<p>What is each school giving you? </p>
<p>How much merit are you getting from Bama and UDayton? </p>
<p>Are you getting free tuition plus 2500 per year from Bama? If so, then your remaining costs (including travel) will be about $10k per year or less depending on meal plan and dorm selection.</p>
<p>What are your stats?</p>
<p>What is your likely “family contribution” at Vandy and other elites?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t pay too much attention to Bama’s ranking because it is rising because of the millions and millions that are being invested there in new facilities, new profs, etc. They will have added 900,000 square feet of Science/Engineering reseach buildings by the time you’re a soph there. Over 700,000 square feet have been completed for the mega-sized Science and Engineering Complex.</p>
<p>keep in mind that the univ as a whole has jumped 21 national ranking spots in 2 years…I don’t know of any other univ in the Top 100 that did that. Increases in sub-rankings will certainly follow. </p>
<p>Bama is one of the few univ that can still hire new profs, so it’s able to grab the best ones while others are cutting back. </p>
<p>There’s a reason why the federal gov’t invested millions in these new facilities over the last several years. High tech companies are located in the state and are moving to the state. Bama rec’d more fed money for new buildings in 2010 than any other univ in the country. </p>
<p>Since Bama is located in the stae that has the second largest Research Park in the nation (Cummings Research Park), you should have no fear about employment, salary, grad school opps, etc. </p>
<p>Engineering salaries are the same no matter where you graduate from. Exceptions might be Cal Tech and MIT, but even then the difference is not worth mentioning.</p>