<p>@Sniner, D is in Honors but no special options thus far. She is looking at Engineering or possibly math.</p>
<p>D definitely wants to live elsewhere (at least last I heard). We looked at east coast last spring but the area didn’t float her boat. Probably because we lived in England for two years and she’s already tried green places with gray winters ;-). So she’s generally thinking of trying the South or California. She’s only applied to Mines here.</p>
<p>We get two responses when we say she’s considering Alabama. Response 1: “WHY would you want your kid to go to a place like Alabama (meaning the state)?” Response 2 (from people who have actually been there): “Oh, it’s soooo beautiful! She’ll really like it!” </p>
<p>We have experienced much more negative than positive. We have actually had people say, “you shouldn’t pick a school because of its football team.”. </p>
<p>Sniner: When my older son, who is in his third year of college, selected Alabama over lots and lots of other scholarship offers/letters of admission, his fellow graduates thought he made an awesome decision. He could graduate debt-free, while many of his classmates would have student loan payments for many years. </p>
<p>BTW, my younger son would say that it’s all right to select a school because of its football team. That’s just one of the reasons Bama is at the top of his list.</p>
<p>We finally were able to get into Roommate finders today. </p>
<p>Regarding the “haters”, my D has also gotten a scholarship from Purdue, though not quite as much as Alabama. I had posted in the Purdue forum that it wasn’t as good an offer, and someone had replied that “Alabama does not have a strong engineering school”. Well, I beg to differ. What we saw the times we have visited, we were impressed with the faculty and research opportunities. </p>
<p>We’re not 100% sure she’ll be going to Alabama- we heard today finally from UT Knoxville that she’s a semi-finalist for the Haslam’s Scholars, which is a full-ride plus other benefits. But, if that doesn’t work out, she’ll be going to Alabama. She said she’s okay either way- she will be going where the scholarship is the best!</p>
<p>mckinna, that is our thought process also. We follow the money believing our kids are quite capable of flourishing at many places so why not go to the place that gives you the best abililty to graduate debt free or close to that? Some have questioned my daughters choice of bama but we pay them no mind. Roll Tide!</p>