SMU and University of Houston

What is the DL word on these schools?

• I work for the University of Houston. It's no UT, and it's certainly no Rice. It is second-tier in every respect. However, it's much better respected academically than SMU. Anything's better than SMU.

• Exactly what R1 said. I'm from Texas, so I can also corroborate.

  SMU%3A%20Worse%20Even%20Than%20Texas%20State

• How are they in terms of homophobia?

  op

• UH is ever striving. Once a community college, still a commuter school, but now also a tier 1 research university. I think the school of hotel/restaurant management is ranked third. It worked for me on my second try at college.

  alumnus

• What's wrong with SMU? Its private and expensive, no? The campus is pretty, iirc. Much nicer than UH. I guess I just assumed it was a competitive university.

• We used to call SMU, "suck my uterus. "

  Trinity%20grad

• SMU is full of conservative morons. Rich, white, and Extremely entitled. Full of good ole boys who will go into finance or consulting and girls gunning for their MRS degree. They take rape and sexual assault accusations very lightly and try to cover them up, though the local media has recently been on their tail. The Bush library is currently being built there. Full of your typical Texas Republicans. Utterly noxious student body as a whole. That said, my cousin went there and, while she didn't exactly enjoy the majority of the students, she found her own cool group and got a decent education. And one of my parents went to SMU law school and has been extremely successful, though I don't know how much that had to do with the school.

  grew%20up%20right%20by%20SMU

• What is the University of Houston campus like? Nice area?

• They're the Harvard and Yale of large Texas cities!

• No, those would be Rice, R9.

  R2

• [quote]What is the University of Houston campus like? Nice area? Not too. Just west and north of Robertson Stadium is a poor area with shotgun shacks. South of the main campus is a black area with a mix of middle class, ranging from lower to upper. There are some very nice houses in there, with some sections where black professionals live. Keep going south and the neighborhood gets pretty rough again.

• [quote]SMU is full of conservative morons. Rich, white, and Extremely entitled. Sounds like A&M, which is also a cult of young Republicans. A&M continues the conservative brainwashing. Anyone not an A&M grad is seen as a lesser human being.

• SMU has an excellent performing arts program. It IS full of rich entitled kids, to be sure, but its academics are actually better than the early posters would have you believe...

• [quote]What is the University of Houston campus like? Nice area? The campus itself is a mixture of mid-century institutional ugliness and some newer attractive buildings. It's not exactly beautiful; it looks like an urban office park. But it is an oasis within the neighborhood (emphasis on hood). The campus lies a few miles to the southeast of the city center just off the 45, on the wrong side of the imaginary line that separates the good parts of the city from the rest. It's not advisable to commute to and from the better parts of town by any route other than the 45. It might be worth mentioning that there are actually four constituent campuses within the University of Houston system: the main campus southeast of Downtown; UH-Downtown, housed in a funky converted office building on Main Street (and thus often mistaken for the "Main Campus"); UH-Clear Lake, adjacent to the Johnson Space Center; and UH-Victoria, located 130 miles from the Main Campus. The four campuses are technically separate universities but share an administrative framework such as HR and the library system.

• Some day R10 will get a sense of humor.

  Then%20again%2C%20no%20one%20else%20in%20Texas%20has%20one

• SMU is very similar to USC: so-so academics, lots of spoiled rich kids, huge party scene. If you aren't in the right fraternity or sorority, you ain't shit. (Pickles Bush was a Theta.)

• Perhaps someday, R15, you'll be funny.

  Texan

• SMU remains a snobby party school and a sort of academic last-chance finishing school for vaguely retarded but trainable rich kids. The school has made some major improvements since the 'death penalty' days, when its total emphasis on football was wrenched away. Still, it is, as several others indicate, not at all on a par with UT, Rice or even A&M.

• [quote] It's not advisable to commute to and from the better parts of town by any route other than the 45. An extension to the MetroRail system under construction will serve the UH main campus and, I believe, Hobby Airport. The existing MetroRail Red Line already connects UH-Downtown to Rice, UT-Med and Baylor Med, with an extension under construction that will eventually serve Intercontinental Airport.

• "just off the 45", "other than the 45" Are you originally from the West, R14?

• It looks like I was mistaken about Houston's MetroRail serving the airports. But UH will be well-connected to transit in the near future with no need to commute via the Gulf Freeway.

  http://www.gometrorail.org/clients/2491/473439.pdf

• SMU has much more prestige in Texas, but remember that is "Texas prestige." It doesn't travel.

• SMU doesn't have prestige in Texas, dear. It's as basic and forgettable as your trolling.