Pair of Oregon Duck Stars are All-Academic As Well

U of O has taken the Pre thing to far. Naming majors after Steve Prefontaine is unnecessary. Prefontaine did earn a degree from U of O, and that was 40 years ago then standards were not so soft.

Looking at the facts, the University of Oregon is right in the middle of the Pac 12, which is normally thought of as one of the more academically demanding athletic conferences. By no means is Oregon an ivy league elite type school. At the same time, by no means is it a weak academic school. In fact, it falls in the middle of the Pac 12 schools. One measure is the freshman acceptance percentage:

Pac 12 School acceptance rates vary greatly. Here are the 2015 Acceptance rates:

Stanford University 5.05%

Univ Southern Cal 17.5%

Univ Cal Berkeley 17.7%

UCLA 20.4%

Univ of Washington 58%

Univ of Oregon 73.9%

Univ of Arizona 76.9%

Oregon State Univ 78.9%

Arizona State Univ 80.2%

Univ of Utah 82%

Colorado Univ 87%

There might be an easier school than Oregon somewhere. Maybe Central Southwestern Mississippi Remedial Junior College, but it is doubtful. No matter how you want to spin it, Oregon is a horrible place to get an education. Sorry if that makes you little fanboys all butthurt, but those are the facts.

#4 UCLA @20% acceptance

#X U of O: 74% acceptance

#X for U of O because you omitted WASU.

Anyway, less than 1:5 chance of getting accepted to the top 4. A 3:4 chance of getting into U of O. Exactly how does U of O fall in the middle when it so far off of the top 4?

Academia Accolade wrote:

Kudos to both Edward Cheserek and Jenna Prandini for their accomplishments in the classroom, as well as on the track. I picked this up off the wires, demonstrating that super jocks can be great students as well. I can't help but believe that Oregon's investment in their new athletic learning center isn't at least somewhat responsible for the honors earned by these two champion athletes:

http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=210103899

Isn't a University by definition a learning center?

Every knows what the UO athletic learning center is about. It is a place for the Ducks pre-student athletes to meet with their appointed eligibility guides (aka tutors) to do homework assignments and papers. Oregon has become the University of North Carolina, Eugene without the conscientious whistleblowers to expose them.

Anyone who considers Cheserek or Prandini "academic all americans" needs to get their heads examined -- at Oregon's highly regarded Department of Astrology, Psychics, Tarot and Palmistry. There are many pre-pre-pre degrees offered in that college.

Screaming Meemie wrote:

Looking at the facts, the University of Oregon is right in the middle of the Pac 12, which is normally thought of as one of the more academically demanding athletic conferences. By no means is Oregon an ivy league elite type school. At the same time, by no means is it a weak academic school. In fact, it falls in the middle of the Pac 12 schools. One measure is the freshman acceptance percentage:

Pac 12 School acceptance rates vary greatly. Here are the 2015 Acceptance rates:

Stanford University 5.05%

Univ Southern Cal 17.5%

Univ Cal Berkeley 17.7%

UCLA 20.4%

Univ of Washington 58%

Univ of Oregon 73.9%

Univ of Arizona 76.9%

Oregon State Univ 78.9%

Arizona State Univ 80.2%

Univ of Utah 82%

Colorado Univ 87%

These statistics are unbelievable! How could any school have be considered academically rigorous or anywhere close to elite and accept over HALF of its applicants?? To call something elite it HAS to have under a 10% admit rate. Elite is by definition only the top.

That being said... Most people on here are just hatin on two kids. Leave them alone. They are succeeding where they're at and that's what counts. I don't care if you are a janitor or any profession at all. What matters is you do your best with where you're at.

Hey, Screaming Meemie, your stats are incompleted because you showed the value for Colorado College and not the University of Colorado and left out Washington State University. Here are the average SAT scores for reading and math of the students admitted to Pac 12 schools last year.

Stanford 1475

USC 1375

Berkeley 1370

UCLA 1300

Washington 1215

University of Utah 1175

Colorado 1170

Oregon 1108

Arizona State 1105

Arizona 1095

Oregon State 1090

Washington State 1050

Overall excellence. Pac-12 universities run the gamut in overall quality, with Stanford finishing tops in the conference and fifth overall in US News & World Report's 2013-2014 study. (Princeton was first nationally, followed by Harvard, Yale and Columbia). Cal was second among Pac-12 schools, placing 20th overall. Los Angeles rivals USC and UCLA, curiously, tied for 23rd in the national rankings, and Washington was 52nd.

After that, there was a notable gap until Colorado arrived in 86th place, followed by Oregon (109), Arizona (119), Utah (121) and Washington State (128), with ASU and Oregon State tying at No. 142. The US News & World Report rankings look at various factors including academics, extracurricular activities, costs and location. More than 200 universities were evaluated.

Western State schools on ARWU 100

2 Stanford University

4 University of California at Berkeley

7 California Institute of Technology

12 University of California at Los Angeles

13 University of California at San Diego

15 University of Washington

18 University of California at San Francisco

34 University of Colorado at Boulder

41 University of California at Santa Barbara

47 University of California at Irvine

51 University of Southern California

55 University of California at Davis

86 University of Arizona

87 University of Utah

88 Arizona State University

93 University of California at Santa Cruz

Cal St Eugene is for academic geniuses.

Pre won 4 Olympic Gold medals.

Pac 12 School acceptance rates vary greatly. Here are the 2015 Acceptance rates. Note that Washington State is now included as is the University of Colorado's rate confirmed.

Stanford University 5.05%

Univ Southern Cal 17.5%

Univ Cal Berkeley 17.7%

UCLA 20.4%

Univ of Washington 58%

Univ of Oregon 73.9%

Univ of Arizona 76.9%

Oregon State Univ 78.9%

Arizona State Univ 80.2%

Univ of Utah 82%

Washington State University 82.1

University of Colorado 87%

Any way you look at it, Oregon is in the middle of a list of very fine, highly rated universities. Scoring in the top 200 of American Universities is impressive to most educated people around the world. Anyone who doesn't understand that the University of Colorado is a fine university,though they may rate at the bottom of this particular list, will never get it. IMHO, it would take a pretty ignorant person to ridicule any one of these fine schools.

To give you a bit of perspective regarding your statement below about research citations, grants, etc., I'm a research scientist who works for a large government agency and I obtained my PhD from an Oregon university. I've come to realize that your success as a researcher is roughly proportional to the amount of support given by the university (or agency). The more monetary support you're given in the form of generous start-up funds and student salary results in more publications, and more success at attracting external funding. For state schools and the like, they have very little endowment/overhead with which to support their new faculty members. So the new hires are left to compete for external funding, which is getting more and more competitive (sometimes only a 10% success rate). In contrast, I recently began collaborating with a professor at Stanford, and invited her to be a Co-I on my grant proposal. When she sent me her budget, I was stunned at the level of support that Stanford provides. I also collaborate with someone at Caltech, and the story is similar. One of my senior mentors told me that when universities like Stanford, Caltech, and MIT hire someone, they're going to throw enough money at them to enable their success. It's in the university's best interest. The PI can pay a sizeable group of PhD students to crank on projects (and the dept pays for their salary; it doesn't come from competitive grant funds). So I actually give more props to a researcher at a state school or small private university who solely supports his/her students by externally awarded grant funds. They might not have as many publications as the Stanford PI, but given more support, they'd likely be just as productive. There's lots of capable people out there...and yes, the University of Oregon has several prominent PIs in their respective fields.

I can read & write wrote:

Not true. WSU, OSU, and UO has been grandfathered into the PAC12 and each remains unranked academically given the low numbers of research citations, awards, publications, research grants, prizes, and federal laboratories. Since the days of the PAC8, ASU, UA, Utah, and CU have been admitted given sufficient academic credentials.

If it's my kid I'd send the brat to Cal to learn to make particle beam weapons.

"That being said... Most people on here are just hatin on two kids. Leave them alone. They are succeeding where they're at and that's what counts. I don't care if you are a janitor or any profession at all. What matters is you do your best with where you're at."

Thank you. Yes, Oregon is not known as an academic powerhouse. It is far from the academic reputation of Stanford or Cal, for example. Having said that, there are two excellent athletes there who are working hard and getting good grades. Congrats to them.

I don't think anyone from Oregon has tried to claim that the University of Oregon is an academic "powerhouse". What is fair to say is that it is a fine university that is highly rated in certain disciplines and is amount the higher half of all American universities.

Oregon is a school, that will challenge high school students with a mixture of A's and B's. Is it the best school for a kid with straight A's and top of the chart entrance exam scores? Maybe, and maybe not. Students pick their "best fit" university based a variety of reasons such as overall cost, staying close to home, specific programs, the best place to further a running career, etc. Oregon is the best choice for a lot of kids, and not the best choice for some other kids.

Reading some of the posts here, it is clear that some of the posters would never make admittance to Oregon, or if they did, they wouldn't last for long. Everyone is different, but to say it is a "clown college" is just plain wrong, and reflects only on the poster who probably attended such a college -- unless he/she couldn't get admitted.

Cal St Methville should be kicked out of the PAC12 for academic stupidity ;-)

skolar atlete wrote:

Cheserek can be a pre-business man when he graduates. What is general social sciences? Pre-psychology?

Google is your best friend.

Sounds like it could lead to a degree in Business, Economics or teaching, all areas that have lots of employment potential. Not a bad major overall. .