One other question: Thoughts on why the big increase at AU in 2014? Surely not due to being in the FB title game in 2014 (2013 season), I hope.
CycloneGrad - I seriously doubt AU students attend the school for sports, unless they are on scholarship for that sport. Looks like they are maintaining pretty close to 20k +/- undergrad, where are you seeing the large increase?
I think there’s something to this. My Illinois daughter, who always intended to come home and work in Chicago after she graduated from UA, has decided after 4 years down south that she’d prefer to stay in the south. She’s planning to do a year of graduate school at UA and after that, if she gets a job in her field in Alabama, I suspect she’ll stay there. If she doesn’t, she’ll be looking at cities in the southeast. She currently has no intention of returning to Illinois - a complete 180.
What beth’s mom said. My non-Alabamian self actually admires the commitment UA has to reversing the brain drain that’s so long been an issue throughout so much of the South.
The biggest predictor of where someone goes to college is where they live (that is, people stay close by); a strong secondary predictor is where their parents go to college. This means that if you can get smart kids to come do their college somewhere, they’re much more likely to stay there and raise a smart next generation who go to college there themselves—and even if the smart kids move elsewhere, there’s a smaller but still non-trivially better than chance likelihood that the smart next generation will go where a parent went.
Basically, UA is (and, looking at other similar scholarship programs, UAB and AUH and a couple others are) playing a long game for the benefit of the state of Alabama. Why people like John Knox don’t see the utility of that, particularly given what has historically been the dismal state of Alabama’s educational system, I really don’t get.
@threeofthree I was joking about the sports thing! The big increase I am talking about is the number of AL students in the Freshman class increased significantly from 2013 to 2014, 2334 (2013) to 2757 (2014), an increase of 18% in one year.
What caused that? Reason for my questions above.
Cyclonesgrad, Auburn’s football success in 2013 might help explain the sudden increase in freshman in-state enrollment for Fall of 2014, but it also increased the following year after a rather dismal season there in Fall of 2014.
Also, UA’s in-state freshman enrollment peaked in 2008, before its national championships in 2009, 2011, and 2012, and went down each year till last Fall, when it slightly increased. Maybe the national championship won earlier this year will lead to a significant increase though.
Would like to see if that freshman increase is for engineering students - as GT continues to deny high stat instate students they are enrolling in UA and AU. Although I will say the COE has its share of attrition as well…before, during, and after sophomore year - no stats just hearsay from engineering kids.
The attrition from COE is normal for all engineering colleges. Same when I went to school in the late 70’s/early 80’s. Students find out how much work engineering is and decide to go another route.
Getting a BS in engineering not only is a test of intelligence but also persistence. Those that do not have the fortitude to continue when things do not come easily leave the program.
Threeofthree, I don’t think there has been a huge increase in freshman engineering students at Auburn. UA now has the largest freshman engineering classes by the way.
My hunch is that the increase in instate freshman enrollment at Auburn is due to several factors:
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Auburn is still the most esteemed school in the state in the minds of many high school guidance counselors. A lot of people in Alabama hold a number of false notions about UA. For instance, my brother was once told by an admissions officer at Troy State, that UA’s admissions standard was lower than that of Troy State, which is laughable. There is also widespread belief that Auburn is harder to get into, which may have some basis in fact, though the difference in standards between the two schools is not as large as many think.
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UA’s growth may be off putting to some in state students. Auburn is in a rather small town which might be more comfortable for many in-state students.
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Auburn has enhanced its recruitment of in-state students, particularly the best ones, realizing that it can’t match UA’s recruitment of out of state students.
Alabama has added 7A in athletics, which have the largest schools - which are no way as big as schools in states like TX and IL (do you have 8A or 9A or even bigger athletics?). There are a lot of smaller HSs. I would suspect many of the larger HSs (outside of what would be considered low income/inner city) that offer more AP, IB programs are what is considered ‘feeder’ to UA with the higher stat students. IL has big public HSs like TX and probably other states too.
I cannot imagine relying on GC advice for the school search - primarily due to the other influences on those folks, biases, etc. We were lucky to have the new GC who was helpful in getting the transcript out and bouncing off specifics on the kids w/o the attitude that she knew more than me (I had worked for two universities and had more degrees and experiences). I learned from my friends with older kids, CC, other networking.
Some parents allow a very wide college search for their students. I know a mom and dad who went all over with oldest DD, and she ended up at AU and the younger two also in-state public. They didn’t travel around with their twins but used what they knew for targeting schools based on interest/degree plan, and one of the twins did go to AU as well (although that student was an athlete and NMS and URM so she got more scholarship than I had ever seen from AU for UG).Several other friends’ allowed their DD to search out all over, while the parents kept the student grounded, always comparing with in-state public opportunities - the student maybe discovered after all their work with applications/essays, that parents did have the right idea on school match (esp with plans for Medical school).
For those who want to compare UA and AU engineering stats, here they are for the HS Class of 2014 (per ASEE):
The University of Alabama
New Undergraduate Applicants
A. Number of undergraduate applicants to the engineering college: 4,433
B. Of those in (A), how many were offered admission? 2,552
C. Of those in (B), how many were enrolled in the fall? 1,447
Percentage of entering students (excluding transfer students) ranked in the top quarter (25%) of their high schools: 70%
Percentage of entering students (excluding transfer students) ranked in the top quarter (25%) of their high schools: 77%
Newly Enrolled Test Scores
Scores Reflect 75th to 25th percentile
SAT 75th 25th
Math Range: 730 590
Reading Range: 680 550
Writing Range: 660 530
ACT 75th 25th
Math Range: 32 27
Composite Range: 33 28
Auburn University
New Undergraduate Applicants
A. Number of undergraduate applicants to the engineering college: 4,397
B. Of those in (A), how many were offered admission? 3,648
C. Of those in (B), how many were enrolled in the fall? 1,317
Percentage of entering students (excluding transfer students) ranked in the top quarter (25%) of their high schools: 70%
Newly Enrolled Test Scores
Scores Reflect 75th to 25th percentile
SAT 75th 25th
Math Range: 700 590
Reading Range: 665 550
Writing Range: 620 520
ACT 75th 25th
Math Range: 31 26
Composite Range: 32 27
Unfortunately, there’s no way I’m aware of to identify how many applicants to either school were from the State of Alabama.
I am not surprised by UA engineering class increase - $$$ works wonders. If we didn’t have the funds for Auburn, my son would be at Alabama.
Side note on John Knox: His is one of the loudest voices for kicking Greeks off campus - take that for what it’s worth to you. After heavily investing in Greek housing, I seriously doubt that anybody in UA’s administration is listening too closely.
As far as scholarship $$ offered to in-state students - as I stated, I had no facts or figures to back that up so I honestly don’t know. It IS a perception, though, among Alabamians.
Those leaning toward Auburn often state that UA has extremely low admission standards compared to Alabama. As you may know, Alabama has a program to enroll students with low ACT scores, and that’s what I often hear: “Alabama took a kid with a 17 ACT! I couldn’t believe it! They’ll take anybody!”
Southlander, while I think UA needs to raise its admission standard, it does reject almost half of its applicants, so I take those kind of claims with a grain of salt. Auburn too takes in students with an ACT of less than 22, just a smaller percentage.
While I have concerns about UA spending money on Greek houses, I don’t see them as something that will break the budget, especially given that the Greek chapters will be paying UA back each year for the amount UA borrowed to fund the houses.
Oh, believe me, I do take the comments with a ton of salt. I just wish I had some facts and figures to throw back at them instead of gritting my teeth! I’m sure they’re somewhere on the UA website - I just have this pesky job that I have to do instead of finding fun stuff like that!
Someone upthread asked what OOS schools do Alabama students attend. From what I’ve observed working on sorority recommendations, a good number go to Mississippi State, which used to waive OOS fees if you were in the band or chorus. Some go to Ole Miss. I’ve also seen Harvard, Columbia, MIT, American, Boston, Loyola, Furman, Oklahoma, TCU, Florida State, Ole Miss, Southern Miss, Villanova, Chapman, College of Charleston, Vanderbilt, SMU, LSU, NC State, Duke, Georgia, Tennessee.
Obviously the high stat students are going to the highly selective schools. And anecdotally, I’ve found that students with unusual college choices are often following family tradition.
But also, Alabama has a large number of junior and community colleges, and around 27 four-year colleges. Enrollments are increasing there, also. A “normal” Alabama student with average stats could go to a number of in-state colleges, live on campus, and pay way less that UA or AU. A lot live close enough to live at home, which cuts costs even more.
I agree with Southlander.The State of Alabama does seem to be investing in their “directionals” to make them attractive as a smaller, cheaper alternative to UA. We have family connections to Livingston AL, home of the University of West Alabama. My mother went there in the mid1940s because that’s what her family could afford and she could live at home. After getting a teacher degree, she transferred to UA in the big city of Tuscaloosa to get a library science degree. Over the past decade, I have seen UWA add buildings and amenities, including on campus housing. In-state COA with room & board is around $13,000 – about $10,00 lower per year than UA.
This may have been posted already, but I was looking for something else and found this breakdown by high school of the number of Alabamians in the class that entered in Fall 2015:
You can go back to 2011 to compare the figures for individual schools.
Great digging, Lucie!
Thanks!
There must be some “Murphy’s Law” corollary that if you search really hard for something, you’ll find the last thing you searched really hard for (and didn’t find!). 