I’m from California but I come from an extremely conservative family who owns land/house where my mom grew up in Virginia. I spend all my summers there. I have cousins in Tennessee, NC and VA. I’m applying to mostly SEC schools.Curious if anyone could give me any information about social life at SEC schools if your not in-state or in my case not necessarily in region. I have a sis at Vandy and a brother at TCU (tri delt and delt) My dad was a sigma nu.
U of Alabama is half OOS so being OOS is not a big deal. 1000 Calif students are at UAlabama.
I don’t think any of the other SEC schools have that many Calif students.
I don’t think you’d have any social life problems at Bama.
UGa has very few OOS students.
UGA doesn’t have a lot of OOS students, but UGA is a very, very good place to go to school, and is the second best school in the SEC (Vanderbilt being the best, obviously). I would check out Texas A&M if you’re a conservative person. Very good school that is staunchly conservative and has a lot of tradition. Baylor and TCU are good options if you want to go the private religious route. I live in Fort Worth, and my entire family (save one or two people) graduated from Baylor, so I can tell you that the schools are nearly identical outside of being 1 1/2 hours from each other.
Baylor also offers good scholarships that can get the costs down to be on par with OOS tuition.
What are your stats?
Attending a school where there aren’t many OOS students can be a problem. Such schools often become ghost towns during weekends where there is less to do.
There is rarely ever a time when you can’t find something fun to do at UGA, or any other SEC school for that matter.
I agree that you wouldn’t have a problem with any of the schools emptying out on the weekend. UGa, and all Georgia schools for that matter, are very much instate because of the great deal that a lot of Georgia students get on tuition with the hope scholarship. They have no reason to leave.
Ole Miss is after bama with about 40% out of state. From what I understand, it’s a little more southern.
USC, from what i understand, has a lot of out of state students, but they all draw from around South Carolina.
The social life at all the schools are very Greek.
USC-Columbia has attracted significant numbers of OOS students by means of good financial aid for years. And Athens is a great place to attend college but there are stronger programs, especially in engineering, at Louisiana State, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Auburn.
“UGA doesn’t have a lot of OOS students, but UGA is a very, very good place to go to school, and is the second best school in the SEC (Vanderbilt being the best, obviously.”
I always hear that Florida or TAM are the second best SEC schools. ???
OP - how much have you seen with campus visits? What are you wanting to study, and what are your goals?
I got a degree from TAMU, but IMHO UA offers a great academic and campus experience for UG, in-state or OOS. DD is at UA. UA does have impressive Greek visibility and opportunity, but if one is not interested in Greek (like DD) then that is fine too (majority of campus is not Greek).
Lots of GA students attend other schools (many are at AU). Not sure why other poster thinks so highly of UGa.
Sounds like you are comfortable with the south - need to narrow down your scope. Spending time in VA, perhaps you have visited schools in that geographic area.
If you are a HS senior, you need to get going on applications.
Would your conservative family be okay with you attending a state school? I think most don’t care about promoting socialist institutions, but you should probably make sure they’re willing to cover the costs.
Ah you’re right!!! Florida is better than Georgia academically, it’s just hard to remember they exist sometimes as a UGA fan 
As for TAMU, they’re about equal, but UGA is ranked higher and I think Athens is just prettier than CStat.
I believe that Texas A&M is stronger than nearly SEC school in most disciplines. For one, TAMU has for years had more money to fund its rise. They were hiring prominent faculty away from other institutions when I was in college during the ice age.