Alabama scholarship question

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
21

OP there are several reasons for the 3.5 GPA (which you consider B+/low) - the high test score indicates a student has the potential for college. ACT/SAT equivalent above a 30 is at 98 percentile (jump from 95 percentile at ACT 29 to 97 percentile at ACT 30). For in-state students, the 3.5 GPA and ACT 30 is full tuition for 4 years and engineering/CS students receive an extra $2500/year. Engineering/CS brings their OOS student applicants with ACT 30/3.5 to the same level of scholarship as in-state with these stats. The deal is there with applications meeting the deadlines.

There are many students that have easily managed a 3.5 GPA in HS that choose a major where they really have to work for the same GPA in college. Some students do not have the study skills, or they get sucked into a lot of distractions, can’t handle the freedoms, start skipping classes and other bad behaviors that hurt their ability to be successful.

There is a lot of variability on grading across high schools - some grade leniently and some not.

UM is a fine school Univ of WI is a fine school. You seem to think selectivity or higher cost to attend make it more valuable for you to attend.

There may be a bit of north/south thinking going on here, but having grown up in WI and being involved with very good universities in several states, UA is doing many things ‘right’. It isn’t just football or sororities/fraternities that is attracting the high level of OOS students (current freshman class 65% OOS, last year freshman class 62% OOS). UA offers some excellent honors programs - the general HC program and some specific programs. There is a sizable core of high stat kids on UA campus.

The courses that are challenging at UM, U of WI, are going to be challenging at UA.

Dr. Witt will be retiring, but here is an explanation of how UA has been able to steer the University to where it is now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrV8g7kxJps

There are numerous high stat OOS students that have decided to apply and visit UA - some parents have even said they have to check out this campus to see if it a good college option.

There are a lot of happy UA scholarship students (and parents).

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My family and I will be in the Atlanta area Oct 22 (late arrival)-Oct 26 for a family reunion/college visits. I’ve registered for a tour/info-session Friday the 23rd at Georgia Tech (a school 2nd on my list if I’m denied from Michigan). Friday evening and all day Saturday I’ll be tied up with family events. So we might drive out to Tuscaloosa on Sunday the 25th for a Monday morning tour; my cousin’s wife is a UA grad so she might tag along if she can get off of work. My parents got me out of school for college visits for the 26th but our flight home is around 9pm so we would probably have to leave Tuscaloosa around 1:30 to avoid Atlanta rush hour traffic and make it to the airport.

@riverbirch/cyclonesgrad:

Well initially I thought cost was an issue, but my parents made it clear that they will pay whatever it costs. My older sister and brother have already graduated college so multiple tuition bills won’t be an issue. My parents basically said get into the best school you can given how competitive the world has gotten. My dad emphasizes that your first job typically defines what kind of engineer you will be. For example, in electrical engineering there are literally thousands of specialties (ex. VLSI design, communication systems, UHF and Microwave etc…). He said it is really important to get an engineering job that it involves real engineering work. Many engineers (if not most) graduate college and barely do any real engineering (technical sales, logistics, basic script writing, test engineer, support engineer etc…) which also leads to the sub 70k a year pay. My parents keep saying it is always the same schools getting their grads into these top paying positions so this is why I’m really leaning toward brand name engineering schools.

I’m not concerned about getting a job, I know regardless which school attend for engineering you will have a high probability of employment. I’m more worried about the quality of employment. I really don’t want to live in suburban Atlanta writing scripts for server deployment at some odd division of HP or be in Charlotte, NC doing basic IT work for Microsoft or sit at Google’s Data Center in SC. Someone posted a list of companies which hire Alabama graduates and most are for regional positions I noticed (not all, but most). I understand by attending a big name school does not guarantee anything but it should definitely help your odds. Also big name schools have a highly successful alumni network which I heard is extremely important for landing some prized jobs…. These are the main reasons I’m still on the fence about UA.

@ cyclonesgrad

my mom completed her BS and MS in ChemE at University of Illinois
my dad completed his BS in EE at University of Washington and MS at University of Illinois

(they first meet at University of Illinois: Dad had a little bit too much to drink at some grad student mixer, stumbled up to my mom and immediately complimented her on her breasts. The rest is history…)

@SOSConcern

I was told ACT scores are not really a good measure of ability hence more and more universities are no longer requiring ACT/SAT scores. I’m a good example of it, I have a 34 (2 points away from a perfect) and I’m struggling to get into the schools of my choice. Plus, you can inflate your perceived ability with the ACT since you can take it as many times as you like and only your highest composite score stands; some schools will even take a super score. A bunch of people in my high school went from the high 20s to 30+ ACT scores just with practice and multiple attempts. It is also not a very difficult exam; it barely covers Algebra/Trig (no Pre-Calc or Calc). I was told by many of my teachers to take the ACT/SAT with a grain of salt since it is now more of a formality for admissions rather than a major factor. What I’m noticing prominent schools put a large emphasis on unique abilities (not so much ACT scores, GPAs and NMS). Like if you started a successful business in high school, do you play the stock market, wrote your own smart phone app and had it published, Intel Science Prize etc…

Prestige is definitely going to be a factor in my decision. My mom who is an engineering consultant always stresses University prestige does matter in some fields and consulting is one of them. When you pitch a client your consulting services, your team’s credentials are often your selling points. People feel better shelling out large sums of money when they know Stanford educated engineers are working on their problems over Bob’s University engineers… This is one of the reasons elite consulting firms (engineering or not) usually recruit from a certain pool of universities. Of course these consulting firms compensate very well…

How long are the tours at UA (typically)? Some posts say 30 minutes and another poster stated they spent 4 hours there. Do they allow you to visit the UA career center during campus tours to ask some questions? Also someone said you can visit with professors during the visit? If that is true, how do you go about requesting to meet with a professor (a EE or CS one in particular)? I know these are probably questions for the UA staff but just in case anyone knows off the top of their head.

Thanks for everyone taking the time out of their day to answer my questions. It is very kind of you to do that for a complete stranger.

–sorry for the grammar/spelling-- extremely tired

AJ

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AJ, honestly you are really sucking in a lot about ‘prestige’ that just only goes so far. Some students after getting the UG do go for ‘prestige’ at the graduate level, esp like you say for consulting - graduate degree would be very useful.

It is all about the performer. The cream rises to the top.

Actually some years engineering jobs or CS jobs may be leaner than other years; someone that is best prepared for job market will always do better. Being a HS senior, you are a little bit of a snob about what you don’t want to do…I know my TN nephew who got a CS degree and had a very strong Co-op job, then a summer internship (the internship he knew he didn’t want to work there); he wanted to work in Nashville, but he actually got an excellent job offer through a personal connection. Was it exactly what he wanted to do - no. But I am sure there would be a line of CS grads wanting his job. I know a CS grad that graduated from VA Tech, and she was hired with a major company with a lot of new grads; first wasn’t in the dept or doing the kind of work she thought she wanted to do - but she now really likes it.

Sometimes as you say the entry job will define - for example H did a junior/senior project in test engineering. Although his GPA was lowish, he got an early job offer in test engineering for a large company. His salary offer was actually higher than someone with a higher GPA (a friend from the same school, who got company to match his offer). After working his way up in test engineering in another company, he changed companies to get into new product development (his current company didn’t want to move him into that area, they wanted to keep him in test engineering) - later he went back to prior company where they had a new appreciation of his abilities.

Check with UA Honor Program office to line up your day - which sounds like trying to pack in a full Monday morning and leave early afternoon; discuss what field(s) you want to study - so ask to see engineering areas/labs, maybe step in a class, meet CS and EE professors. When arriving Sunday, you can do some driving around campus if there before dark. Look at UA Honor’s Page and Web site first to find out information. You can see a visual of campus on the www.

The new UA President has all his degrees in Eng from TAMU and very strong academic background with four different major universities (on web site search Dr. Bell and read about him).

I know several students that have gone to GA Tech. One that is currently a junior in ChE will have to do a 5th year; however he did have a good summer internship near parents’ home and he likes GA Tech. Friend’s son completed UA’s ChE program and is now in 3rd year med school - he is a very strong student and loved UA.

If you believe that spending a lot of money to go to GA Tech as an OOS student, or any number of other private or public OOS schools, and your family feels that is cost-effective, then choose the most prestigious school you can get into.

My brother was in-state attending U of WI. It was his work, work ethic, brains that got him into eventual senior management and ownership of an engineering firm.

My dau is an eng student at UA. She is getting some fabulous opportunities at UA. She is working as hard there as she would at any other school, but she is also having fun. She will have no debt as UG. She is in the STEM MBA program. She has had intern work experience in her field, and she interviewed with a large firm before returning to school (interview for a summer internship next summer).

My nephew is at a law school that is not Harvard, Columbia, etc but a very reputable law school - he has a full tuition scholarship. He is #2 in his class (second year; had the top grade in a number of courses) and the prestigious firms are interviewing him for year 2 internship (they typically will automatically extend a job offer to those who have completed the internship successfully). For the better law opportunities, best to be in the top 10% of your class.Last summer, he attended a two week law class at Beijing University that was lined up through another law school (he found it listed within lawyer associations/information) - most students just went to an overseas course/study that was arranged by their own university. He lined up a better course and less out of pocket too. Out of the 26 law students on that trip, only one other student and he were w/o student debt. The rest of the summer he worked for a judge and also a small law firm - so he had really broad experience. He has GTA duties this year as part of his scholarship - he negotiated with the professor he most wanted to work with, and his 10 hours/week are going to be writing a ‘worthy paper’ - most likely will be published because he has had published papers that he has presented to a variety of academic conferences, his dissertation has been published in book form and now also released in paperback and is being used at the college level in the field he got a PhD (political philosophy). One of his top course grades was legal writing, although it is totally different than other academic writing. He was a tenure track professor in history before he chose to go to law school; his last year teaching, he had a TA. He has worked very hard, worked smart, and only had to incur a little debt before finishing his PhD, which he paid off pretty quickly. Since he has worked before going back to law school, he won’t be going into debt. He is also a pretty humble guy - how many schmuck lawyers who act like they know a lot but don’t?

In Alabama, Auburn has historically had the ‘engineering’ reputation (similar to GA Tech). MS State also has a pretty strong engineering reputation. The resources UA has put into building up STEM over the last 13+ years hasn’t gone un-noticed. The firm my daughter interviewed with has historically had AU grads in its AL locations - but they have been hiring UA grads. It is a national company, so she may have some great opportunities in her future.

TAMU grads are all over, UA is drawing students from a pretty wide area, and there are receptive firms from all over too. Of course students that go to school at UA often do hire into jobs in our region, but it doesn’t mean they have to stay there.

If you are admitted to U MI eng/CS program, evaluate what your opportunities there would be and cost differential.

A lot of food for thought!

24

The campus tour itself is short. It’s interesting, but not very informational to make a decision. What you’ll want to do is schedule a visit through the honors college. I don’t have the current contact info at the moment, but I’m certain someone will post it soon. They will set up an individualized visit for you with tours of the engineering building, meetings with professors, and will arrange appointments for any other interests you request - my son met with the co-op office, as well as sitting in on a class. Tell them when you have to leave campus and they will design your visit to fit your schedule.

25

The campus tour just introduces you to the campus. It’s not informative about academics.

Learning about academics is best left to the Honors College or Engineering or the dept major office. If applying for honors, let the HC arrange the day after you’ve told them which campus tour you’re signed up for and your intended major. Same for eng’g.

26

@AJ2020 Let me give you some perspective from my personal experience and my observations from what you wrote.

First, your parents went to UIUC, my home state, I am assuming in the 80’s. UIUC was a good school but not great by any means. In fact, I applied for accounting in that era and they offered me engineering so I did not go there. Of course, as fate would have it, I ended up graduating in engineering from ISU.

Second, what exactly is an “engineering consultant”? What “engineering consulting” firm does she work for? Is she really a Management Consultant? To me, an engineering consultant is a contract engineer and I will tell you, from experience as I have hired contract engineers, that where they went to school is no issue. Skills and what experience is the key.

Third your mom is very right that Management Consulting firms recruit MBAs from certain firms to give the impression they are sending in experts, i.e. Northwestern, University of Chicago, Stanford. My sister went to University of Chicago, graduated UIUC w/ MS Aero, and was hired by major consulting firm. She went on her first consulting job and they introduced her as their “financial expert from the University of Chicago”. We still laugh about that today. BTW, she works for HP now setting up shows around the world.

I received my MBA from Northern Illinois University and learned what I wanted so I could progress in my career. My first son was born as I started and I had a choice: go into debt for a “Prestige Degree” or go to an affordable school at night to learn what I needed. I chose the later and have no regrets.

Fourth, Yes, the consulting firms pay high dollars but you will earn it for sure. The expectation is to travel significantly and never be home. Not very conducive to a family life, great when you are young and single for sure. Depends on what you want, there are many divorces in the consulting business.

Finally Fifth, My sister and I make almost the same amount yearly even though she has the MBA from University of Chicago and I graduated from lowly Northern Illinois. It is not where you start, contrary to your Father’s opinion, but where you finish. My fist job out of college was in the oil refining business as an inspector and I learned valuable non-destructive testing techniques, then I did heat treating for a small company and learned production management, heat treating of materials, and how to run a business. This was before I went to get my MBA. I have done more beyond this and every experience built up my skills.

It is not what you learn in school but rather the effort you put in after you graduate that will determine your success.

I respectfully disagree with your parents. I could pay to send my kids to an expensive school but do not do so out of choice. My feeling is they need to have skin in the game (loans) if they choose to go to a school that is more expensive that what I am willing to pay for. Everybody needs to understand the value of a dollar.

My real question to your parents: Do they want you to go to a high profile school to fulfill their dreams? I think there is much more to your parents request than what is being said.

Sorry for the length. I just felt a dose of reality needed to be said.

27

OK, I’ll add a few cents to the conversation too -

I read a comment above that it seems that the best resources are at the highest ranked schools. There are a lot of factors to that.

I live very close to one of the schools that is always near the top of the rankings and know both students attending and co-workers who are graduates of Rose Hulman. In fact my son was accepted there with a substantial scholarship (although still with a significant amount to pay), but decided not to attend because 1. it was too close to home and 2. he wanted a larger school with more opportunities.

Although Rose is at the top of the rankings year after year, I definitely wouldn’t say that the rankings correlate with the resources available there. It is a teaching school with no PhD program and not a large research university with the resources to conduct research. One type of school may be better for some students and the other type better for others, but to assume since Rose is highly ranked that it has more/better resources than a large research university really isn’t the case.

There was also a comment above about the quality of instructors at higher ranked schools. As I’ve been enrolled in undergrad/grad programs for about 14 years of my life, I’ll say that at any large school the quality of instructors varies substantially. Some are brilliant people, but have no interest in or aptitude for teaching students. Some are great teachers, but don’t seem to have as much knowledge in their fields as others. Some are brilliant and very good about sharing their knowledge with others. But I’m not sure it’s true that higher ranked schools, get ‘better instructors’. What I think you’ll find is that instructors like most adults in their lives have personal reasons for accepting the positions that they do. For example to refer back to Rose, the instructors that choose to teach at Rose are the ones that WANT to teach and are not as focused on research in their fields. Other schools may have specialties or facilities that attract certain instructors. I just saw an article today about the large scale structures lab at UA. My son, a civil engineering major, will tell you the relatively new large scale structures lab is one of very few in the country. Civil engineering professors who are interested in doing research that requires such facilities will be more likely to consider working at UA. But other schools, especially large research schools, have their own areas of specialty and their own special facilities that they like to tout to those that tour their campus. To say one is ‘better’ than another is really subjective. The best one is the one that aligns closest with your personal interests.

It is also very true that there are ‘degree snobs’ in some professions and yes, consulting is one of them. There are a lot of ‘degree snobs’ throughout the business world, so I have to admit, when I got my MBA, which was heavily subsidized by my employer, I went with school that had name recognition over a smaller, regional school. But I’ve never seen any evidence that university name is a large factor in the engineering world and as I mentioned above, I work with a substantial number of grads from Rose Hulman, but also from many other colleges and I’ve never seen any difference in career paths just because they came from a higher ranking school. But there is also the fact that the name on the resume that matters the most, is the most recent. Since I have an MS and MBA - no one cares where I got my BS or even what it was in. If you follow the threads, many students opt to attend UA and save money, so that they can then go on and attend grad school. If ‘prestige’ is important to you, then make sure that you have the resources to keep the same level of prestige if you continue schooling past undergrad.

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@jrcsmom very well said about resources for undergrad/grad studies!! Also that name recognition is not a factor in the engineering world!! The tools are not subjective as in business, i.e. marketing, strategic planning

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@AJ2020

Contact info for the Honors College: http://honors.ua.edu/contact-us/

Shoot them an email ASAP and be as specific as you possibly can be about your interests and your time limits. We spent the morning in the CoE (spent an hour meeting with an ME professor and a student ambassador, who later took us on a tour of the facilities), and it was extremely helpful in determining the school’s fit for our son. (If there’s time, they’ll likely take you to the new 3-D printing lab, too, which is really fun for engineering-types: http://3dlab.eng.ua.edu/.)

The engineering student who took us around was from the Huntsville area, IIRC, and the daughter of two working engineers. Her sister was a student at Auburn (although I believe she was transferring to UA). The professor was a Georgia Tech grad: http://eng.ua.edu/people/sshepard/. Great guy.

Good luck to you!

30

[QUOTE=""]
I'm not sure it's true that higher ranked schools, get 'better instructors'. <<<

[/QUOTE]

This is VERY true. Higher ranked schools do not hire profs because they’ve demonstrated that they’re “great teachers”…not at all.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but some things are counter-intuitive when it comes to higher-education.

And…furthermore…the quality of academics isn’t even the majority of the rankings. I haven’t looked at it lately to see if it’s still the same, but when I did look, the quality of academics was only about 40% of the rankings.

31

Side question: would you only schedule a tour through the HC once accepted? So, if you toured during junior year you would not have this resource?

32

If you suspect you will qualify for the honor’s college, you can still contact them as a junior and they will arrange the tour for you. If you don’t qualify for the honor’s college, you can contact the department you intend to major in, many of them arrange individualized tours as well or your area’s recruiter.

33

^^ As a HS junior, you can definitely get a tour arranged via Honors! You don’t need to be an accepted student or a HS senior.

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@2muchquan No…you don’t have to be accepted. HC arranges for juniors.

35

Nice story about a student from Michigan double-majoring in studio art and computer science: http://www.ua.edu/features/findyourpassion/computerart.html

36

I’m taking my D to tour as a Junior and I’m a bit nervous about it as well, since it seems like they expect you to know your plans for the future and she doesn’t. Her latest interest is Engineering so we’ll go with that for the tour.

Will HC take you to visit the LL communities?

BTW, does the Engineering scholarship stack with the NMF scholarship?

37

Yes the scholarships stack. They refund $$ to students if account is positive after all semester charges.

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@nw2this your daughter can attend the summer week SITE at UA - do a search on ua.edu web site and it explains the program. My DD went to the program between HS junior and senior year and decided on her field of engineering. They expose students to eng and CS.

39

@nw2this, when we visited in the spring of 2014, my son had already been accepted to the CoE, but he was coming in as an “undeclared engineer” and was not sure engineering was for him. (Our thoughts were that, whenever a university had an engineering college, he should apply there since it’s much easier to transfer OUT of engineering than IN, and it’s usually one of the most difficult schools to gain admission to. At UA you also get the $2500/year stipend to study, which is a nice bonus!).

My son was originally planning to major in mathematics in college but started to get interested in engineering as the year went on and was looking at SLACs with 3-2 programs primarily. It wasn’t until we got to UA, where the Honors College arranged for one of the ME professors to spend an hour with us and touring with a lovely ME major, did my son feel pretty certain engineering was for him. When I scheduled the tour, I explained our situation and the recruiter made sure we got to meet with someone from the College of Arts & Sciences too, who told us all about the Blount Undergraduate Initiative and other programs he thought might be of interest to my son, who was a theater geek in HS.

As a big public university, UA was one of my son’s safeties, but in the end he realized he much preferred the vibrancy of big universities and the flexibility that would be available to him (both socially and academically), so in April of his senior year he was pretty much choosing between his two safeties–Penn State (our state flagship) and UA. We visited PSU two weeks after UA, and while it was a gorgeous campus as well and the programs (and career planning!) were incredibly impressive, my son felt UA was a much better fit. We felt much more emphasis on the arts and humanities at UA than at PSU and the people were just more interesting (and down to earth) to him at UA. And it’s proven to be an excellent decision, especially at more than half the price we’d be paying for PSU. He is now a declared ME major, but has many friends from Blount and is having a great experience.

So as long as you give yourself enough time, the HC should be able to accommodate your daughter’s needs and interests. Just try to be as specific as possible about what you want to see/do while on campus, and leave some time for a little serendipity! And feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions.

40

@nw2this here is my trip report regarding my son’s visit to UA honors / CBHP, it is a lengthy play by play of our visit, might be helpful… http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/1789529-a-visit-to-the-university-of-alabama-cbh-and-honors-college-p1.html