Business school, in particular? Friend is considering their master of finance pgm but doesn't know anyone there. Would like to connect with someone who's familiar with the program.
US News ranks ISU #53 in graduate programs in business. UI is unranked (that's hard to believe; in general UI has very strong graduate and professional programs). WVU is unranked and not an AAU member. WVU's program probably is fine if the student wants to stay in or around West Virginia after completing the degree as is the case with many graduate programs in state "flagship" universities but if the person wants to move to another region of the country, another program might be advisable. I'd recommend caution but the program might be satisfactory.
All of them were super nice people. Their IQs would fluctuate between 70 and 140. On a daily basis.
When it comes to the rankings I consider them to be US Fake News. I don't trust any of the rankings. For instance, a WVU degree has less value in Iowa than in West Virginia. Similarly, a degree from EIU has less value in West Virginia than Iowa.
Does your friend enjoy dating their cousin?
The chair of the civil engineering department at ISU explained to me how the US News rankings work and it eliminated any faith I had in them. Basically, the poll all the schools on the list and ask them to rank all other programs. There's a huge familiarity bias built in. Someone in the engineering department at Cal Poly probably has no idea how good or bad the graduate program is at Iowa State. So, either they don't rank them at all, or they put them really far down the list, knowing nothing about the program.
It would probably depend how good looking the cousin is
west virginia gets a bad wrap. it struggles but iowa would too if say a few (coal company executives) were able to sap 8 trillion dollars of natural resources (coal) from it and left the majority of people VERY worse off (pollution, general eco decline). for years the economy was coal over everything, pushing workers to become addicted to drugs and alcohol to keep the machine going. well the machine has stopped but the addiction is still there.
Wow, this must mean that their university is really terrible! View attachment 71887