>> . they are fightin' on the front lines
That they are - Austin is extremely liberal. The latest shenanigans at UT - protestors blocking conservative speakers, especially those that are experts on Israel - from any access to UT, was very disappointing. That denial of free speech, on a TEXAS campus, by the left, was outrageous. Where were the UT regents and president - that they allowed this to happen ? I was disgusted by that.
On another note - although Bryan-College Station has grown MUCH larger than when I was there - it is still considerably cheaper to live off-campus there, than it is in Austin.
Two fairly unique things at A&M - in addition to one of the best veterinarian schools *if not the best*, in the WORLD - they also have a hyperbaric lab and a small nuclear reactor, or at least they used to. Not sure if it still does.
Nuclear engineering used to be one of A&M's top ranked programs, maybe it still is. The ROTC program at A&M, *ie. the Corp of Cadets*, is also top notch.
No, I didn't go that route, but still greatly respected the integrity of that program.
I will also hold up the geophysics program there as being better than any other in the country - including UT and Colorado School of Mines - which are also highly rated, at #2 and #3. That is from experience in dealing with graduates from those programs during my career - not from some 'national ratings' system. We had some real pioneers in that field (and a dud or two) that taught there. One was the founder of 'deconvolution' - a foundation in both analog and digital processing of data - used by any field involved in signal processing. That was Dr. T.W. Spencer.
Once - our entire geophysics class (21 of us) was FLUNKED by a Math professor for using a different technique on a test to solve a difficult problem. Our solution involved using the dirac delta function, the math majors had never heard of it. We solved the problem in less than half a page, and all the math majors took a couple of pages to solve it. Well - our Geophysics Prof that taught us how to set up and solve problems in such a simpler and elegant manner, Dr. Kissinger, confronted the Math guy - and Dr. Math guy had to back down.
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