I don’t want to duplicate what’s already been said about visits in other threads but do want to tell others about our time visting Alabama and learning about Blount since that it something that comes up occasionally and there isn’t as much info about.
First, my D is different from most posters here as she is not a STEM oriented kid, and she is not at the Presidential scholarship level. Reading CC you would think that everyone is a Presidential scholar. Well my D is a humanities kind of kid, planning to major in English, and is at the “Foundation in Excellence” level which is half tuition. She is in Honors College and her scholarship puts Alabama at the same price as our instate flagship, where she would not qualify for Honors. We were a bit worried that she wouldn’t be treated as well because she wasn’t at the same level as other kids.
I am happy to say that we were treated very well at the school. We met with Honors College people who were wonderful and had the personalized itinerary all prepared for her. My D’s reaction at the end of the day was “Everyone knew who I was, everyone knew my name”. It was quite impressive when we compare it to visits at other schools. I don’t think she was treated any differently because she did not have a Presidential scholarship. We requested that we be able to meet with Dr Hornsby, director of the Blount Initiative as D was very interested in the initiative as it described on the website. Our schedule was the general Campus Tour, lunch, Blount, then Honors College info session.
Dr. Hornsby is the director of the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, and also an English professor. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Blount Initiative is a small LLC in the School of Arts and Sciences, that is focused on liberal arts. Students take 5 Blount courses, plus two seminar series, and end up with a minor in Liberal Arts. While the courses are quite varied, I think I can best describe them as a mix of history, philosophy, English, and current events. It seems designed for kids who love deep thinking and learning and debating about ideas, which describes my D well. The class sizes are small, I think they said 15 was average, and the freshman classes are actually held on the first floor of Blount Hall, where all the freshmen in the program live. Dr. Hornsby was very enthusiastic about the program and gave us a real feel for what it was like with lots of anecdotes about what happens in a class, what the students do outside of class, etc. After hearing Dr. Hornsby’s take on the program, we had a tour of Blount Hall with a student who is a sophomore in the Initiative. It was nice to be able to hear her take on the program also.
Probably the one downside of the Initiative is that the housing in Blount Hall is not as nice as most of the suite housing. It consists of two doubles connected into a suite and sharing a bathroom, but with no common area, and no cooking facilities. They do make up for it with many common areas in the dorm and cooking areas for the students to use, but its definitely a step down from the dorms at Ridgecrest that we saw on the tour. D was not thrilled with the idea of 4 girls sharing a single bathroom.
Bottom line for the visit is that D liked Alabama a lot. She didn’t come away with a decision made, but I think it is in the top 2 right now. She also has decided not to apply to the school she was planning to apply to RD in January, as she feels that her choices now are all good (she has 4 acceptances so far with 2 schools still pending), and there really isn’t a need to get more. I’m quite happy about that.