only on Letsrun do you get criticized for winning NCAA cross while getting a degree in mechanical engineering.....unbelievable.
only on Letsrun do you get criticized for winning NCAA cross while getting a degree in mechanical engineering.....unbelievable.
Pro runners have a short carrier that pays poorly. These kids need a college degree.
*career
Criticizing this guy's mechanical engineering degree is beyond absurd. He is a high achieving guy with great grades. If he opts for a traditional career, his prospects look very good. The rankings mean little. By the way, after watching the NCAA XC championships, he is one mentally tough guy. Seems like an ideal hire should he decide to head to a traditional career.
I could see him being a good fit for OAC. Seems like a real grinder-type guy (similar to Ritz's style) and I assume he would be fine remaining at altitude.
he's a grampa wrote:
Ghost1 wrote:
Mantz majored in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University so in theory he won’t have any problems being employed should he decide to forgo becoming a professional in distance running.
I’ve never heard of a mechanical engineer having trouble getting work. Sometimes they had to relocate but it is a profession in high demand and kudos to him for leading a top rate athletic career in conjunction with a typical demanding major. No disrespect to other majors especially those in the humanities but mechanical engineering is hard-core.
Yes, and it is only taking him eight years to complete a sub-par four year program.
LOL there's always a few of these guys. What was your major and at what school did you do it? GPA? How many national titles did you win while getting your degree? It's ignorant to say BYU is sub par academically, not sure where people get that idea. Also ignorant to claim he's been in school for 8 years. If you've read any of the countless threads that have whined about Mantz over the last 3 months, that point has been covered.
To the point, should Mantz return? If he wants another team cross country title, then yeah he should come back. Also, he's mentioned he wants to go to grad school, so maybe he wants to finish the degree sooner rather than later. That said, he maybe would benefit from living like a pro to see if it helps him avoid injury.
top 30 in the world school wrote:
he's a grampa wrote:
The byu engineering school is ranked 131st out of 182. Very much closer to the worst than the best. They would be happy if they were only sub-par. I'm sure that it is a very challenging major for the type of students that byu gets, but could easily be completed in a few months by a Stanford or a Princeton engineering student. The fact that it is taking Mantz eight years to muddle through says it all.
As an engineering major at a top 30 school in the world, I can tell you that those rankings, especially for engineering, mean next to nothing. The math/physics taught at my school vs the math at Princeton vs the math at BYU is exactly the same. Engineering curriculums are taught from the same group of textbooks. The only advantage in going to a “better” school for engineering undergrads is that you will be working with highly motivated and smarter students. (And that people like you sill be impressed by the name of the school lol) The quality of education is similar everywhere.
Rankings are determined by prestige (nothing to do with difficulty and a dumb metric IMO.. very outdated), research output (again, nothing to do with undergrad education quality), student faculty ratio (not really representative because class sizes =/= this ratio) and international students ratio (useless, no explanation needed).
So yea, those rankings are useless, especially for engineering. And btw, the kids who go to Princeton, Harvard, Stanford etc… aren’t geniuses or anything. Saying that they can complete a BYU ME program in a few months just shows that you’re either brainwashed by these “elite” universities’ marketing schemes or you’re really out of touch with what engineering education looks like, They’re just hard working, smart, and driven students who value going to a “prestigious” school.
Glad you made these points since I was going to mention how unreliable rankings are. Especially since rankings are often from research output and grants won, they are not a good indicator of quality of undergraduate program. At BYU, research is not the top priority; undergrad education is. So, they won't rank as highly as they should. Also, people writing these rankings aren't going and sitting in classrooms at each school.
My experience has been that the instruction at BYU's ME undergrad program was at least as good as the instruction at the grad program I attended afterward at a supposedly top 5 ME program. Difference is BYU's focus is undergrads, and my grad school is focused on research.
He should stay in school and complete his degree. Why the hell would he go pro?
If he has his schooling done then he should try to go pro. He’s not a young guy by any means.
It is foolish to think that a lowly regarded engineering school produces graduates with the same level of ability as a top 20 or even top 50 engineering program. The students, faculty, facilities and curriculum aren't even close to being equivalent. I've been a professional engineer for over 30 years and have never worked with or even to my knowledge met a BYU trained engineer.
Over those years I must have worked with thousands of engineers and plenty of them were from mighty obscure programs. Before this thread, I didn't realize that BYU had an engineering school,
As for Mantz, I don't know his academic abilities, but apparently he has already been at residence in the BYU program for five years and and still has two years until he leaves. He either only takes one, at most two, significant courses per semester or he'll end up with an absurd number of credits. He's had enough time to be well into a PhD course.
silivalley wrote:
It is foolish to think that a lowly regarded engineering school produces graduates with the same level of ability as a top 20 or even top 50 engineering program. The students, faculty, facilities and curriculum aren't even close to being equivalent. I've been a professional engineer for over 30 years and have never worked with or even to my knowledge met a BYU trained engineer.
Over those years I must have worked with thousands of engineers and plenty of them were from mighty obscure programs. Before this thread, I didn't realize that BYU had an engineering school,
As for Mantz, I don't know his academic abilities, but apparently he has already been at residence in the BYU program for five years and and still has two years until he leaves. He either only takes one, at most two, significant courses per semester or he'll end up with an absurd number of credits. He's had enough time to be well into a PhD course.
But the materials and the subjects studied are basically the same or equivalent wherever you go and the textbooks in the United States are equally the same so why should there be a difference in quality between BYU and better ranked universities?
First of all to get into an engineering program in the United States you need very solid SAT’s in mathematics at the high school level and very solid overall scores in STEM pre courses which I assume this runner had.
Mantz did a mission for two years, and was a top ranked athlete during the time he studied at BYU and that meant twice a day training plus weight room etc. which would’ve totaled around 2 to 3 hours per day total. For that reason it seems normal that he would take longer than the average time to complete the degree in mechanical engineering.
In my book, anyone studying for a degree in mechanical engineering is basically way ahead of the game compared to most people anyway so this guy should be admired rather than admonished for the time he took to complete his degree. On top of that, he’s a nice guy, modest to a fault, and someone who possesses very good integrity from everything that we see about him, as is typical in general with people from that faith.
Is it normal for engineers to solve a problem with research, or with subjective impressions based on their own personal experience? Frankly, you sound like a crap engineer.
If you want to evaluate the strength of an academic department, look at the CVs of the faculty. Where did they earn their PhD? How active are they in research and grants?
ME is a big department, but here's the list of where the BYU faculty obtained their PhDs: Georgia Tech (3), Iowa State, Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven/Utah State University, London University (UK), MIT (5), Michigan, Purdue (5), Rensselaer Polytechnic, Stanford (2), UC San Diego, UIUC, University of Utah (4), Virginia Tech, Wisconsin (2).
Most faculty members have their publications easily accessible, with about half having full CVs online. They generally show recent publications and ongoing, five to seven-figure grants. Several have links to lab websites with fuller explanations of their research projects. There's no need to let your opinion be founded on ignorance when you can inform yourself easily enough.
Basically, it looks pretty much like what you'd expect of research-active faculty at a large, undergraduate-focused school. Probably about what you'd expect from the other schools tied with BYU in the USN ranking: Embry-Riddle, Alabama-Huntsville, Kentucky, Miami, Oklahoma, South Carolina. If you saw someone with a BS in ME from Alabama-Huntsville of the University of Oklahoma, you'd probably read it and evaluate it on the merits, rather than harrumphing and pounding a table.
It all depends on what offers he has. If he his best offer is 30K a year, he would be crazy to take it. He'd make much more as an engineer.
I think you summed it up best! Alot of these guys should move up..maybe to the marathon..make some money!
silivalley wrote:
It is foolish to think that a lowly regarded engineering school produces graduates with the same level of ability as a top 20 or even top 50 engineering program. The students, faculty, facilities and curriculum aren't even close to being equivalent. I've been a professional engineer for over 30 years and have never worked with or even to my knowledge met a BYU trained engineer.
Over those years I must have worked with thousands of engineers and plenty of them were from mighty obscure programs. Before this thread, I didn't realize that BYU had an engineering school,
As for Mantz, I don't know his academic abilities, but apparently he has already been at residence in the BYU program for five years and and still has two years until he leaves. He either only takes one, at most two, significant courses per semester or he'll end up with an absurd number of credits. He's had enough time to be well into a PhD course.
Maybe he is already in a combo BS/MS program! He should either do another year of eligibility at BYU or go pro and go to grad school at BYU. He would be training with Jared Ward and Clay ton Young and the BYU team. Would be a good setup. I believe Clayton Young is doing his MS in Mech Engr at BYU under that arrangement.
Mantz on his mission in Ghana. The perfect son. The kind of kid every mother and grandmother would love to invite into their living room. Clean-cut, well behaved, and polite. No one has a bad word to say about this kid.
Now back to his career. Number one should be he should get his degree in mechanical engineering and then he’ll be safe and he can look forward to a life of good job prospects for the rest of his life. Once he has his degree then I think he should take a few years to go as far as he can in athletics. After that he can assess whether it’s worth continuing or to get into the job market and build a family. Please remember, that for Mormons it’s very important to get married early and produce a lot of progeny. Extremely family oriented people.
Current and former byu distance runners are extremely unlikely to be doping at even minor league levels. They can't even use the performance booster known as SMHCWM (Swiss Miss hot chocolate with marshmallows), as Mormons appear to have a problem with hot beverages.
When Mantz is in a race, you know that at least one runner is clean.
whatyouseeiswhatyouget wrote:
Current and former byu distance runners are extremely unlikely to be doping at even minor league levels. They can't even use the performance booster known as SMHCWM (Swiss Miss hot chocolate with marshmallows), as Mormons appear to have a problem with hot beverages.
When Mantz is in a race, you know that at least one runner is clean.
+1 just as you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of Mormons imprisoned in US penitentiaries. Very rare. Yes they are human and they may fail at times but in general they live to a higher order.
I have met a lot of Mormons on my travels throughout the world and during my teaching stints in different countries and they have always been very impressive people because of their discipline, rigor, and dedication to task in addition to their incredible ability to master foreign esoteric languages for the purpose of their mission in order to spread their faith.
If he does not turn pro soon, he will find himself competing in the masters category when he does.
Ghost1 wrote:
whatyouseeiswhatyouget wrote:
Current and former byu distance runners are extremely unlikely to be doping at even minor league levels. They can't even use the performance booster known as SMHCWM (Swiss Miss hot chocolate with marshmallows), as Mormons appear to have a problem with hot beverages.
When Mantz is in a race, you know that at least one runner is clean.
+1 just as you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of Mormons imprisoned in US penitentiaries. Very rare. Yes they are human and they may fail at times but in general they live to a higher order.
This has to be satire. Right? Right?? I'm pretty sure the Utah state penitentiary is full of Mormons.
Mormons are like anyone else. Sometimes religion even drives them a little crazy, and they do heinous things in the name of God. (e.g. serial killers Chad & Lori Daybell, serial rapist Warren Jeffs, etc. etc. etc.). Sometimes you get guys inspired by Joseph Smith who go the con artist route (e.g. Mark Hoffman).