Reputation outside of South

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
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<p>Thank you to all the positive and polite posts that helped answer my question. This thread was extremely helpful. I am sorry that it got so catty. </p>

<p>I think FiveUnderPar just doesn’t like the fact that standardized test scores weigh so heavily in the scholarship process. I’m just sick of people getting mad at me because I receive the same benefits of a NMF scholar without the high test scores but that is not my fault. It is important to note that those are two seperately operated and funded programs. </p>

<p>As far as my OP, it could have been worded better but considering that this is a blog site I really didn’t think it necessary for me to use essay-level language on this site. The attack from the wording was completely unnecessary. My question was valid. I’ve lived in Alabama my whole life and I’d do anything to get out of here. I’m willing to go the extra mile to get where I need to be, I just wanted to make sure it was possible.</p>

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<p>And slippy 2000, you said that you weren’t trying to sound curt but what was the point of typing,
“why come on here to ask about academic reputation? I mean… really???” </p>

<p>The very purpose of College Confidential is to ask questions like these because academic reputation IS important and VERY subjective. Statistics alone available on the internet through “gazillions of megabytes at the push of a button” cannot tell you everything you need to know. So, what better forum is there than College Confidential to inquire of such things that rely so heavily on opinion…</p>

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<p>And I am not anti-south. I just want to go and explore different cultures and expand my social horizons. It’s not a big deal. There are things i love about the south and things I don’t love too much, just like everybody else.</p>

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<p>Congrats on the NAF scholarship…and you don’t need to apologize to anyone…Bama offers it, pays for it, and you qualify…so take it. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>Since you are getting the big scholarship (which you mention is a big cost savings), then that will free up your money to be used for int’l travel so that you can experience other cultures. :)</p>

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<p>ScorpioChik -</p>

<p>In hindsight, I apologize that my initial response was a bit over the top. I, too, could have made my point without the harshness. Ironically, I have a daughter that is a high-stats kid in a similar situation — with a host of wonderful opportunities facing her that she must choose from. That’s the potential problem with these message boards — we type these posts in seconds, sending them off to for all to see, that reach people that we don’t know — and with hindsight, perhaps we could have phrased them better. I think that I had just come off of a couple of other school’s CC boards reading about other accomplished kids that were frustrated that they weren’t gaining acceptance to their majors — or acceptance to special programs. Combined with staring at my iMac with a backdrop of blazing Texas sun coming through the window, I went off on your post. Not a justification. You’re just a kid the age of my daughter looking for a little guidance.</p>

<p>My daughter and I recently attended a UA reception here in Houston, Texas at a first-rate venue. The day of the event, my daughter received a autodial call from the local UA rep to make sure to only bring one parent as the RSVP’s were potentially going to exceed the 800 person limit. I have been to numerous college dog-&-pony shows over the last couple of years and none were as big and energetic as this one. The point is that high achieving students here and around the country are really catching on to the scholarship and educational opportunities at the Honors Colleges of the southern flagship universities. You’re already seeing that in UA’s USNWR rankings other the past few years. The seeds of increasingly talented entering classes are bearing fruit and should continue to do so. Look at how tough it is to get into UFE or CBH. At Ole Miss’s Barksdale Honors College I think that applications were up 27% this year. They have a different approach than UA, and someone posted yesterday that they were rejected with a 31 ACT. Over 1,000 qualified applicants for 300+ spots. You kids that are lucky enough to be in these Honors Colleges are already building resumes before you step in the door. If students take advantage of the opportunities at these places, and continue to achieve high grades, they can pretty much do anything coming out of Bama.</p>

<p>I am blessed to live in a very nice area of Houston, and I rountinely see Bama stickers and affiliation plates on the tailgates of Range Rovers and the like. A few homes have UA flags proudly flying (a recent national championship is going to bring them out). Bama is on the clearly on the rise.</p>

<p>By the way, I wasn’t personally insulted by the original post. I’m not jealous of high stats kids — my daughter is one of them. I just knew that the post was going to upset some of the people that were deeply rooted in UA. Several of the phrases in the original post were not going to be well received by the constituents of the Bama board — and that’s all I was trying to say. Where and how you communicate something makes a difference. Maybe we both learned something from this.</p>

<p>Let me say it again — Bama is on the rise and I think that a smart kid can do alot with the opportunities it presents — and I think that you’re going to see Bama grads in all kinds successful positions in various places beyond the southeast.</p>

<p>ScorpioChik — I hope this helps.</p>

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<p>I think where I went off the rails, ScorpioChik, was in assuming that you were a Northerner who chose to just drop in and dump on someone else’s school. I did not realize you were from Alabama. My apologies. (Having a bad day… had my cereal in the bowl and discovered we had no milk. So I’m grumpy.)</p>

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<p>This has been an interesting topic for me. Being from Northern California, Alabama was not on our radar. However, the more I discover about UA the more I like it. My son will be attending this fall. The reaction we get is mixed. Some people say, “Do you really want him to attend college so far away?” or “College in the south, they are so conservative (backward) there.”
UA strikes me as very warm, inviting, and friendly. I doubt that my son will get lost in the shuffle. Here, in California some dorm have 3 or 4 students in a dorm room designed for 2. Students attending community college in California find it difficult to get their classes and graduation will most certainly take more than 4 years from CSU or UC. One parent told me that the average class size is only 35 at one CSU.
UA does small things right. For example, at orientation, siblings are invited to attend. Other universities leave the younger sibling sitting in the hotel room. I appreciate the communication with parents and activities like parent weekend.</p>

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<p>We toured UA last Friday with my son, including very impressive meetings with a faculty member in Aeronautical Engineering and a senior student in Chemical Engineering. Sounds like engineers from UA do very well in terms of jobs, graduate schools, scholarships, etc. I left thinking that if he goes to UA and does the work he could get into most any job or graduate school he wanted to (it was interesting that even though UA does not have a specific program in Petroleum Engineering they still place CE grads in PE jobs). If he becomes NMF and can go to UA for free, I would be thrilled.</p>

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<p>I would really love some anecdotal evidence. It would be a huge help if someone can post (or PM) details of recent engineering grads or current seniors with definite plans.</p>

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<p>The senior CE we had lunch with was going to medical school at UAB next year. She said that the other senior CE students *** who had done a 1-year co-op during college to get real-world engineering experience (she emphasized this point) *** either had jobs lined up, were still choosing between job offers, or were set to go to grad school. I think mom2collegekids has a son who was CE at UA…maybe she has more anecdotal information about where his classmates went after undergrad.</p>

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<p>I would really love some anecdotal evidence. It would be a huge help if someone can post (or PM) details of recent engineering grads or current seniors with definite plans.</p>

<p>========</p>

<p>You may not get many postings because this forum didn’t start getting popular until about 2 years ago…so most of the students/parents posting are juniors, sophs, frosh, or incoming.</p>

<p>UAProphet was posting for awhile. He’s graduated with a ChemE degree and immediately found a very good job (I believe in his home state in the Midwest).</p>

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<p>I too would like to hear some anecdotal postings about what Bama engineering grads are doing. The recent career fair had mostly automotive industries. Most of son’s friends that are chem eng majors are indeed premed. Would love to hear about any job placements outside of the automotive industry and/or other regions of the country. Had met some engineering students during CBH weekend who had done co-ops with the local power company and had prospective jobs there upon graduation. And some of son’s friends are actually doing co-ops at Mercedes Benz next year. But curious to hear of any jobs/co-ops in areas outside of the south or automotive industry.</p>

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<p>^ and/or acceptances to elite engineering grad schools. Would MIT, Stanford, and the like be impressed by a top UA grad? Do grad schools value geographic diversity like they do for undergrads?</p>

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<p>My math grad son (not eng’g) is in an elite school’s PhD program. So, not a problem. He as accepted into every PhD program he applied to. His PhD peers are from everywhere…elite undergrads, flagships, and regional publics and privates. It’s a myth that you have to go to an elite undergrad to get into an elite grad school.</p>

<p>Grad school acceptance is about…GPA, courses taken, GRE scores, LORs, experiences/research.</p>

<p>When we’ve attended the Friday honors awards over the years, it was announced where many of the seniors would be attending grad schools…the top schools were definitely mentioned…MIT, Ivies, Berkeley, UMich, etc, etc.</p>

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<p>Ok, I’m going to stick my neck out here w/ a couple of comments.</p>

<p>My son is definitely going to UA…but it was a rocky road, decision-wise for him, especially after he toured the more well-known and probably more reputable engineering schools (w/ aero emphasis). The comment someone made above about co-ops/internships really caught my eye: this was a definite deal-breaker for my son - he KNEW he had to have either of these during college in order to get experience and job prospects at the end of college. </p>

<p>I can honestly say - and I hope you don’t jump down my throat here - that UA is WAY behind in the coop and internship ‘bandwagon’ (we had a very bad experience w/ this part of our tour, so if you want details, PM me…I’ve calmed down since…). There are very valid reasons for their being behind IMO…and I’ve drunk the Koolaid and I do believe help is on the way. Let me explain. </p>

<p>Specifically, there are something like 18 aero eng seniors at UA right now; in contrast, the incoming freshman class will probably have ~100. Just think about that for a moment. That is PHENOMENAL growth. In the recent ‘past’, there have not been many companies interested (or had the resources) to come down to li’l ol’ UA to interview just a couple of kids. Companies are after a much larger pool of students.</p>

<p>So, as the years tick over, YES, I have complete faith that UA will get on companies’ radars, and YES, there will be many more opportunities for our students.</p>

<p>Secondly, for aero specifically, the classes have in the past been so tiny that some classes are only offered certain semesters in alternative years. If you miss your semester or even year to take that class, guess what - you’re waiting another full year to take it. If students were to take a co-op in aero engineering, I know for a fact that this would not only put them a full year behind (which is typical), but more likely 2 years (since co-ops are usually multiple semesters, alternating between summer/fall and spring/summer). I know (again, I have faith!) that UA classes and its curriculum will grow as its student base grows, so I’m pretty certain that in a year or two, coops will become more and more prevalent rather than the rarity they are today.</p>

<p>I look at my son as a kind of pioneer. He decided to go out on a huge limb, to a university that offers limited coops, internships, and onsite job interviews in his field. And while that originally was a deal breaker for him, the other, multiple positives at UA far outweigh his unease about job prospects. He knows (and we parents know) how successful he will be, based on the opportunities he will have at UA…and, I will add that he is NOT NMSF, NOT UFE, NOT CBHP. He could have chosen to study at a place where everyone knows its name…but instead he has chosen to study at a place where everyone will know HIS name. We parents are very excited to help him help put UA even further on the map. :)</p>

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<p>^ This is my biggest concern. S was accepted at some top schools, including Georgia Tech (he will hear about MIT tomorrow night). GT has no question marks when it comes to recruiting, job placement, grad school, and especially internship/co-op. Everything we hear and see about UA (and Honors) is great, but I worry about passing on “write your own ticket” schools for UA.</p>

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<p>I’m a stat nut and an analyst by nature, so I’m going to share my absolute favorite source of data on engineering programs, if I may. I’m not sure the link will come through on CC, but here goes: [College</a> Profiles: American Society for Engineering Education](<a href=“Page not found”>College Profiles) . PM me if this doesn’t come through intact. You’ll want to look at the ‘online profiles’ section.</p>

<p>ASEE is the American Society for Engineering Education. In our college searching, I slogged through many pages of these online profiles for various schools. The latest data are still 2010, but this is still a gold-mine, IMO. </p>

<p>This site if not for the faint-hearted! But you will be rewarded if you are patient to learn how to manipulate through the various fields (left-hand side of the profiles) and zillions of pages. Where else can you instantly and effortlessly get actual data on how many students are enrolled in various branches of engineering, by year, by race, by gender, etc…from hundreds of schools??? The mind boggles. </p>

<p>Another GREAT page to look at is under ASEE’s Publication called “The Profiles & Data Book” Engineering Statistics link - this takes you to a document called “Engineering By The Numbers”.</p>

<p>Why I like the ASEE data pages is that they are starkly black and white: they have none of the fluff that you get when trying to compare schools from glossy website pages or brochures. And, the profiles’ data are all in the same format from school to school, so you’re probably comparing apples w/ apples…</p>

<p>Enjoy! :)</p>

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<p>I didn’t realize how small the aeroE program had been. I know that the EE and MechE programs have typically had the most students, and the ChemE program is decent sized, but I didn’t realize AeroE had been so small.</p>

<p>I don’t know that much about co-ops because my kids’ scholarships didn’t really require them to leave school for a semester, work, then return. But, they’ve done summer internships…but that was as ChemE…not AeroE. (Older son started as ChemE, but changed to math, but he kept his summer internship…lol.)</p>

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<p>Since this is the University of Alabama forum, I want to throw my input into the ring regarding UAH’s engineering program.</p>

<p>If engineering is truly something you’re interested in, why is UA being considered but not UAH? Huntsville is a city built on aerospace and UAH is a school known for its engineering program. In fact, that is part of the point for the UA system: UAT, UAB, and UAH all specialize in widely different fields and it plays into the strength as a whole. </p>

<p>UAH graduates often move into NASA and many engineering companies in the area; I’d be willing to bet more often than UA graduates as well. Similarly, UAH actually performs more engineering research than UA despite its smaller size and it would be much easier to really stand out among the crowd.</p>

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<p>Parent here with freshman aerospace engineering student. They started with 83 students in August and are down to 57 this semester. According to what my son has been told, they will lose many more after first semester second year. He has been told by upperclassman the curriculum is very difficult but rewarding. My son is doing very well and loves it.</p>

<p>Good luck to your son aeromom. Welcome to the family, Roll Tide.</p>