Apparently some posters think LSU >= Harvard, academically

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As a recent graduate of LSU, I am happy to see that LSU remains in the top tier of the latest U.S. News and World Report college and university rankings.

When we finally reached the top tier last year, it was a major breakthrough and suggested that LSU was headed in the right direction. However, it is very important to realize that simply being in the top tier of the U.S. News rankings is hardly enough.

We are still ranked 128th (which is effectively identical to last year’s ranking, since there is a six-way tie for that spot), and this puts LSU right in the middle of all of the schools that U.S. News ranks.

LSU can do much better than this, and it would be a shame to see LSU remain stagnant after having come so far. Maintaining LSU’s forward progress will obviously require increased support from the state. Unfortunately, it appears that the opposite will be true in the near future.

There are, however, many ways that the greater LSU community can support the school. For example, LSU’s growth and development is currently limited by the fact that the university endowment is very small. The Forever LSU campaign has been moderately successful in building the endowment, but we still are well below where we need to be.

Thus, donations by alumni, no matter the size, will always help. Furthermore, the LSU community includes many large corporations whose futures will be impacted by the progress that LSU makes in the coming years. Many of these businesses have already made contributions to the university, but they are far from enough.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, LSU must continue to improve upon the quality of the education that it provides.

I cherish the education I received at LSU, but there is always room to improve. This means that LSU will need to tighten its standards (not its admissions standards, but its educational accountability standards). In the past few years, LSU has hired and retained some of the best and brightest faculty in the country, so there is absolutely no reason why Harvard, UPenn, Yale, or Stanford should be graduating better-prepared students than LSU. In reality, many of LSU’s graduates are on par with the best graduates of the top schools in the country, so it is clear that the potential for greatness is there.

Even though LSU is facing tough times, LSU can continue to improve by capitalizing on the resources that we already have. Reaching and maintaining top-tier status is an important milestone in LSU’s development, but we should now set our sights even higher.

Geaux, Tigers!

Nabil Thalji
medical student
Philadelphia, Penn.

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FWIW, undergrad, it is pretty much true.

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Quality of education is often more about the effort you put into it than the school itself.

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And it should be noted that with his "inferior" LSU education he was helping explain shite to Harvard students after their first class in med school.

It is all an elitist perception...nothing more.

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The average student at Harvard definitely will be academically better than even the higher than average LSU student but that doesn't mean or imply that the coursework that they took is fluff. Unless if it were a proven and known fact that LSU tends to give out higher grades for lesser work.

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No, I am not.

It is just that I never associated with stupid people in my studies. Maybe it was just me.

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But that does not mean a Harvard student is inherently better educated than an LSU student...just tested more rigorously.

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