which drastically dropped our overall ranking (though did not harm our engineering). If he had done the opposite, our position with GT may have been changed. But Hahn wanted to be a complete university, an Ohio State or Penn State, rather than a public MIT.

In short, don't let GT pretend they're historic royalty, they're "new money" through and through.

Epic Post.

I've personally experienced a lot of the GT arrogance, as I have several GT grads in my family. I think I need to send them this post. =^)