I generally think private schools and out of state tuition are a waste of money unless there is some slam dunk ROI and you've got @creepycoug kid's level academis prowess.
UW's surge in the academic world is largely a function of its QS world rankings, which focuses on a few variables that work well for Washington. But those same rankings tell me I should choose ASU over Dartmouth and has schools like Arizona pegged above schools like UVa or Vanderbilt; so, depending on who you are and what you value, that's either fubar or gold Jerry, gold.
UW is quite elite in some key areas, like comp. sci and biotech, and I'm proud of that as an alumnus. But as serious adult talk in the real world, outside of things like that, I don't think it matters. Haie has a lot of good fun with it, but the UW and UO history major are going to be treated pretty equally and you're not going to convince me anybody knows whether one received a better education than the other.
I also try and remember that it's harder to get into UO, OSU, WSU, UA and ASU now than it was for me to get into UW when I did, and a lot of the things that make UW stand out now were non-existent when I graduated. So for a lot of us, walking around with academis superiority boners makes about as much sense as it did for Jimmy Lake ... or Mahler himself, who tells Twatter that he didn't finish community college.
Turning it around: UW will typically trail (by a lot) Cal, UCLA and Michigan, and by less, Illinois, Wisky, UNC CH and UT. Hell, there are more than a few rankings (including US News) that has Florida ranked higher than UW. Do I think those schools are better, much less a lot better, than UW, or more ridiculously, that those kids are getting a better education than they would at UW? No, I don't.
It's suck-my-dick week. Which means everyone is on @haie alert and the fur and the feathers are flying.
You are smart AF to do UW undergrad + JD so I give you a pass, but when it comes to these things you can't live in the past.
And the reality is UW was really hard to get into when I went there, and it's extremely hard now. They want to be Berkeley. Doesn't matter that they aren't.
It's a different game than Oregon and the state schools.
But the state schools still do a pretty good job and get what needs to be taught in 2022.
Oregon just puts out shit and tells their residents to eat it.
I agree. Washington has separated itself from that level of public institution, without question. UW was really hard to get into the department you were in and is next to impossible to get into today. That's a whole different animal than general admission and subsequently majoring in the arts and sciences, which is the biggest chunk. I thought this year's CDS stats were interesting. Both schools now test optional, so the % of students submitting scores is pretty low at both places: UW 27% and UO 33%. I personally think that's fubar but that's a whole other debate that likely gets us dragged into the Dirty Tug. With that low a % of test scores, I didn't study those too hard, but Washington's skew higher as you'd expect.
But the GPA comparisons were at least interesting. The distributions are different, but not shockingly so. It's almost what you'd guess ... higher % of kids in some of the lower distributions, but there are some interesting comparisons. Where UW separates is in that big bulk in the second band, and that is what has changed at UW from historical trends.
UW
UO
My only point is simply that for a good bulk of the undergraduate population, it won't matter in the end. UW has 36,000+ undergrads. The VAST majority of them aren't doing what you do. I'd say the same about a lot of schools. But, sure, if you want to be an engineer at SpaceX, do what my BIL did and make sure junior gets into Michigan and kicks ass while he's there.
If I lived in Oregon, I would pay the OOS for UW over either Oregon school because I have the money and UW has more to offer and I like Seattle more than Eugene. But if your kid would be going into arts & sciences at UW, or accounting or something like that, I wouldn't borrow for the difference. And, Oregon has some areas of strength on the science side ... not like Washington, but in the S and M (not so much the T and the E) of STEM, they have some strengths and are getting better as they continue to fundraise, a detail I wouldn't ignore. It takes 100 years to gain prestige in the humanities, but you can buy the sciences like a rented whore. See, for example, UW's biotech story and Leroy Hood. One day, Cal Tech was the center of the universe for that and UW didn't even have the department; the next day, because of Gates, all that moved to UW. They did just plow like a $1b or some crazy number into more science facilities.
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But the GPA comparisons were at least interesting. The distributions are different, but not shockingly so. It's almost what you'd guess ... higher % of kids in some of the lower distributions, but there are some interesting comparisons. Where UW separates is in that big bulk in the second band, and that is what has changed at UW from historical trends.
UW
UO
My only point is simply that for a good bulk of the undergraduate population, it won't matter in the end. UW has 36,000+ undergrads. The VAST majority of them aren't doing what you do. I'd say the same about a lot of schools. But, sure, if you want to be an engineer at SpaceX, do what my BIL did and make sure junior gets into Michigan and kicks ass while he's there.
If I lived in Oregon, I would pay the OOS for UW over either Oregon school because I have the money and UW has more to offer and I like Seattle more than Eugene. But if your kid would be going into arts & sciences at UW, or accounting or something like that, I wouldn't borrow for the difference. And, Oregon has some areas of strength on the science side ... not like Washington, but in the S and M (not so much the T and the E) of STEM, they have some strengths and are getting better as they continue to fundraise, a detail I wouldn't ignore. It takes 100 years to gain prestige in the humanities, but you can buy the sciences like a rented whore. See, for example, UW's biotech story and Leroy Hood. One day, Cal Tech was the center of the universe for that and UW didn't even have the department; the next day, because of Gates, all that moved to UW. They did just plow like a $1b or some crazy number into more science facilities.
Anyway, I took the bait, and we digress.