All very different schools. I live in PA and go to Philadelphia frequently and have an older son at Drexel. I would not describe Philadelphia as an affordable city or tout that as one of its attributes unless the frame of reference is to NYC, Boston and Wash DC, among those peers it may be relatively affordable, and the areas around Temple more so, but affordability is relative and overall Philly is fairly expensive compared to smaller cities and most southern cities I have knowledge of.
The area around Temple is improving slowly, but we would not consider it for our D despite the aid they offer. My son at Drexel is a fifth degree black belt and even he didn’t want anything to do with Temple.
I recommend La Tech over Troy for engineering/science because La Tech is real research university (Carnegie Classification: research-high), whereas Troy is not.
As far as being commuter schools, both are heavily that direction. More than half of Troy students are non-traditional (25 or older), whereas at La Tech it is less than 20%.
I would not recommend either over Bama or Temple, except for financial reasons.
@mom2collegekids my husband’s relatives live in Huntsville. Their Eldest son goes to Auburn with free tuition, nursing niece plays softball at Troy, and then the freshman son is starting now. I got the sense that Troy was on a lower tier, but since Troy doesn’t get talked about much on cc, didn’t feel like I really knew much about it. It is tucked way back as a very unlikely possibility for my S, but that free full ride keeps me from throwing it completely away.
Glad to learn more details about Troy. OP probably wouldn’t like the suitcase college feel of UAH, but it is more of a possibility for our family with so many relatives in the city.
Based on what I know (limited), Troy also has more of a “Southern Conservative Christian” vibe than UA.
Since Temple and UA plus Grand Valley and UMich are all possibilities for you, with Grand Valley being a clear safety although you may want another area of the country, you’re good with “safe merit”. You can start looking for competitive merit scholarships - are you looking for those because your EFC is unaffordable? Have you run the NPCs on several private colleges with good premed advising and record where you’d be very likely to get good merit (ie. Dickinson, St Olaf, Lawrence, for instance).
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my husband’s relatives live in Huntsville. Their Eldest son goes to Auburn with free tuition, nursing niece plays softball at Troy, and then the freshman son is starting now. I got the sense that Troy was on a lower tier, but since Troy doesn’t get talked about much on cc, didn’t feel like I really knew much about it. It is tucked way back as a very unlikely possibility for my S, but that free full ride keeps me from throwing it completely away.
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@powercropper Yes, I figured they were from AL. That’s a different situation.
@Mom2collegekids My S wouldn’t mind the commuter feel at UAH, he is an introvert who doesn’t care for large populations and would probably welcome a weekend of peace and quiet. Likewise for Troy, S doesn’t need traditional college town. Neither has the swim team that he might want, but he recognizes that getting a good education at affordable cost might trump his desire to continue swimming.
IMHO Huntsville is a mid-sized city, and there is more available in the surrounding community outside of campus than at Troy. Having relatives in a particular area, you are going to hear their impressions too.
UAHuntsville has grown up a lot with having more of a campus vibe and much more of a campus. IMHO UAHuntsville is more on the top tier (not in what is offered at a bigger school like UA, AU but in academic quality - not as many areas of study, however some fields are quite strong and offer PhD programs). UAB, UAH, and USA have the strong academic quality. I would put Troy more like U N AL, Jacksonville State, Montevallo, etc. A student that does well at those schools will not necessarily be limited, but they may just not have the academic environment that matches what they could find at that other tier.
I know two families with kids at Troy. They have a ‘deal’ with siblings - not sure if it is with in-state and within various income and family size parameters. I know one family has two sisters there and another has a sister and brother. These are all in-state kids and pretty good students.
At these smaller schools, some of the kids find more activities with sorority/fraternity, and perhaps even live at the house - and it is a lot lower cost for these organizations than at a school like UA. UA does has a engineering co-ed fraternity that is low cost, but that is the exception as far as I know.
It is really difficult to make generalizations on many of these kind of topics. Living in AL and knowing students that have attended these schools, and having been on their campuses and attended professional meetings. You do gather ideas about various schools.
UA has a much wider appeal nationally - in a large part with their recruitment efforts and scholarships. AU has a heavier attendance and appeal to students from the schools my kids have attended - but it seems AU does draw a lot from FL, GA, region in additon to AL.
We are looking at both Temple and Alabama. Have you played around with the overall COA? We compared dorms, dining, plane tickets, and average cost off-campus housing for future years. We looked at the need (or lack of need) for a car during undergraduate. We even looked at clothing costs since she has zero winter clothes (we are in Hawaii). Alabama appears to be cheaper for us, but my D wants to major in Engineering and would get the additional automatic scholarship.
It is crazy how different these two top automatic scholarships schools are, isn’t it??
@MYOS1634 I’ve tried running several NPCs but it’s very hard to tell exactly where my family will be financially in a year from now. My parents are currently going through a divorce, and both moving and buying new houses, so there are a lot of unknowns as to what our future situation will be.
@palm715 Yes it is very crazy how different they are! One thing that is standing out to me is that the Alabama scholarship can be applied to grad school if any funds remain, so that’s a great advantage if I can enter with sophomore status from my AP/Dual enrollment courses.
@flynn4meghan, I’m guessing you’ve checked with Alabama on accepting credits; they seem very generous. Any chance you might want to do an Engineering major while pre-med? It would be an extra $2.5K a year scholarship. Also, have you looked at the Blount Undergraduate Initiative? It’s associated with the Honors College, but the housing is less expensive than the traditional honors housing.
Flights in and out of Huntsville perhaps may be higher cost, but some do fly Nashville or B’ham - there are shuttles and sometimes the savings can be substantial.
However if a student is going relatively far away, there may be less trips home.
I have one student at college with a vehicle, and one w/o.
Then it makes sense that you are building a merit-seeking list, since (a) your parents may not have much money to begin with (since living in separate households tends to cost more than sharing a household, plus costs of divorce like lawyers), and (b) they may fight over who pays what amount of your college costs, with each trying to minimize his/her share.
@clarinetdad16 In what way do you disagree with my Troy comments?
@sosconcern I’ve never seen Temple, so when I’ve read several posts over the years stating that it’s in an unsafe area, that gives me pause.
I’m trying to remember a particular detail; I think I remember someone posting that area bordering one side of the campus is particularly dangerous. Temple Univ does show up on “dangerous campus” lists, but I don’t know what that’s based on.
Is Temple a school that doesn’t have a “real campus”? Is it more urban and spread out?
