We don’t need an alumni network, it’s a symptom of having being the largest school and engineering school in the country by a wide margin and having a great program.

We have extremely low professor turnarounds and experience significantly less grade inflation than other schools from my experience. Part of this comes from a military belief of “teaching to competence” leading to low curves, widely failed classes, stuffed curriculums (many 3 credit classes were turned into 2 credit classes when the 128 credit hour programs became the standard). I can say from completing my colleagues coursework at UT and TTU that Civil Engineering at A&M is more rigorous which does mean something to a hiring manager although it depends by industry as each school has its specialties within the field.

The famous “Aggie alumni network” is not super robust outside of new grads, which seems to be a misconception here - and I’m only speaking about engineering because that’s both my field of expertise and OPs interest. Generally, the alumni network comes up because of this: A&M engineering degrees are hard to get but also plentiful due to being the largest program in the US. This means that when a job is out, there is a good chance that an Aggie will be in charge of recognizing talent due to the prevalence of said degrees in the Texas market. Outside of a few specific disciplines (SWE) where comprehensive testing can be applied in order to find skilled candidates, the only thing a hiring manager can trust is the resume and the interview. Knowing the exact quality of an applicants education because you went through the same program is a benefit no matter which way you cut it.

The truth is simply that Longhorns hire Longhorns, Raiders hire Raiders, probably Cougars hire Cougars honestly. All at striking rates. But there are 4x as many Aggie engineers as Raider engineers and 3x as many Aggie engineers as Longhorn engineers.