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Never heard of Dickson, and you misspelled Emory, but I think you overlooked New College in Florida, and I think Georgetown counts as a Southern school. I think you might have counted St. Louis, too -- Jesuit school.

There are plenty of weak programs all over the country, and some of the Southern cow colleges are as weak as they come. But you can still get a decent baccalaureate education if you apply yourself, challenge yourself, and let your board know you want to work, and don't take those weak courses you mentioned. Sometimes you can't get out of them: my freshman math was the third time I'd seen that material in four years, and then I reprised some more of it the next year in analytical geometry and introductory calculus. Probably just as well: my instructor in calculus was a master's man from MIT who prided himself more in delivering his lectures in fully-parsed Standard English than on getting the content across to the students. Understanding was our problem. I barely passed. My classmate who had to take it over, took another instructor during a summer session and achieved a good grade easily.

What was the college you left, whose program was so unimposing?

What they don't explain to high-school students is that matriculating in one university and getting by with a gentleman's "C" will open more doors than taking the same degree from a college less well thought of. Haverford versus Florida A&M, Oberlin versus Sul Ross State or New Mexico Highlands. It's a class descriptor, like Paul Fussell pointed out in Class, and not just an education.

Shell Oil doesn't even recruit geophysicists and geologists at a number of "oil-patch schools" that are well-known for the preparation of their students for industry. It's that snob factor; and when products of other schools encounter ex-Shell managers at other companies later on, the prejudices are applied nearly as strongly as they would have been at Shell. Companies play favorites unremittingly and for keeps, and managers who are veterans of those companies carry those prejudices elsewhere without inspection, because they serve the useful purpose of reducing the inventory of subordinates the manager has to take seriously.

I meant Davidson in NC -- not Dickson (I was writing from memory). New College in Florida is an excellent school, and as I said, I may have missed a few. I counted Washington University and St. Louis University as mid-western and not southern, but if it makes you feel better, then add two to the south. Georgetown is definately not a southern school. Sorry about the Emory misspell. I earned gentlemen C's my first semester at a northern college after transferring from a southern school with close to a 4.0. However, once I realized what was expected of me, my grades improved dramatically, and I ended up magna cum laude with a 3.60.

I agree with your comments on the snootiness factor in that calculus is calculus whether taught at Harvard or Woodchuck State. I also know a corporate recruiter who prefers to hire engineers from Union, Bucknell, and Lehigh, rather than MIT and Cal Tech, because he wants engineers who can walk and chew gum at the same time.