<p>Hi M2CK,
Great story about your first (and second) meetings with Dr. Sharpe; thanks for sharing. Things are moving along here; we just received the formal letter from Dr. Witt offering our son the Presidential Scholarship! I guess all the long nights have paid off. I look forward to connecting with you and your family in person at some point.
Craig</p>
<p>My seats are in the East Upper deck, so I wasn’t in the student section. Therefore, these might not have been current students. But then again, they could have been students who had not bought a student season package like those in the student section, and had bought their tickets online from a non student season ticket holder. They looked old enough to be grad students, but maybe too old to be undergraduates. But it wasn’t just one group of Asian Indians, but several that I saw, and they were dressed in Bama gear and high fiving each other just like other fans.</p>
<p>Check out the California schools. Very large Asian populations. We toured UC Irvine a couple weeks ago, and in the presentation they told us that 55% of students are Asian! Out of about 28,000.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Yes, the UCs do have very high Asian populations. However, you’re not going to get these merit scholarships there. Instead, if you’re OOS, you’ll have the pleasure of paying $50k per year to go there. If you’re instate, you’ll pay about $30k.</p>
<p>I am not sure I would even want to go into the UC system at a time when the entire state looks from the outside like it is becoming socially and economically dysfunctional.</p>
<p>And if you want to indict a state for a past history of discrimination against Asians, California would probably be the state you think of first as having shown tremendous hostility to Asians – no state in the South has anyplace near the same history that California during the Gold Rush had of mistreatment of Asian immigrants – which only goes to show you that over the course of time, things do change and you cannot look at an abominable past history to determine the present situation in a state vis a vis its treatment of ethnic groups.</p>
<p>Sorry to revive a dead thread.</p>
<p>For 2012 how has this stat changed?</p>
<p>paying4college - at the same time CA is the birth place of Asian American Studies. I would also tell you that I notice in urban area of CA asians have no problems. In rural areas you get the same looks you get anywhere else in the nation. Born and raised in CA fyi.</p>
<p>I’ll try to find that.</p>
<p>Santookie: Will this help?
[2012</a> At A Glance: Total Enrollment | OIRA](<a href=“http://oira.ua.edu/d/content/glance/2012-glance-total-enrollment]2012”>http://oira.ua.edu/d/content/glance/2012-glance-total-enrollment)</p>
<p>This is always fun to read.
<a href=“http://oira.ua.edu/d/content/reports/2011-2012-common-data-set[/url]”>http://oira.ua.edu/d/content/reports/2011-2012-common-data-set</a></p>
<p>The percent may be low overall, but that may be misleading. Many Asian students seem to be clustered in STEM and business…not spread over the 100+ majors.</p>
<p>OK, let’s go straight to the horse’s mouth when it comes to the Asian-American experience at 'Bama. I just queried a current Japanese-American undergraduate at UA who hails from Hawaii. Keep in mind that her home state is the most ethnically diverse state in the nation, a place where 57% of its residents claim Asian heritage.</p>
<p>This is what she told me:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For the record, I did not add the exclamation points above. :)</p>
<p>malanai - thanks for sharing that email. It’s very uplifting!</p>
<p>m2c and cuttle - Yes stats were very useful so around 2% and about 500 undergrads. Not too bad. The concept that they’re clusters around STEM makes its interesting, since engineering and science is probably around 12k students. Hmmmm food for though.</p>
<p>But yes does relieve our family a bit. We’ve never ever been to the south. Well I’ve driven through Texas once.</p>
<p>Only the ethnicities of American students are reported. If a student is an Asian int’l, he/she is not counted. There are about a 1000 int’l undergrads on campus, many of them are minorities (largely from Asia and South America). None of their numbers get counted. Thise probably explains why there seems to be more Asian students on campus than the reported numbers. </p>
<p>You may wonder why int’l ethnicities aren’t counted. There is a desire to know how many minority American students are enrolled in a college. There is a belief that if int’l minority numbers are allowed to be included it will distort the data. For instance, if all/nearly all of a school’s Black numbers were from int’l students from Africa or the Carribean, it would hide the fact that the school was not admitting African American students. </p>
<p>As someone is frequently in Ttown and frequently shops there, I have this observation: </p>
<p>As we all know, Bama has grown a lot over the last few years, hence the need to hire many, many more profs. As many of us know, many PhDs are ethnic…Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, Jewish, (I’ll include Italian since two of my son’s profs are from Italy), etc, therefore many/most of these hires have brought more diversity to the campus. Their families are obviously living in the community. When I’m out shopping at Target and Sams Club, it is an amazing diverse atmosphere…families with in moms in headscarves/apparel, Indian families, Asian families, etc. I admit that I have observed these families to see how they are treated within the community. I’ve never seen anything other than welcoming gestures. </p>
<p>And, the int’l student population seems to be filled with people of a variety of ethnicities. I often meet South American grad students, Asian grad students (mostly Chinese), etc. And, it seems (to me) that the grad school has a high number of ethnic students. When the tornado hit Ttown and many of the more local domestic students left campus early, the int’l and further-distance domestic students remained behind because their flights home had been booked pre-tornado. During the week after the tornado, we often ate in Lakeside Dining (Bama opened the Dining Halls to the public and fed everyone for free during that week). The number of Asian students (both undergrad and grad) in Lakeside Dining was astounding. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that I was home in Calif and on a UC campus ( 
). For those who don’t know, some of the UC campuses have 50% Asian populations. 
Anyway, nosy-people that we are, we would chat with these students. This is how I learned that these kids are largely in STEM and the Bschool (both undergrad and grad). I don’t recall meeting any Humanity majors. I do remember meeting a couple of grad students who were studying to be some kind of sports conditioning coaches or something like that. Don’t know exactly what the name of their area of study was, but they were TA’ing the credited Conditioning classes and running classes at the Rec Center.</p>
<p>As an Asian-American Parent with a UA freshman, I was more concerned with the number of OOS students than with the number of Asians when he was applying a year ago. A recent text from my DS, “I like it here.”<br>
With over 50% OOS in this freshman class, it lends itself to regional diversity which my wife and I like especially when my DS was born and raised in the same state.
UA has been more than welcoming with our DS and southern hospitality is first and foremost the best trait at The University of Alabama…Roll Tide!</p>
<p>Are there any Indians ( from South Asia ) at Alabama?</p>
<p>Yes, of course there are. I believe that one posts on this forum.</p>
<p>Also, the number of Asians, Hispanics, etc at Bama are probably a bit higher than what is being reported. Asian and Hispanic countries do send kids to Bama and their numbers do not get counted as ethnicities. Only domestic students’ ethnicities get counted.</p>
Thank you for this information. My daughter is participating in Distinguished Young Women - and if successful, it provides scholarships to mostly schools in the South (Alambama has a few). We are of Asian descent (my girls were born in the States), but I am trying to get a feel for what her experience would be and if she would feel like she fit in. I’ve heard a few different opinions as to what to expect, but I don’t know if any of that is based on anything but conjecture. Her friends now range in ethnicity, but the Asian population at her school isn’t high. I’m not necessarily looking for an Asian community for her - she just wants to feel at home.
Always… my best advice is to visit the campus. The University of Alabama is not only a beautiful campus but so many students feel right at home as soon as they begin to meet people, I can almost say right at home from the moment their feet touch campus soil. There really is such a thing as “Southern Hospitality” but it is more than that. I have heard Dr. Bonner (The University of Alabama’s President) refer many times to the “personal touch” of the university. I believe that your student will feel truly welcomed at Bama.
I would love to hear your input after your visit.
The large majority of asians seem like they are actually from Asia (mostly China) and not asian-american. Some of them drive pretty cool cars like Aston Martins, BMW M5s and AMG Mercedes. They tend to stick to themselves, but are friendly and always down to play basketball at the gym.
That’s all I got.
My son is half asian and one of his roomates is asian. They have not had ANY problems or discrimination. We are from the west coast and when we were visiting college campuses 2 years ago, we were pleasantly surprised at the number of Asians we saw on the UA campus (I really wasn’t expecting to see many in the south-my ignorance). My son LOVES being at UA and feels at home. My daughter will also be attending this coming Fall as a freshman. Come to think of it, two of her three roomates will also be asian/half asian. One is a NMSF (since someone above asked about asian NMF).
I agree with other posters: if you can afford to visit, It really helps to see if a school is a good fit for you 
Roll Tide!!!