<p>Nice article. Wanted to share. </p>
<p>[The</a> Magic Of Nick Saban: Everyone Wants To Go To Alabama - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2013/05/13/the-magic-of-nick-saban-everyone-wants-to-go-to-alabama/]The”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2013/05/13/the-magic-of-nick-saban-everyone-wants-to-go-to-alabama/)</p>
<p>No mention of the generous merit money guaranteed if one makes certain stats. I wonder what that young man’s choice would have been had he snagged one of those awards.</p>
<p>I wonder what his DAD’s decision would have been? Lol</p>
<p>Roll Tide, I bet.</p>
<p>It bothers me very much when I hear that parents make the college choice decision for their kids. If its a money issue then ok I get it but a decision like travel etc, just seems somewhat trivial. For the amount of times the student travels I can’t see why his parents couldn’t adjust. There are countless flights out of NY particulary Long Island thru Southwest to Birmingham. There’s even a direct flight out of Laguardia every night. Delaware must still be a 4-5 hour drive from LI.</p>
<p>i think having kids go “away” to school is really good for them. to keep a kid close because you would miss them too much, or whatever the other trivial reasons might be, does them a disservice.</p>
<p>^^^^Couldnt agree more MikeW. My wife and I aren’t exactly ecstatic that our youngest son will be 1200 miles away but we are more excited for our Son who is going to his FIRST choice for college with a Nationally ranked school and Nationally ranked Accounting program which is his intended major. Our Son has worked very hard his whole academic career and couldn’t have made us prouder. The fact that after a hard week in school he has a National Championship Football team to cheer for right on his campus makes his choice that much more exciting. He’s earned it.</p>
<p>^^^THIS^^^</p>
<p>It’s just such a fit. A wonderous, magical place. Roll Tide.</p>
<p>It’s too bad the author couldn’t interview an out of state kid who will attend for the article along with the one who turned down his acceptance.</p>
<p>^^^ That would have been a good comparison to have one of each.<br>
My DD is coming from OOS, no big merit scholarship. Her other choices, for what she considered her best fits, were also OOS for us but to the west coast. When it came down to it she said she could not see paying over $50k a year just for her undergrad when she could go to a great school like Alabama and get just as good of an education. We had no problem with her going to the best school for HER. We have raised her to be conscious of finances so she knew it was crazy money to spend more on schools that cost 3x more than Alabama. Any love of our own in state schools has lost its luster due to the watering down of the academics due to the 10% rule. She saw some of them as just an extension of high school and did not want that. And they all would have cost more to boot than Alabama. Just could not see it being a wise financial decision. </p>
<p>As for the distance, yes it is going to be a “strain” at times. However, when we have friends whose kids are going to in state schools that are even further, Texas, it is a big state… that drive to T-Town is not so bad. We have already figured out she is not going to be coming home that much. Even kids that have stayed in state don’t come home that much. Parents are going to realize that if the kid goes off to college even 3 hours drive away, they are not going to see them any more than those of us whose kids went further. They are going to get involved in activities and not want to leave for the weekends not to mention homework. Parents are still going to have obligations at home that keep them from going every weekend to see jr and even if they tried that is going to get old real fast, and expensive.</p>
<p>“My DD is coming from OOS, no big merit scholarship.”</p>
<p>“And they all would have cost more to boot than Alabama.”</p>
<p>i don’t get it.</p>
<p>DD1 goes to UA. DD2 goes to a school an hour away. we saw the UA daughter way more days this school year than the other daughter who goes to school an hour from home. (she has a job and works a lot of weekends.)</p>
<p>Kid in that article is from the next town over (my own hometown). There is a current rising junior from his school at UA. Wonder if they ever spoke. Wish I had the chance.</p>
<p>I can accept that Saban has had a positive effect on OOS enrollment. But I think the article overstates his contribution. After all, this trend started well before Saban, so Dr. Witt should get the lion’s share of the credit. And too many in the comments section didn’t read the whole article, and think these students chose Alabama mainly due to football. Not sure if I like the impression left by the article.</p>
<p>I do agree that they could have proved the point a bit better if they had described a high achieving out-of-state student accepting one of the merit-based scholarships.</p>
<p>[University</a> of Alabama | Best College | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-alabama-1051]University”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-alabama-1051)</p>
<p>It was actually 43.5% in Fall of 2011, not 53% as the article says. The article used data from Fall 2010. I haven’t seen the percentage for last fall yet.</p>
<p>[University</a> of Alabama | Best College | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-alabama-1051]University”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-alabama-1051)</p>
<p>It was actually 43.5% in Fall of 2011, not 53% as the article says. The article used data from Fall 2010. I haven’t seen last fall’s rate yet.</p>
<p>I liked the article and echo a lot of the observations mentioned previously, particularly the dad’s common, but potentially misguided reasoning to not send his son to UA due to the distance from NY and the overemphasis on Nick Saban causing the rapid increase in the popularity of UA. That said, one must remember that Dr. Witt was hired by the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama to head an already initiated growth plan. Much of the original growth was planned under the presidency of the late Andrew “Bow Tie Andy” Sorensen who had originally planned to retire from UA around 2010 and J. Barry Mason, his interim successor and former dean of the business school who wanted a role where he could still teach classes.</p>