According to U.S. News‚ “the nation’s most prominent college ranking agency‚” NCSU has the 30th best graduate engineering department in the country.
Along with an outstanding engineering department, our university excels in veterinary medicine, architecture, agriculture and a whole host of physical and mathematical sciences.
I don’t mean to downplay the humanities or any of the other spectacular colleges here, but based on rankings alone, the University’s strengths lie in fields of accuracy.
In designing a bridge, one percent error could mean the difference between safety and the Tacoma Narrows. In Webassign, one decimal place off can be the difference between right and wrong.
For technically inclined students at the University, precision is a reality.
UNC-Chapel Hill, on the other hand, is famous for its liberal arts. While UNC’s intellectuals sit and meditate about Proust, Hemingway, Van Gogh and Liberace, State’s scientists solve the world’s problems.
Have you ever wondered why this paradox exists, N.C. State, accurate and scientific, UNC, creative and lacking in purpose?
A recent survey conducted by the University of British Columbia has found a surprisingly strong correlation between color and cognitive performance.
In the study of 600 people, participants were given tests in blue or red lettering. The participants who took red tests scored much better in recall and attention to detail. The other participants, who took blue tests, did better on sections involving imagination.
Perhaps this color rationale applies to UNC and N.C. State. Carolina blue causes UNC’s students to respond to creativity and imagination, while N.C. State students with their bold red attire are more accurate and precise.
Still, it is difficult to definitively say than one color is superior to another. Creativity and imagination are not completely useless. Philosophy, for example, is doubtlessly a fundamental part of the future. In 20 years, America will need philosophy teachers to teach philosophy to the next philosophy teachers.
The war of the colors carries onto the sports pitch as well. In another study at Durham University in northeast England, researchers found that in competitions between evenly matched opponents at the 2004 Olympic Games, athletes wearing red defeated those wearing blue 60 percent of the time.
Before I get stoned as a hypocrite, I do realize that the University’s all time records in Men’s Basketball and Football do not support a 60 percent spread. Think of it this way: the statistics should give our sports some hope for the future. Maybe, just maybe, the Wolfpack will win the next 40 or so against UNC and bring that number into fruition. At least an optimist can hope.
One final study, led by the University of Rochester, published a result that most State men already are fully aware of. Men shown photographs of women wearing red consistently find those women more attractive than those wearing other colors.
We already knew that N.C. State ladies are the best in the world. Now we know the color doesn’t hurt either.
