As a graduate of UAF with an advanced degree, I can tell you you are very incorrect about the quality of education there. Most of my professors would tell us to compare our testing against any school in the U.S. by simply going to those schools' departments online and looking at their tests. At any time we were at the same level as any Ivy League school. And most of the time I had no trouble with California Institute of Technology's tests within my field. UAF is not a selective school; they use the first year to weed out the wannabe's with a 70% failure rate. It is an engineering school first and foremost and every hard-science program is quite challenging.