BYU-I defi-nate-ly doesn’t teach their students how to spell “definitely”.

(See above posting by Paul)

Sorry. I just couldn’t resist.

I’ve not yet begun to look for Masters opportunities, but as I have had successful interviews with Wal-Mart Headquarters (Marketing & Finance departments) as well as Royal Dutch Shell (Category Management) I’ve learned that very few business professionals in the position to hire make any distinction between the two BYU campuses.

Interestingly enough – when I did point out some of the key advantages that BYU-I has over BYU (particularly in the Business Department), being a BYU-I graduate became a great boost to success in the hiring process.

I definately think that BYU-Idaho gave me opportunities that I may not have had at other schools. I don’t think I would be where I am now if it wern’t for BYU-Idaho.

Just thought I’d chime in.

Thanks for the helpful comments- I really appreciated them.

It also reminds me that I, once, was admitted to a Ph.D. program (German) at UIUC, and even flew out to visit the campus. It was really nice there- but ultimately I chose Michigan.

There are, however, some real disadvantages with the school as a springboard to graduate programs–at least in the humanities and social sciences which I know best. Because BYU-I is not a research-heavy school, it does not espouse the German-originated system of academic rank. Instead, it focuses on teaching. Thus, the professors are not as up-to-date on the current literature in their fields, haven’t published as much as some of their colleagues at other universities, and do not maintain as wide a circle of connections as other faculties would. This isn’t to say that they don’t have top-notch faculty, they just teach so much that they have less time for professional development. Because BYU-I lacks graduate programs, many of the professors have a limited understanding of the bureaucracy involved with the graduate admissions process. Although they were quite supportive of my efforts to enter graduate school, they didn’t understand exactly how to work the admissions game in the most effective manner. I have had to figure much of this out on my own through trial and error. Also, my friends in the sciences have told me that the lack of undergraduate research opportunities often hurt BYU-I students applying in the hard sciences.

I have heard from friends that BYU-I graduates have been quite successful in entering professional schools and that their extra-curricular participation often sets them apart from cookie-cutter BYU graduates. My sister-in-law and brother recently moved to St. Louis for him to start chiropractic school. He is at the top of his class–above many BYU graduates–and she was able to find an excellent media design job because her workplace had previously hired a BYU-I graduated and loved his work. She was promoted several months later. I have friends from BYU-I in medical, dental, law, and business schools all over country. I think Kim Clark’s Harvard connections have probably helped with networking as well.

Professors at UIUC sometimes vaguely remember that I graduated from a BYU, but they have no idea that BYU-I is any different from the larger institution. If anything, this hurt me in the application process. Outside of Mormon and Western history, along with a few outstanding professors, BYU is hardly known in the history world. Historians often tends to be suspicious of this LDS-controlled institution if they know anything about it at all. But that is probably the subject of another post. Overall, I think BYU-I prepares students well by teaching them how to learn, how to interact with faculty, and by providing them with significant mentorship. Nevertheless, its learning model is not tailored to produce potential graduate students and seems to create more successful admissions to professional schools than academic graduate programs.

That seems then to support the conclusion reached by the BYU-I person who e-mailed me, that “it is rarely the University they attend that gets them into graduate school, it is their level of personal commitment.”

Have you found that to be the case in your academic/professional career?

Of course, I’ve barely heard of tons of small liberal arts colleges here in the Northeast (or, for that matter, in California, in the South, in the Midwest, etc.).