My son got accepted to Engineering for both OSU and Alabama. He got scholarships to both but the one for Alabama is significantly more. He got accepted to Honors for Alabama and waiting to hear from OSU. He hopes to play Sousaphone in the marching band for whichever school he attends.
He is leaning towards OSU. I think he should consider Alabama for the cost (although a lot further than us since we are in VA).
Anyone have any experience with both of these schools or can give some insight?
I don’t have any insight into the academic question, but I saw in your post that your son wants to be in the marching band. I know at Alabama they do auditions for the marching band and not everyone is accepted–and I think the auditions have to be done before the end of April and I think they have to be done in person (I might be wrong on that though). Google “Million dollar band auditions” and see if you can find the info. You might already be aware of all of this, but wanted to make sure he doesn’t miss out for lack of knowledge on the process. Good luck!
I have two children at Alabama. We are from Pittsburgh which is likely even further away. Both children were in Engineering (son computer science, daughter Environmental Engineering). My son is graduating with a Masters in Computer Science achieved in 4 years and will owe nothing. He should run to the computer and accept the scholarship offer. Both schools should be great experiences and yield good jobs but nothing is better than having no debt.
Does he want to play in a marching band for a school that will win a National Championship?
We are familiar with the audition process for both schools. Thank you.
My son, who is OOS for both schools, has been accepted to both OSU and Alabama and has received nice scholarships to both. The Alabama scholarship makes the out of pocket cost for us less than even our own flagship. He’s gotten into Alabama’s honors college as well. We’ve heard good things about the Bama honors experience, but he just can’t get over the US News ranking for Alabama at 129, and we’re concerned how the ranking keeps dropping every year and show no signs of changing course.
My D20 considered both of those schools. Marching band is very important to her, so we checked out both marching programs as well as we could. My daughter prefers UA for their marching style. At OSU, if I recall correctly, they march in a high-step military corps style. My daughter doesn’t like that type of marching, so she ruled out OSU. I’m not sure if that type of thing matters to your son, but for my daughter, it was a deal breaker.
My daughter also did a marching band leadership camp at UA last summer. She thought that the band staff were fantastic and really liked the camp a lot. Previously, she was worried about the “prestige” factor at UA, but that quickly faded as she spent time at the school. She loves UA now and it is her first choice school.
Watch37,
As an alum, I am troubled by the slide in the rankings as well, not because I think it means UA is sliding in academic quality, I don’t believe that at all, but because I suspect it makes UA less attractive to more than just your child. However, the stats don’t reveal a significant drop in attractiveness of UA to top students. Looking at UA’s top 25th percentile of 32 (23-31 middle range) for Fall 2018, and its very large freshman class size, we can see that UA enrolls just as many or more top students in actual numbers (ACT of 32 or higher) as/than UF, Vanderbilt, UGA, and other highly ranked state schools.
Of course, UA still enrolls far more of the lower tier students, and thus has a lower graduation rate, one of the factors that explains UA’s slide in the rankings. Have you shared your child’s concern with UA admissions? I wish you would.
According to the College Board, UA’s top 25th percentile dropped from 33 to 32 Fall of 2018, likely due to UA having raised scholarship requirements for students who applied for that term. But it will likely go back to 33 this Fall given the positive changes made to UA scholarships for this Fall term.
It has been perplexing to me why UA has not raised its admission standard just enough to stop this slide in the rankings but then again, this slide is recent. For some reason, the trustees of UA feel obligated to admit lower tier students, at least more than trustees at other schools do. Take Clemson for example. Like UA, it is in a relatively poor state, yet Clemson has a much higher lower 25th percentile ACT score than almost every other state school in the South. I appreciate the intention to be as open as possible to lower tier but hard working students, but it seems to be backfiring at this point. We have been told that UA is now focusing on growing grad school enrollment, so perhaps it will be raising admission standards sooner than later.
I forgot to mention in the previous post that UA’s six year grad rate is increasing again. According to the College Board, its grad rate has increased from 68% to 72%. It had been stuck around 67-68% for about five years, so this is good news and should help with the rankings.
The slide in rankings is due to changes in how US News rates the universities rather than a decline in academics at UA. Back in 2013/2014 Bama was ranked around 80 as I recall. The quality of the students and rigor of academics is just as strong now as it was then. Two things happened. First, US News reshuffled the categories of which universities were rated together. This brought a good number of colleges such as Villanova into the same category as Bama and it was now ranked against these new colleges. Second, US News recently changed its weighting to give an advantage to universities who graduate students on Pell grants, and a disadvantage to universities who offer strong students merit scholarships.
The good news is that employers don’t hang out on the US News website watching how the rankings go up and down the with the same all consuming interest as people posting here in CC. You son has good options and I’m sure he’ll do well whatever college he chooses.
When we were on campus visiting in October we actually had lunch with one of their admissions officers and talked about this topic a little–not specifically about the ranking, but why, since the top 25% is so high, that the bottom 25% is so low. What I heard gave me a lot of comfort as the parent of a potential student in that top 25% but also a lot to think about just as a human, related to education inequality that exists in our country.
What the admissions officer told me was that they strive to enroll the high achievers, but as a state-funded institution, they also feel a strong responsibility to educate students from Alabama. The average ACT score for a senior in the state of Alabama is just above a 20. High schools with the highest scores average just above 22, and high schools with the lowset scores average below 16. Therefore, if UA has about 40 percent of its student body from in-state, there are going to be some lower scores. He wished the in-state averages were better, but recognised how some students struggle against overwhelming odds just to get into that bottom 25%.
I have thought about this a numer of times since our visit. My son’s suburban Colorado above average, but not top high school has an average ACT of almost 24, and a neighboring high school has an average above 26. I think we on CC sometimes forget the variety of experience that exists.
I was slightly worried about rank/reputation, and gave a hard look at what is important to us as a family. For my DS, what matters is getting into a top grad program, and given the opportunities for top students at Alabama have I don’t think it will be a problem. If he was going straight into the workforce, our analysis might have been a little different, but also maybe not since he is looking at engineering and Alabama’s programs are ABET accredited.
Yes, I have heard that too, but as I pointed out in my post above, Clemson also is in a state with challenging demographics and a lot of poverty, but Clemson’s lower 25th percentile ACT score (27-31 middle range) is much higher than UA’s (23-31 middle range). Auburn’s is two points higher (25-30 middle range) now and it is in the same state! There are plenty of colleges in Alabama for the lower tier student. Given this fact, it is not UA’s obligation to admit lower tier students. It is not like they can’t transfer to UA after proving themselves at other schools. Auburn in fact steers many of its lower tier applicants to AU in Montgomery, but lets them start taking some classes at Auburn even before gaining full time admission to the main campus in Auburn. I see no reason why UA can’t do something similar with Shelton State. Hopefully, it is about to do that.
The dropping in ranking is not because Bama is getting worse or not getting better or anything like that. The metrics US news uses keeps changing to fit the results that US News wants to get. And USNews seems to have an agenda against southern publics. Just a few years ago, Bama was around 80 (dont remember exact) after quickly moving up over a few years. Then suddenly US News changed its metrics and Bama sunk like a rock. It’s not like the school’s quality changed.
What do you think the ranking tells you? Do you think it tells you the quality of education in the classroom? No it doesn’t. That metric is around 40% of the ranking!
There’s nothing to worry about. It won’t hurt career paths. It won’t hurt job prospects. It’s certainly not hurting grad/law/med/dental school admissions, since Bama students are getting into top programs year after year.
First of all, I think my brief comment above about Alabama’s ranking in US News has unintentionally veered the discussion off course from the OP’s original question about specific programs at OSU and Alabama. I didn’t mean to do that, but it certainly has raised some lively discussion about the value of rankings.
Let me say that my comment was not meant to shed a negative light on Alabama. I have many friends who have either attended UA or have kids there, and the feedback I’ve received about their experiences have been positive. I also fall into the camp of people who, like Colorado19and22, think that UA deciding to provide a quality education to in-state students who don’t have strong GPAs or ACT scores is commendable. Why not give these students an opportunity to attend a flagship university instead of relegating them to a satellite campus or community college?
But Alabama’s decision to take this commendable path means that it will continue to languish at the bottom of the US News rankings of flagships, unless and until it decides it wants to be included in the conversation with other elite public universities like Michigan, UVA, UCLA, etc. Flagships like Ohio State, Georgia and Florida have decided they want to compete with these elite public universities and have taken the necessary steps to do so, including admitting mostly students with high stats. At Ohio State, for example, over 96% of the freshman admitted class graduated in the top 25% of their high school class. These elite public schools’ bottom 25% have ACT scores of 28, while at Alabama it’s 23. That’s a huge gap, and having 40% or 50% or even 60% of students with 30+ ACT scores won’t ever be enough to bridge that gap.
@Mom2collegekids - I have to disagree with the comment that US News “seems to have an agenda against southern publics.” If that were true, why have southern publics like UGA and Florida risen in the ranks over the years? And why have non-southern publics, like Washington, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, significantly dropped in the rankings just like Alabama? Now I do agree with you that the metrics used by US News don’t entirely make sense, but as the publisher of this widely-used ranking system, they get to set the rules and we have to play by them, whether we like it or not. Until some other organization comes up with an alternative ranking system that outshines US News and becomes the go-to ranking system, US News is it. Ironically, Alabama complaining about unfair rules set by US News keeping them out of the top 100 is like UCF complaining about unfair rules keeping them out of the college playoffs, allowing Alabama to win the National Championship (Sorry, had to get that one in!)
All kidding aside, the bottom line is that US News rankings, even being as controversial as they are, matter to prospective students and their parents. They just do. And they very much matter to the colleges. For some students/parents, it’s given very little weight and is considered somewhere in the pecking order with other college decision making factors, such as weather, distance from home, financial aid, school colors, dorm options, food options, etc. For others, it’s more important and I can’t fault those students/parents for putting reliance on the rankings in making their decision.
“Why not give these students an opportunity to attend a flagship university instead of relegating them to a satellite campus or community college?”
First, because that is what those satellite schools and community colleges are for. The state of Alabama has a very large number of colleges and junior colleges throughout the state. Why should the state flagship be the remedial institution of the state? That is absurd. Second, these students would still have a chance to attend UA, but only after they have proven themselves at other state universities, or junior colleges. Raising the standards just a bit would likely have a huge effect on things like graduation and first year retention rates, not to mention the lower percentile numbers. I would have less of a problem with cutting students slack who have lower ACT, but higher GPAs. If a student has a low GPA, why in the world should the state’s flagship be obligated to admit them before they have proven themselves somewhere else?
But how can someone with a 23 on his or her ACT be considered “remedial”? That’s a perfectly fine score and that student can do just fine at a flagship with hard work. And back when most flagships had open admissions, why were they able to properly educate students with average or even below average ACTs? It can be done at flagships because it has been done. It’s just that some flagships have chosen a different route, which I don’t have an issue with, just as I don’t have an issue with Alabama’s approach.
The problem with this is that many people equate a high ranking with instructional rigor and high academic achievement of the student body. US News is actually moving in the opposite direction with the changes it is making in the factors it uses to rank colleges. In December of last year US News received a letter from prominent Democratic senators urging
As a result US News did indeed change how it formulated and weighted its rankings.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Unusual-Letter-Democratic/245250
Colleges such as Bama who recruit high stats students and give them merit aid are now at a disadvantage in the US News rankings. The excellence of the instruction and the achievements of the many outstanding students has remained the same.
I really think the school would receive a huge blowback if they made it even harder for Alabamians to attend UA. As it is, a lot of folks in the state believe (incorrectly!) that the huge increase in OOS students has taken spots from in-state ones. It’s a tough balancing act making the various constituencies happy, and the administration may decide they need to raise the ACT cutoff to respond to the decline in US News rankings, but it will not be an easy decision.
@Watch37, I understand your concerns; in the end, your son and you need to do what you think is best. My son took the money at UA over the opportunity to study engineering at our flagship, Penn State, but it was an easier decision because Penn State offered him zip financially, and he really didn’t care enough for the school after we visited to justify the additional cost to us.
If your son visits both schools and prefers UA, encourage him to take the better financial package and embrace all the opportunities the school offers. Once he’s there, he’ll never give OSU another thought (unless they beat UA on the football field!).
Nobody in the real world gives a second thought to US News rankings, and top students at UA, especially in engineering and business, do very well.
I am not expecting UA to reject all applicants with an ACT of 23, especially if the applicant has a GPA of 3.5 or even slightly lower. ACT of 21 is a different story, though even there, I would be more lenient if the applicant had a GPA of 3.5 or higher. We all know even highly ranked schools are usually much more lenient with applicants who are athletes. I am not asking UA to be less lenient than other schools.
But then again, I am not on the Admissions Committee. I just notice that UA seems to be one of the few state flagships that seems to think it is obligated to accept the lower tier students and it seems to have affected its place in the rankings. Ultimately, I agree that the rankings don’t matter much, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter to potential applicants.
@LucieTheLakie My son has decided to attend Ohio State, even though the cost of OSU will be higher than either Alabama or our own flagship. He feels it’s the right fit for him and as his parent I agree 100% (a nice scholarship from OSU certainly helped). Alabama was very gracious in offering him lots of merit scholarship money, admission to the Honors College, and all the perks that come with Honors. But in the end, he felt OSU checked all the right boxes, with one of those boxes being a research university with a top tier national ranking.