Quote Originally Posted by BrunswickDawg View Post
No, its not.

The worst thing about rankings like these is so much of it is beyond the control of the university.
We are forced to admit at lesser standards than a lot of our competition due to the Ayers case; the Legislature will never fund the school at a level that will make it competitive for salaries; as one of the poorest states, we will always have a high student debt load unless a robust lottery program funds tuition like our competition; without a funding cash cow like a medical school we will always rank lower than OM which hurts perception; etc etc.However, that means we have to maximize the things within out control, and I don't know that we are.
You hit the nail on the head. I believe we're the only school in the SEC without either a law school or a medical school. That hurts us a bunch. As also stated, our admittance standards are far too low to be able to move up any type of academic list. For every top scholar you bring in, you're also bringing in 5 farmers kids who are there to party for 1-5 years and not use the degree they get. Until we start focusing on other areas such as Birmingham, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Nashville, St. Louis, and Charlotte instead of Clarksdale, Greenville, Gulfport, and Southaven then we'll continue to fall. I mean everyone talks about how we don't recruit in football but go look at our academic recruiting. It's beyond putrid. They don't pay the Academic Counselors a living wage and as stated above, we hardly focus out of state. I'm not saying go all in on out of state like OM but give a little bit of an effort to it and we may be able to get in the door for the athletic prospects at these schools if they see their friends going to State as well.