Because it’s not a false assumption, Kevin. There are well-over 2,000 accredited 4 year schools offering college degrees that by the standards determined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching do not even qualify for consideration. According to this system, ranking 71st overall places BYU in the top 2% of American schools. That's not bad!
But BYU does not rank 71st out of 2,600. That is how you get your 2%, which is faulty. It ranked 71st when compared to only 262 schools. Now you might assume the other 2400 schools would all fall behind BYU, but this is nots upported by anything you've presented. There is a reason why the study categorized schools according to class. There were only 262 schools in BYU's class, and among that group BYU ranked in the top 30%.
If you want to make a broad sweep of any schools outside BYU's class, then why stop with four year colleges? Just go ahead and include the 20,000 junior-community colleges, assume BYU would be ahead of them if they were all plugged into the same formula, and then declare BYU in the top 1/10 percentile of all colleges. But just because they did not qualify doesn't mean we automatically assume BYU is ahead of them. Why would we want to compare BYU to a Liberal Arts school, or a school with less than 3,000 students? Just so we can say BYU is better? You take that for granted. BYU is simply in a different class of school and it should be compared to others in that same class.
This reminds me of debating NCAA football statistics with a fan who insisted that DIvision I teams, Texas and Alabama didn't have the two best defenses in the country because there were three Division II teams that allowed fewer yds per game. So does this mean North Texas and Florida Atlantic had a better Defense than the Division I National Champs? Of course not. There is a reason the NCAA puts certain teams in different divisions and there is a reason why BYU is not compared to 2,400 other schools.
Clearly it’s not. And yet for some reason, BYU grads continue to have no problem whatsoever getting into the most prestigious and liberal institutions in the country. Go figure
Who said that they did?
As a private, religious institution, BYU will never hold much credibility in the diversity and tolerance depts., nor can I imagine that the institution will ever seek it.
But you have to admit these are two HUGE selling points for Universities all over.
No, but clearly I need to explain it to you. Look up the word, Kevin. An apologist refers to someone who offers a defense by argument. As an online critic of the LDS church, whether you know it or not, you qualify in every sense of the word.
An apologist by definition is someone who "defends a a belief or idea" and its roots are deep in religious apologetics. What "idea" am I defending here? That BYU is an above average school, but not outstanding? By your loose definition, everyone who ever took in a breath is an apologist for something. An apologist is one who staunchly defends something because he or she has a personal stake in the matter. I don't have a personal stake in this matter, but you clearly do. A critic and apologist are not synonymous. Apologists make arguments in defense of silly religious claims, and I critically dissect them to determine what's true. That's not apologetics.
Calling everyone on the other side an apologist is a trick used by you guys to pretend the level of subjectivity is equal on both sides. As if we need the Church to be false as much as you need it to be true. This is absurd. Hell, I wish the Church were true and many other critics do as well. You seem to forget that many of us drank the same kool aide, and remember what it was like living in fantasy land where we were special in the eyes of God because we belonged to his Church, were promised blessings in the hereafter, eternal life, etc etc. Why would anyone not want that to be true?
In the same way, Mr. Apologist, that your senseless rhetoric critiquing BYU reveals more about you than it does the actual institution itself. Two can play it that game.
But I'm not critiquing BYU. I'm simply not going to pretend BYU is something it isn't, and I'm not going to pretend I know nothing about why so many LDS attend BYU. You see everything as an attack on BYU because your apologetic view places it up on a pedestal. Very much like how Evangelicals think Mormons attack the Bible when they point out errors. You're not attacking it, you just don't put it on the pedestal of inerrancy as they do.