I have a daughter who thinks she wants to go to college out of state (OOS). We live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and will be starting college visits in the upcoming months.
Does anyone have children at Auburn who are OOS? I know Auburn attracts a lot of Atlanta-area students, but I wanted to hear from parents from other areas (specifically Texas).
Has anyone used the Montgomery airport to get to Auburn?
I really like the Auburn vibe and have been impressed with the love and loyalty former and current students have for their school. The “Auburn Creed” and “Auburn Family” I hear and read about seems to really define the Auburn experience.
My daughter will be a traditional student who most likely will rush a sorority and major in some kind of liberal arts with law or graduate school on the horizon.
Based on the scholarship section of the Auburn website, she will qualify for some OOS merit, so Auburn is within our budget.
I appreciate any feedback.
There are a lot of OOS kids at Auburn, many from Texas. I have friends that I went to Auburn with who live in Keller, TX. Their daughter is a freshman at Auburn this year. She also joined a sorority.
I’d say most people use the Atlanta airport. I think there is a shuttle that leaves daily from Auburn that goes to the Atlanta airport. When I was a student there and needed to fly home I’d drive to Atlanta or hitch a ride to the airport with a friend living in Atlanta. That airport is about 1 hour and 45 minutes away from Auburn.
One of my son’s roommates was from North Dallas (he’s back there now employed as an engineer) and another roommate from Virginia. Lots of OOS kids. I think there are 12 round trip shuttles from the Atlanta airport every day, including holidays. Getting to/from Auburn from the airport is pretty easy and convenient. Actually, I just checked Groome Transportation and they’ve upped the trips to/from Hartsfield/Jackson to 16 daily trips.
Just some math…
AU to ATL is 99 miles. RT shuttle service on Groome is $86.
Cheap parking (offsite) is $10-12/day, or ATL airport parking is $19/day.
$2.50/gallon for gas w/ 25 miles/avg mpg = ~ 8 gallons or $20
It would come out @ $60 for a 4 day trip/long weekend for parking and gas vs the shuttle service.
Riding with another student from ATL is the cheapest way, since the ATL airport is on the southwest side of ATL - you almost HAVE to pass it to get to most parts of the city/suburbs.
Quick question…you mentioned that your daughter SHOULD qualify for OOS merit…has she completed the AUSOM scholarship form? From my understanding, OOS merit scholarships have already been awarded. My son heard back on Dec 20th 2019, as the AUSOM document had a deadline of Dec 15th.
Please check.
WDE
Thanks, WDE1994.
She is not a senior this year, so she still is in the “college search” phase. I told her if she wanted to go out-of-state she would have to qualify for some kind of scholarship/merit/discount. Based on her current grades and scores she would qualify for Auburn merit which would make Auburn’s cost within our family’s budget. Hopefully, the merit amounts will remain the same when it comes time for her to actually apply!!
My DD is a HS senior and has been accepted to Auburn, she is still weighing her options, but it is one of her top 2-4 choices. We are from California. When we visited in November we flew into ATL, but I have also wondered about the Montgomery airport and had planned to try doing it this weekend, but a family emergency made me cancel the trip. My husband did fly into Montgomery a few days ago and he said it was super small which makes it easy, so if driving and parking it might be an option. The advantage I see is there is not dealing with a time change, when going to ATL you lose an hour because of the time zones. We’ve made 2 trips to Auburn and I have been really impressed with the area and the people we have met. If you go for a visit, we have stayed at the Marriott in Opelika, although it is about 20 minutes from the campus it is a nice relaxing place to be and they have a shuttle that will take you to the university so you don’t have to worry about parking on campus, super friendly staff at hotel.
If she is interested in applying, apply as soon as the application opens up and hopefully she will get an early acceptance. They used to do rolling but changed this year. The first group of acceptances went out mid-late October then another round near end of November and the last group will find out by March 2nd. It’s always nice to have an acceptance in hand early in Senior year.
Pertaining the questions about Montgomery airport:
I lived in Montgomery and graduated H.S. there and now live in ATL. The Montgomery airport (MGM) is about 28 miles closer to AU than ATL, but I would check on flights to/from MGM from Dallas.
On Delta, every flight out of DFW has to go to ATL. With even a minimum layover, getting to AU is typically going to be more expensive and longer, because leaving AU and going to MGM to fly back, you and your child will still have to go to ATL.
I don’t know how Southwest or United flights out of MGM work, so maybe there is a benefit there.
For the California folks…the flights on Delta from LAX to ATL are $200-$350 cheaper vs flights from LAX to MGM (sorry, i don’t know where in CA you live and just chose LAX as an example).
And, Yes, the rolling admission is no longer as of this year. He was planning on applying in August, but in late July, the changes to the portal were on the AU website.
My son applied in early mid-September when the portal opened, but due to the Nov 15th date, no students found out their admissions acceptance until the last few days of November **.
**I am applying a caveat to the above statement… since AU was changing over from Rolling admissions (which typically opened ~ Aug 15th in the years past), we did hear that certain students were granted admission in early October. I don’t know how, but their admissions were able to be submitted earlier. We were told that a certain group of students who applied early were issued acceptance early (again told that there was a glitch in the system, while transitioning from the old rolling system to the new system).
Hi! My daughter was just accepted last week for the class of 2025, and we live in North Dallas. She submitted her application Aug 21.
@DallasTracy …Congratulations! Is Auburn one of her top choices?
We are in Dallas, as well. My daughter is a junior in HS, and we visited the campus a couple of weeks ago. We both LOVED it!! Everyone was so nice and helpful. Our tour guide actually sent a personal, hand-written post card to my daughter the other day. She was excited and super-impressed!
I am most certain that Auburn will be one of her top choices when it comes to applying this upcoming summer.
We are in central TX and lots of kids from our area go to the SEC schools. With UT so hard to get into, the SEC schools offer the same experience (athletics, big school, fun Greek life) and are attractive to Texas students. It’s a nice change of scenery. We had a bunch go to Ole Miss and 'Bama in particular, but also some to Auburn (especially for engineering). Tennessee and Kentucky seemed less appealing. I agree that the flight selection to ATL is going to be a lot better. After the first year- or maybe even the first semester- kids find classmates who will give them rides to the airports.
@HighTide2020: I read a report a few ago which stated that the University of Kentucky had the highest admission rate among several hundred schools examined. (The study actually stated that Kentucky had the highest admit rate in the nation.)
Also, Kentucky has a substantial percentage of commuter students.