<p>nspeds: </p>
<p>This is a conversation, and my use of ad hominem was absolutely appropriate given the linguistics.</p>
<p>Your wording of the next sentence, no matter what you <em>meant</em> to say, was incorrent, and thus subverted your own point. Nice going.</p>
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<p>If I were comparing Harvard to Princeton, I would agree.</p>
<p>But please… the fact that only 3 students managed to place at HLS… and 241 at HLS… pretty clearly demonstrates that there is some preference here. Unless you gave the numbers an IMPROBABLE interpretation, there is no way to rule out preference for top schools. No way.</p>
<p>I thought this common sense would have penetrated that dogma you hold, but alas, it’s tough to penetrate that Longhorn thickness.</p>
<p>Let’s give our brilliant Ivy friend nspeds an English lesson</p>
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<p>In sentence 1, nspeds makes a distinction. In sentence 2, he asserts that I’d be stupid if I saw the distinction. </p>
<p>Logically consistent? Not so much.</p>
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<p>No it wasn’t. I’m resorting to the proper definition. I’m sorry that some two-bit dictionary and wikipedia don’t substantiate my claim, and that hundreds of scholarly texts do.</p>
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<p>This is the best you can do: argue from a typographical error. Beautiful things A&M is teaching you.</p>
<p>A&M’s concentration is on engineering. Secondly on business. neither of those are exactly pre law tracks unless you want to be a patent lawyer or do tort reform.</p>
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<p>Judging from your ignorance concerning informal fallacies, such as the ad hominem attack, you wouldn’t know logic if it kicked you in the crotch.</p>
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<p>Okay. So show me statistics demonstrating A&M’s dominance of the Ivys when it comes to graduate school placement in ANY field. </p>
<p>I am giving you that much. Any field… show me statistics.</p>
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<p>Are you aware that words have <i>multiple</i> definitions? The definition I was citing was the one popular in conversational vernacular. Now had I <i>said</i> you were drawing conclusions, you could be sure that I was misusing the word. However, since I never claimed you’d drawn any conclusions, it shouldn’t have been hard for you to figure out what meaning I was using.</p>
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<p>What is popular is not necessarily what is proper. That is a form of the ad populum fallacy.</p>
<p>Yes, preference. I haven’t disagreed that going to a top school makes it easier to get your foot in the door. I’m not blind.</p>
<p>Top schools have a higher concentration of highly motivated people. They also have a higher concentration of folks interested in prestige. If a large number of these kids weren’t getting into top graduate programs, especially at their own undergrad school, there would be something wrong with the system. </p>
<p>My point is that kids of equal potential, desire, and stats are not inferior to them because of their “lesser” school. The very fact that UT Austin got 27 kids in and A&M 3 says to me that more kids at UT Austin were concerned about status and are after that type of career…not that A&M is a crap school with crap students.</p>
<p>Especially since, and I’m sure you can agree, those schools are pretty much of equal quality.</p>
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<p>I’m waiting.</p>
<p><em>yawn</em></p>
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<p>I never maintained that argument.</p>
<p>Clearly I’m going to lose this argument if I dont go look up your statistics, because you’ve already shown me that a Boston school’s graduate program gets more students from its own undergraduate programs than it does from an undergraduate school in texas.</p>
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<p>No, you don’t need to look at MY statistics.</p>
<p>Give me ANY statistics (from a solid source, of course). Something.</p>
<p>I’m waiting.</p>
<p>Katho: I’ve gone a whole thread listening to a longhorn without being tempted to say “12-7”. It looks like our mutual distatste for unsubstantiated arrogance has overriden our schools’ rivalry :P</p>
<p>Thanks nspeds.</p>
<p>But it actually IS a part of the conversational vernacular, as I have demonstrated. therefore it is both popular and proper.</p>
<p>lol, sorry, but I don’t attend either. I ran away to Louisiana for college :)</p>
<p>But if it makes you feel any better, I applied to A&M and not UT.</p>
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<p>That it is a part of converstaitional vernacular is not a sufficient condition for it being proper.</p>
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<p>The ball is in your court, buddy. As I stated:</p>
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<p>I’m waiting.</p>
<p>The fact that you have postponed the posting of evidence for this long speaks volumes. But I won’t judge, I will continue to wait.</p>
<p>Just to update everyone in this thread: vyse is supposed to respond to the following claim:</p>
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<p>I am flexible when it comes to the source. Give me any reputable source and some statistics that show that A&M is on par or superior to the Ivys when it comes to graduate school placement. Without any such evidence, call it arrogance, private-school haughtiness, pomposity, whatever, I am the winner of this argument.</p>
<p>nspeds: This is a first. I’ve never seen someone reverse-strawman THEIR OWN ARGUMENT to weasel out of having to argue it.</p>
<p>Lets remind you of what you said that started all this:</p>
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<p>Ok, then tell us what is. because we all seem to agree that the top schools are helpful with getting your foot in the door. Yet you have never told us WHAT it is other than prestige that creates such a large chasm between the ivies and everyone else.</p>