Was a daughter, and I don’t really remember. I know that Wake was a school they eliminated. She s in grad school now so it’s been a number of years.
@fretfulmother
I don’t know anything about UA’s policies, but our oldest ds has life-threatening food allergies and was able to receive an exemption for the required on-campus housing and food plan at his university. He preferred off-campus living, so for him it was a good fit all around. I don’t know UA’s policies, but it might be worth asking if he is at all interested. Cooking your own food all the time requires easy kitchen access, so it might be possible.
FWIW, I do know that excess scholarship $$ is refunded to the student, so he could use scholarship $$ to pay for rent /food.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek - ok thank you! I talked to DS about UA very briefly before and he likes a lot of things about hte school. Maybe it’s even worth an email or call about whether they’d help with kosher food. The story is that it was a girl who was about to pick MIT, who convinced Caltech to start a kosher dining hall (which closed about 10 years later for lack of use, sadly).
I’d still consider Pitt as with the scores you mention, your guy would be a candidate for top merit aid. It’s worth an app. They are considered a higher level school than Temple (not that levels mean everything though).
Also, I’ve seen U Miami (FL) mentioned. They too are worth considering with stats you mentioned. I’ve seen students get superb merit aid from them
And consider U Rochester. They have decent merit aid and/or need based aid.
All of these would make good homes for Jewish students, provide a good education, AND have the potential for really decent offers. I’ve seen students turn down higher ranked schools for the offers they get at each of them. They did not regret their decisions.
@Creekland - THANKS!!
@PurpleTitan Thanks for that clarification. I naively assumed that acceptance rates were clearer indicators for safety/reach/match schools than they actually are.
@ucbalumnus - I went and looked at those CDS for a bunch of schools. Thanks for the link, because that site makes it very readable.
The grids are as one might expect (though it surprised me slightly that P says DI is “considered” and Y says it is not).
However, H has what I can only interpret as a fairly in-your-face listing - they list everything except I think DI and maybe one or two others as “considered” (whereas all the other colleges list things like grades or essays as “very important”… Or perhaps this is what they mean by “holistic” - nonetheless, H’s average admitted GPA and scores tell a story more “very important” than “considered” if you ask me. 
@futuredoc96, schools with an acceptance rate under 20% (generally far under that in RD) seem like safeties to you?
@PurpleTitan Admittedly there wasn’t much research behind my statement. It was just meant to get the conversation started because I noticed that no one had replied to the OP. I don’t think those are reaches for really anyone. Perhaps I should have said, “here are some schools which are still excellent choices, but may not have the same name recognition or reputation as an Ivy.” That would be more accurate. I’m just a state school bound kid myself, so I was just sharing the tiny bit that I knew about elite universities.
Tulane is a very popular match or safety for high-stat students, because they offer a free application, and non-binding Early Action. They also notify about merit aid when (or shortly after) they send out acceptances. Provided the applicant can afford Tulane, the early action will allow them to bypass other, less-prestigious safeties. A rejection, on the other hand, will signal the need to apply to more safe schools. My son heard from Tulane at Thanksgiving, and so anyone using them as a safety or low-match would have time to apply to more colleges in the event of bad news.
@futuredoc96, “I don’t think those are reaches for really anyone.”
Wut? Northwestern, Rice, Vandy, and Emory aren’t reaches for anyone?
“here are some schools which are still excellent choices, but may not have the same name recognition or reputation as an Ivy.”
Yeah, it makes sense to research before you speak.
@PurpleTitan Thank you!!! You have been so helpful. I will research now from now on and I won’t dare make misinformed comments on college confidential! I have learned my lesson!! 
@mom2aphysicsgeek @cptofthehouse @creekland @ucbalumnus - I hope I didn’t miss anyone interested - I had a nice email conversation with our UA rep and also the UA Hillel director. They were incredibly nice and responsive, but the upshot is that there is no kosher-supervised food on campus or in the local area. A kosher-keeping kid would have to buy ingredients (likely not able to find meat, cheese, or some kosher sundries but yes for fresh veggies, milk, pasta…) and make his/her food from scratch.
I grew up in a small midwestern town where we lived like that (my parents made everything from scratch and would go to the nearest big city several hours away, a few times a year for huge piles of frozen meat and so forth) - and I don’t think a college student would be well-served by doing so.
That said, I wonder if UA will eventually do more for kosher students. Their Hillel has been expanding and got a new building in 2011. It is possible that they will try to recruit more Jewish students (I know some southern schools have been doing so, for a variety of goals). But likely not on my timescale.
Not to beat a dead horse, but you may also want to check out UA-Huntsville, which is in a perhaps more diverse location. I am not sure, but I think UAH has similar scholarship opportunities to Tuscaloosa.
@ItsJustSchool - thank you!
@ItsJustSchool - sadly it looks like not much happening for Jewish kids there, either. However, Bama Hillel in general has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade, so today’s search may not be meaningful next year. Interestingly, one article I found talked about how public universities, including UA, were open to diversity during the days of quotas on Jewish people and Asian people, and there was a large influx of minorities to those universities in those days.
My safety was Harvard and I got in…
Jk. And I never did apply to Harvard (or any of the Ivies, for that matter).
My safety was Penn State only because I live in PA, am in the top 10%, and have solid SAT scores.
That’s too bad about UA. Hope you find a school which meets all of his needs.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek - thank you!! I bet we will. He’s a pretty easy-going guy and I’ve gotten so many great suggestions on this thread and others.
@fretfulmother, I’m not sure how true it is, but it’s been said that UMich, UC-Berkeley, and UCLA came to have the national reputations that they do now because of the accomplishments of students and researchers who were denied entry to the Ivies because of the Jewish quotas that were in place at the Ivies in those days.
Pitt has a strong reputation in the health fields these days. How much of it was due to Jonas Salk (who set up his lab at Pitt after being turned down by several other schools)?