We knew it all along: San Jose State is a true gem

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Recognized as an academic nexus in the engineering-and-tech-centric Silicon Valley, San Jose State has been cranking out STEM graduates like crazy, providing human fodder for the Apples and Googles and LinkedIns headquartered just up Highway 101.

According to a new survey from CollegeVine, a Cambridge, Mass.-based consultant group that helps college-bound high-school students, San Jose State is ranked the most underrated school in America. And while that may sound like a back-handed compliment, students like Hibo Osman say the ranking is right-on: There is a ”there there” at SJSU that the world is just starting to recognize.

“A lot of seniors here graduating go to jobs like Apple or Google since it’s in Silicon Valley,” he told ABC-7, who also spoke with Patrick Day, SJSU’s vice president of student affairs.

“Tremendous faculty. Great students. It’s very reasonably priced and so the return on investment at San Jose State University makes a lot of sense” Day told ABC-7. “So for us, not a shock at all.”

CollegeVine, who says it has worked with more than 6,000 students so far, found “about 10 schools that are consistently underrated, but which students and parents shouldn’t discount.” The survey’s authors say that while “the traditional college rankings do a decent job of ranking the best universities … because of how these formulas are constructed, there are some serious factors that get left out. When we look to advise families on colleges that are underrated, our primary focus is on outcomes — more specifically financial outcomes like starting salary and ROI (return on investment), as well as qualitative outcomes like job placements.”

Here are the criteria they used to identify the top underrated schools:

Cost of attendance and generosity of financial aid and scholarships

One and five-year ROI after graduation

Financial performance of specific majors

Qualitative data on career outcomes such as job placements and grad school progression

And after crunching the data, CollegeVine drew a big circle around the sprawling college campus in downtown San Jose, a school that also can claim some fame for becoming, back in 1857, the first institution of public higher education in California and one of the founding schools in what became the California State University system.

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SJSU should thump UC Davis in opener Thursday night and here’s why “San Jose State is chronically underrated by most families and guidance counselors,” the authors said. “Because of its location in the heart of Silicon Valley, students pursuing STEM have really good outcomes (thanks to the job market in the Bay Area). US News ranks San Jose State outside of its top 300 colleges, but for most STEM majors (computer science, statistics/data science, electrical engineering, etc.) San Jose State is comfortably in the Top 40 when it comes to return on investment based on CollegeVine’s analysis.”

Joining the Top 10 list were other schools with strong STEM programs, like the University of Houston, and colleges located in or relatively close to dynamic job markets, such as SUNY Binghamton just 181 miles from that employment powerhouse also known as the Big Apple.

Fans of SJSU who never in their lives underrated or even undervalued the university took to Twitter to say “we told you so,” starting with Mary A. Papazian, SJSU’s president:

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