Texas Jeff
Legacy Members-
Posts
1201 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Downloads
Recruiting - 2020
2019-2020 Football Season
Football
Entertainment
Sports
News and Business
Cloak Room
Transfer Portal
Recruiting
Events
Everything posted by Texas Jeff
-
Games left involving two teams with 0 or 1 conference loss each: LSU at Texas A&M (10/26) Texas at Vanderbilt (10/26) Tennessee at Georgia (11/16) Texas at Texas A&M (11/30) Tennessee at Vanderbilt (11/30) Missouri has one loss and no games left against zero or one loss teams. Alabama is their biggest test. Alabama can play a spoiler role at home vs Missouri (10/26) and on the road at LSU (11/9) Arkansas can also be a spoiler with games at home vs Texas (11/16) and on the road at Missouri (11/30) Florida still has games at home vs Georgia (11/1), at Texas (11/9) and at home vs LSU (11/16) Ole Miss can spoil Georgia's season at home (11/9)
-
Hey folks at the game -- a reminder that it is OK to make noise and have fun on your own initiative. You don't have to wait until the giant TV tells you what to do. I was at an OU game in the 1990s where the Texas had a slim lead. The defense was saving the day. People in the stands started the "Defense" chant every time they went out during the second half. It was awesome and a lot of fun. At my second game ever, two guys in front of me decided to start the "Texas .... Fight" chant. They did it and spent the rest of the game celebrating their accomplishment. That could be you. If you want to outsource it, offer some kids $100 if they get the defense chant going. Make sure to tell them that this will not pay off unless they get it done while we are actually on defense. I'm not talking about Venmo or some other electronic crap, offer them crisp official US currency. Those kids will have a great story to tell on Monday morning ... how they went to the Georgia game, got 100k people to chant "Defense" and walked away with $100.
-
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Texas Jeff replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
I heard about Trump dancing for an hour at a town hall in Penn, so I had to check it out on C-SPAN: https://www.c-span.org/video/?539179-1/president-trump-hosts-town-hall-oaks-pennsylvania Sorry if it's already been covered here. The great thing about C-SPAN is it's just the unblinking eye of a camera. They just keep rolling. Some unfortunate person fainted at about the 47 minute mark because it was hot in the venue without A/C, and the doors were all closed. Old people standing around for hours, what could go wrong? Trump just stood there for almost an hour dancing to various songs. Kristi Noem looked like a hostage who couldn't find a gracious way to end it. At one point she starts to rearrange the chairs, perhaps hoping that would be a sign that this thing is over. Trump requested Ave Maria by Pavarotti. He then stopped taking questions and just starts rambling. An Ave Maria encore was followed by to "It's a man's world". James Brown said: This is a man's world But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing, not one little thing, without a woman or a girl He's lost in the wilderness He's lost in bitterness, he's lost lost They cut out that part of the song... More Trump rambling was followed by "YMCA". Noem tried to find an exit as Trump worked the crowd. She failed and remained onstage for 20 more minutes. The town hall music festival continued with "Hallelujah" while the screen behinds him changed from "TRUMP TOWNHALL" to "TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING". The crowd swayed and turned on their camera flashlights. I will spare you the rest but it did include Elvis singing "I wish I was in Dixie", followed by Guns and Roses singing "Nothin' lasts forever, and we both know hearts can change" and wrapped up with music from Cats. It's like the movie Idiocracy came to life... -
It depends. Different schools emphasize different parts of the application. Some schools are test optional, meaning you can submit a test if you think it helps your case, but you don't have to. Some schools require it. Your kid is going to have to write one big essay, and what will seem like a small library of smaller essays on different subjects. It is like trying to get a drivers license in 8-10 states at the same time. For UT, a large part of the freshman spots (65-70%) are taken by top 6% students. About 10% are international/out of state. That leaves a small amount of the spots that everyone else is trying to get. So if you are not in the top 6% for UT, you have to be very attractive in some other way to get one of those 15% spots. A high SAT score plus a kid who is really really interested in a non-popular major might get in ... or maybe not. For other UT system schools, they don't have as many top 10% kids enrolling, so there a high SAT score or even strong "demonstrated interest" in a major might be enough. Check out these stats for UT system schools: Top Ten pct - https://data.utsystem.edu/data-index/applied-admitted-enrolled UTSA - 17% from the top 10% in 2023 UTD - 23% from the top 10% in 2023 UT Austin - 64% from the top 10% in 2023 SAT scores - https://data.utsystem.edu/data-index/admissions-test-scores UTSA - 1116 SAT in 2022 UTD - 1291 SAT in 2022 - BTW I think this is slightly better than Texas A&M's average, UTD has smart kids but it's not the classic college experience. UT Austin - 1403 SAT avg in 2022 If you want to outsource this, you can get a college counselor for your kid that knows what schools want what and will help with applications and school decisions, but it's not cheap. And you are early for that sort of thing.
-
So, freshman is kinda young, you have a long way to go -- but perhaps things y'all can think about: * Where does he want to go to school? Far away or close by? * Does he like a big school, medium school, or small school? Walk around on a few campuses to see what fits. * What does he enjoy doing or see as a possible career? Working at a job that you enjoy is a lot more rewarding than doing something you don't, especially for 30-40 years. What will that pay and what is the cost of getting the degree that will lead to that career? * What resources does he have to afford four years of college life? Can he get through an undergrad without going into debt, including possibly working during high school or college to provide funds if needed. What are the parents able to provide? Can he avoid debt? These answers might give you a framework to start looking around. And the answers will probably change over the next few years. If he finds a campus that he likes, check out some YouTube videos of students actually at that school to see if it still seems like a fit. Once you have a rough idea of his GPA or SAT score, there are websites and books that will tell you the average SAT scores for various colleges and you'll be able to think about target and reach schools and start to zero in on his options. But that's still in the future. Texas schools are cheap if you are in-state. My kids had a few friends that went to top out of state schools, some went to UT/TAMU, others to UT system schools or SEC/Big-12 schools with some merit, and still others that are thriving at Texas State. Others are doing the basics at ACC for free with a plan to transfer to a "name" school for the final two years. A big spectrum.
-
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Texas Jeff replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
On Election Day, about an hour after the polls close and before results are in, Trump will be on TV declaring victory and thanking everyone to chants of "four more years". He will put everyone on the defensive to say "well actually the results are coming in and it looks like Harris may have won PA/MI/WI/whatever". Trump will say "the fake news is going to tell you that Kamala won but that's a lie." It will be close all night and it will come down to PA and it might not be decided by morning. It's going to be a long wait. I think Harris wins the blue wall states to clinch and maybe picks up Nevada to get to 276. Trump picks up Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. The next day, the shitshow begins. Lawsuits, press conferences at landscaping companies, people with signs. It's not going to be great. The shitshow continues into December with rallies at state capitol buildings and "conventions" of alternative electors and a bunch of crazy stuff from the red team. DC gets locked down over the holidays prepping for what is supposed to be a ceremonial count. Harris as VP counts electoral votes and puts 276 in her column FTW. Trump announces he is a candidate for the 2028 election, primarily to keep raising money and stay out of prison. -
Still way too early, but Texas, LSU and Texas A&M still control their own destiny. Everyone else needs help. Oklahoma, Florida and Ole Miss each picked up a 2nd SEC loss and are probably out of contention, without a lot of losses and some fortunate tiebreakers. This week, LSU (at Arkansas) and Texas (vs Georgia) play 1-loss teams and try to remain perfect in league play. Surely A&M can take down Miss St on the road?
-
Vice President tells NASA to get to the Moon in 5 years.
Texas Jeff replied to atomheartbevo's topic in Daily Texan
That launch window opens at 7 am central time for anyone up early, 8am on the east coast. What a gutsy move. The launch may take place at 7am and the booster stage may return from space at supersonic speed and destroy the launch pad at 7:15 ... or maybe not. Tune in and find out. -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Texas Jeff replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
I thought Harris and Walz did well and looked great on "60 Minutes" and holy cow Maricopa Co, AZ is crazy town USA. Harris repeated a few lines from the debate, answered some questions and dodged others, but otherwise looked presidential. "60 Minutes" said that Trump's camp wanted them to agree to not fact check his interview before Trump pulled out, and they replied that they fact check ALL their interviews. What did they expect, it's friggin' "60 Minutes" -- this is what they do. -
Dang it, sorry I was talking about the Austin ISD board trustee elections, sorry. There are only two seats up for grabs, district 2 in East Austin and an at-large seat at position 8. https://communityimpact.com/austin/south-central-austin/education/2024/09/12/get-to-know-the-austin-isd-school-board-candidates/
-
Man, maybe ... honestly I haven't looked at it yet. The current AISD board is full of teachers and past principals. What they need is a few accountants. The current board turned down free money two years ago, like $50 million in non-taxpayer dollars over a period of years. They could use it now. They passed a deficit budget that set them on a path to spend down their reserves to critical levels, hoping the lege would bail them out and the lege did not. Now they are going to have to pass a big tax increase and make major cuts over the next two years to get the budget back to level. The board is struggling to cut anything because these are people that ran to improve stuff and not cut stuff. It's not in their nature to cut. They had an efficiency audit, mandated by the VATRE election, that showed that even with Robin Hood taken out, they spend $1500 more per student than peer districts yet somehow pay their teachers and administration less than peer districts.
-
Would have loved to have been at the airport but in the 80's Longhorn Band travelled by bus if the full band was going. We did go through Dallas that night but we were at some bus depot near downtown in the middle of the night for a few hours waiting for new drivers. However I will tell you a story about LHB on a plane... We got invited to the 1989 Inaugural Parade in DC and we were first in line, because GHWB was from Texas and we were from Texas. The Aggie Band was about three groups behind us. We were looking at a long bus trip until some unknown Texas alum rented a DC-10 for us. We had to get approval from the mayor to fly out of the old airport in the middle of the night. We flew to Dulles, landed, went to a parade practice and then headed for our first tourist stop. Arlington National Cemetery. We parked right beside the Aggie Band. We got off and started talking. One Aggie said "That was a rough trip. Two days on the bus. I am so happy to be off the *$^$ bus. How 'bout y'all?" One of our guys responded with "Man, that sounds rough .... We flew in this morning."
-
Alright, after a few weeks in our new league, I know that: "In the SEC, teams just lose more" It's way too early to talk about this, but here's where things stand in the SEC after a chaos weekend: Texas, Texas A&M, and LSU are all still undefeated in conference. They each control their destiny. Win and you're in. Texas A&M has probably the easiest path. They play Texas and LSU at home. They have no remaining games agains the 1-loss bunch. They have games against Miss St, S Carolina and Auburn who are collectively 1-7 in the SEC. Should the Aggies beat LSU, there is a real chance that Texas and Texas A&M would play twice back to back. LSU has to travel to Texas A&M and all of the rest of their games are agains the 1-loss bunch. They have to face Alabama, Arkansas, and the Vanderbilt juggernaut. If you don't know the Texas schedule then something is wrong with you. Georgia is the featured attraction, but old foes loom large in OU, Arkansas, and the Aggies. And of course, they must face the Vanderbilt juggernaut on the road. Other than the Kentucky and Aggie games, Texas only faces teams in the current 1-loss bunch. The road ahead features twists and turns and maybe some potholes, but we are all out of creampuffs.
-
I was there in person, in Longhorn Band, in the other end zone. It was real and it was spectacular. It was a perfect day for football. Sunny but cool with a little breeze. We put "God Bless the USA" in our halftime show so we wouldn't get booed. Everyone stood up when we started playing it. We didn't get booed. On the last play, the middle opened up. I could see a straight empty path from the QB all the way to ... really no one ... just the back of the end zone. On the throw, Jones came out of nowhere and got crushed at the same time the ball got there. We had no idea what had happened until he stood up and started pumping his fist and the stadium just went silent. We jumped around for a while and eventually played Texas Fight and the Eyes of Texas. The director told us that going to the buses right now was a bad idea so we should just stay and play. So we played full blast for about fifteen minutes to an empty stadium. We went outside to the buses. While we were loading, this old guy with a plastic hog hat came over. He said "That is IT! I QUIT! I am never ever coming back to this place. Who wants my hat?" My friend said "I'll take it!" and wore it on the bus all the way back to Austin.
- 414 replies
-
- 16
-
Buttigieg/Secretary of Transportation Thread
Texas Jeff replied to Hank Kingsley's topic in Cloak Room
The questioner should have pivoted to the Chewbacca defense... -
Financial moves to make before 12/31
Texas Jeff replied to StassneyHorn's topic in Business and Markets
OK, I looked at my return from last year. This is on Form 8889, "Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)". One line is for the amount you put in, one line is for the amount your employer put in. There is some math there to figure out your max contribution. If you don't have a high deductible health plan for the entire year then the amount you can put in is less. "See the instructions", says the IRS, which is one of their favorite things to say. -
Financial moves to make before 12/31
Texas Jeff replied to StassneyHorn's topic in Business and Markets
You should be able to do this up until the filing date in April. I am not a tax professional but I have topped off my HSA in some years by making a deposit into the HSA via check or transfer. There is a form you fill out that has how much your employer put in and how much you put in to reconcile who put in what. If you use something like TurboTax this is done as part of filling out your tax forms. -
FINAL 2024 CFB polls/rankings - Texas #3/ #4 /#3 (CFP/AP/Coaches)
Texas Jeff replied to TKthunder2's topic in Football
Future SEC games featuring current SEC teams with no conf losses: Oct 5: Missou at Texas A&M Oct 19: Alabama at Tenn Oct 26: Missou at Alabama Oct 26: LSU at Texas A&M Nov 9: Alabama at LSU Nov 30: Texas at Texas A&M If Texas and Alabama win out, they're the only two with no conf losses. Alabama and Texas A&M control their own destiny. It's possible for Texas, LSU, Tenn, and Missou to have no conf losses going into the SEC championship. -
If the kid really wants to be a high school STEM teacher and really wants to go to Texas, be sure to learn about Texas's UTeach program. The UTeach program works with UT students who are on a path to a degree and gets them a teaching certification to go along with their degree. Their mission is to create more teachers. They offer scholarships for kids who agree to teach for some time after they get their degree. They also offer scholarships for folks already out of school who want to go back and get their certification. They have a new program that provides a pathway via Austin Community College called UTeach Access. Students spend a year at ACC on the basics and are then guaranteed a transfer to Texas to complete their degree and get a teaching certification. It doesn't hurt to explain why you want to come to a particular school on your application and mention specific programs like UTeach, if your kid decides to try math/stats and teaching.
-
Well, today I learned that Texas A&M has a law school and that it is in Fort Worth. Were they out of land in College Station?
-
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Texas Jeff replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
Debate dates in 2016: * Sept 26th * October 9th * October 19th Debate dates in 2020: * Sept 29 * October 22 In North Carolina where Trump was speaking, ballots are being mailed out to military and overseas folks, but in-person early voting starts Oct 17, which is one OU and almost a Georgia from now. -
2024 Texas GameDay Stadium Experience Thread
Texas Jeff replied to TrashMaster G's topic in Football
Just a thought everyone ... pick up your trash on the way out. For bonus points, pick up just one more item than you brought in. There are trash and recycling cans just outside of the portal exits. 100,000 hands picking up just a little bit could make the place look a lot nicer after a game.- 464 replies
-
- 12
-
High grades, some interest and probably a bit of luck. Some engineering degrees are more competitive than others. There is an objective component to applying (SAT scores, class rank) and subjective components (activities, essays, the rest of it). It all gets rolled into an application and read in maybe 15 minutes by someone charged with wading through thousands of similar applications. Demonstrated interest may be important, basically is the kid doing something in school or during summers to show interest in the subject. I say "may" because no one knows exactly how kids are picked. There are different kinds of engineering schools. UT is the first kind, they give the kids direct entry into a particular engineering program. Other schools admit the kid to "engineering" where they take the basics, and then they have to apply to a specific type of engineering at roughly the end of their freshman year. So they might want EE but they might be offered civil engineering at the end of their freshman year. I think I remember at least one school that had the freshman program, but gave the kids free choice to choose their path after that ... maybe Florida? I can't remember... So, depending on what your kid wants, you might be trying to get into a specific major at a particular college, or just generically into engineering with a round two of applications during their freshman year at that school, to get into a particular engineering major.
-
UT system data, although you can drill down to individual institutions. Texas is "UTAUS" in the drop downs. Click on the "By Institution" tab. 93% in state UT system wide, 88% in state for UT Austin: https://dashboard.utsystem.edu/data-index/applied-admitted-enrolled Some similar charts and graphs for the Aggies (66k out of 77k from Texas): https://abpa.tamu.edu/accountability-metrics/student-metrics/student-enrollment-distribution-map
-
I think that you might find that schools with fewer socioeconomically disadvantaged kids do better on tests. Test scores, IMHO, are less about the school and more about the groupings of kids at a school, the resources they have, and the students' family's focus on doing well on what is being measured. Some Austin ISD SAT data from 2021-22, ranked by percent of students that are economically disadvantaged: Bowie: 1180 avg SAT (13.0% eco dis) LASA: 1425 (13.6%) McCallum: 1159 (22.9%) Anderson: 1186 (24.4%) Austin High: 1124 (24.5%) Ann Richards: 1060 (42.6%) Crockett: 968 (62.1%) Akins: 962 (61.0%) LBJ: 854 (79.3) Travis: 945 (83.0%) Navarro: 906 (87.5%) Northeast: 885 (92.5%) The numbers bounce around a bit year to year and that year Anderson was a bit higher than where you would expect them based on ecodis percent. But LASA is certainly in the lead as you would expect, the other west side schools are all similar, and then you have a big drop-off to the rest of the schools. Most of the LASA kids come from Bowie/McCallum/Anderson/Austin High, so if those kids were at their home school the SAT scores of those schools would be higher. It's actually a bit worse than the data shows because as you go lower on that list you have a lower percentage of kids taking the SAT at all.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!