Two major selling points for modern universities are the student-to-faculty ratio and the school's reputation. Both items are called "selling points" for a reason -- they are used to get the school higher rankings in magazines and college guides such as U.S. News and World Reports, and might not tell the whole truth about the schools in question. Student-to-faculty ratios are supposed to give school applicants an idea of how many students typically take each class, with the smallest number of students possible being ideal. School reputation is classified by the average SAT scores of admitted students; how much research money a school receives per year; and how accomplished individual faculty members are in their fields. However, the quantity of faculty, as well as the quality of faculty, can be misrepresented to sell the school.

Many schools are considered to be popular or prestigious because they have a low student-to-faculty ratio. What this means is that students are allegedly given highly individualized attention, because there are just a few students per teacher. However, these ratios are often not accurate reflections of class sizes. Many colleges teach their freshman- and sophomore-level classes in big, lecture-hall format, rather than in small, personalized classroom settings. The student-to-faculty ratio might be accurate when used to describe upper-level classes taken by college juniors and seniors to complete their specific majors, but the "average" is not reflective of all classes offered by the college.

By contrast, enrollment per class at the Refrigeration School, Inc. is limited to 38 students. This is a much more personalized classroom setting than a student will typically find taking freshman Shakespeare or chemistry classes. More importantly, the smaller class sizes really make a difference when students train for the hands-on components of their HVAC and refrigeration courses. The more personalized attention faculty members can give students when they're trying to master difficult concepts they will need to apply on the job, the more likely individual students are to succeed.

The cost advantages of a technical training school over a four-year university might be more obvious, but the personalized teaching advantages are often not as apparent. Students see the difference, however -- especially when they enter the workforce strong and confident in the skills they will need to get an HVAC or refrigeration job done.

At The Refrigeration School, Inc., faculty are selected on the basis of how much real-life, hands-on experience they possess. Each faculty member has at least five years of experience working in the refrigeration, heating, and cooling fields, and many faculty members have even more experience than this. In addition, all of the RSI instructors complete mandatory instructional training upon being hired on as teachers. Being able to teach students the essentials of refrigeration and HVAC maintenance and repair, both in lecture and through direct application, is necessary to be a good teacher.

Many other colleges, by contrast, have some professors who are not especially skilled teachers. A university's prestige is not always measured by the teaching skill of its professors -- it is often determined by the amount of research money the school is granted each year, as well as how famous or reputed its professors are. In fact, in order to become tenure-track professors, faculty members need to publish significant bodies of work in their specific academic specialty areas. There is little time, when working on a 100-plus page research project, to perfect teaching skills -- and understandably so. What this means for students is that many "accomplished" faculty members, though they might be superb academicians, are not especially strong teachers.

Teaching prestige is sometimes -- depending upon the ratings scal -- measured by the quality of faculty in a university's masters or PhD program. This is of little concern to the majority of the students at the university, who are there to pursue bachelor's degrees. In fact, many of these "highly ranked" faculty members might only teach one undergraduate class each semester -- or, none at all.

Finally, those all-important SAT scores: They don't mean as much as many parents (and students) think. Many students who have access to expensive tutoring classes can raise their SAT scores significantly. They are not always indicative of a student's future potential, or later-life career success -- but career readiness definitely is.