Hey MnStream. It’s been a while. So….. I’ll skip all of the BS that has happened in the last 3 or so months. In a nutshell, a lot of bad and unfortunate things have happened and I’ve had a pretty bad attitude. Thankfully, I did not write posts for you to read during this period. Had I, you would have left the computer feeling the same way you did when you saw “The Passion” the first time. So anyways, I’m back…
So, the past week at work has been extremely slow. I’m used to always catching up with various things that I couldn’t get to when I’m slow. Now, all of the sudden, I find myself searching for work. This is because I’m changing positions within my company beginning next week. Our new hirers have successfully taken over my daily processed work as well as many of the projects I created/took over. I have been using up my time by reading just about everything I can find that is remotely interesting, asking other people if they need help with anything they are doing, and by wasting it on personal interests. Luckily, one of the few things I wasted my time on is worth blogging about.
I’ve been an avid Big Ten fan my entire life. I grew up watching the likes of Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, and Penn State. I went to Michigan for undergrad. Many of my friends also went to a big ten school. I hope to go to Kellogg (Northwestern) for my MBA. The Big Ten connection remains strong no matter what part of my life it is. I’ve always grown up seeing the Big Ten as the greatest conference, whether it is in a sport or with academics. Part of me knew that I was biased but I didn’t care.
So, how am I going to tie this into anything worth reading you may ask? I wasted about 45 minutes of my time collecting college ranking data from the US News 2008 rankings. I stored each college’s respective “National University” and assorted them by conferences. I targeted the six large football conferences (BCS automatic bid conferences). Unfortunately, the National University ranking only ranks the top 130 national universities. As a result, 10 schools were not included. I searched throughout the US News’ website and could not find any rankings for these colleges. I decided to give them each a ranking of 150 (denoted in red). This ranking could be unfair and skew the results negatively but most likely is favorable for each respective college. When all national universities are included, it is highly unlikely that even half of the 10 universities fall in the next 20 spots. As a result, I speculate that these rankings are fairly accurate. Lastly, I assorted the colleges by their football conferences (which may be very different than the basketball conference).
What did we find? Contrary to my belief that the Big 10 and Pac 10 were the two best academic big conferences, I find that the ACC takes the cake (barely) from the Big 10. With an Average ranking of 50, the ACC is the best rated conference from top to bottom. This is even with Florida State, who is ranked 112th. Quite an impressive achievement. Falling in second place was the Big 10 with an average ranking of 51.36. The Big 10 doesn’t have any bad schools. The worst ranked school was Indiana which received a 75th ranking by US News. It is, in my opinion, the best conference from top to bottom in terms of average academic ranking because no school falls below 75th in 2008’s ranking. The PAC 10 came in third with an average ranking of 71.9. The bottom schools skewed the overall results by quite a bit. The PAC 10 has arguably the best top 4 with Stanford, Cal, UCLA, and USC respectively.
Then we start scraping a little deeper into the ratings. The fourth best conference was the Big 12 which has an average ranking of 95.33. This is quite surprising considering its best school is Texas, which is ranked 44th. Following the Big 12 comes the SEC and Big East. The Big East’s average may be skewed due to the fact that four of the eight schools were not ranked in the top 130 National Universities by US News. As a result, these four schools automatically received a ranking by my unscientific approach. The SEC’s average ranking is 101.5 while the Big East’s average ranking is 104. The SEC’s diamond in the rough is Vanderbilt which is by far the best ranked school in the SEC. It’s ranking of 19 is 30 spots ahead of the next best school, Florida. Nine of the twelve schools are not even ranked in the top 90 national universities.
This small unscientific approach helps further my belief that:
a) The Big 10 is the best conference overall
b) The SEC is overrated and filled with morons
I am very proud to be a graduate from the Big 10. When all you hear on TV are negative things about Big 10 sports, it feels good to see the Big 10 near the top when it comes to academics. It feels even better to see how bad the SEC is.
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