<p>JL, take a look at the stats for the SUNYs. They are filled with “local Yorkels”. We have very few OOSers compared to many other state systems, in fact that is a big down side for the SUNYs. </p>
<p>I don’t know about Uof A, but usually such schools have more than the usual number of part time, non traditional student, very few kids living on campus–little campus housing available, and those kids who come from out of state most often come from neighboring states or have had an affiliation with the school. You don’t just get a school like that on your radar screen if you live in NY, for instance. The tuition would be double for a NYer as compared to what SUNY would cost, and it would be difficult to get a dorm so you would have to go and find a private place to live. It is primary a commuter school.</p>
<p>I am not meaning any disrespect to the school. My son goes to a SUNY and it is more than 90% New Yorker with most of the kids coming from an hour radius from the school. A lot of commuters which makes it a suitcase/commuter school to the point that it does effect the school atmosphere and provisions. He likes his program and a lot about the school but sees where it falls short in areas that schools like UMD, Penn State, UMich excell as they have so many full time undergrad students living on campus and staying there over weekends. It would be a tough decision for someone here to send a kid to UA Huntsville, just as it would for someone in Alabama to send a kid to SUNY Buffalo (doubt we have more than a handful of southerners much less Alabamans in our flagship school!). University of Alabama flagship, however, would be a different story. It isn’t so much the ranking as the entire make up of a school.</p>
<p>My close friend sent her son to UToledo and they live in Colorado. He wanted to go there because his cousins with whom he is very close are going there, and my friend was originally from Ohio. It was tough for the young man to stay there because of the factors I just mentioned. Toledo is a school similar to Huntsville in terms of on campus housing, amenites, commuters, local kids. That was an issue once he was there even though he had the company of his cousins and their friends to show him the ropes. The school just was not set up for kids who did not live within a couple of hours. Not something one can really understand just reading the description of the school.</p>