UA Honors College questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
1

Hi. I have been struggling to find some specific answers online to random questions I have about UA. We are scheduled for a visit in a few weeks and my daughter is over the moon excited. She has been so impressed with the communication, attention to detail, and the support that she has received. She has been dismissive of some of the more critical comments about UA that she has received from her friends but some have weighed on her. Her friends (juniors and seniors) are all immersed in the college search (juniors) and acceptance (seniors) world now and convinced that their choices are the best choices for everyone. She has tried to find the answers to some of these questions but has not been successful. I thought I would try to figure out answers to some of our questions before our visit. I am happy to do the research myself if you could point me to a specific site, or I am happy with any information that you may be able to provide.

-What is the male to female ratio in the Honors College? (I have found the overall statistics but not sure if these % hold true for those in the honors college)

-What % of students from OOS transfer out of UA (first 2 semesters) each year?
-What is the 4 year graduation rate from the Honors College?

-What is the Greek participation rate for OOS? For Honors College students?

If this information is not readily available, we will be on campus in a few weeks and can figure it out.

Thank you in advance for any information that you may have.

2

You might try exploring the University of Alabama’s Office of Institutional Research website (there are Factbooks an various other reports, unfortunately many not updated with information beyond 2014.) Website is oira.ua.edu

Out of curiosity, I wanted to look at the Honors College stats (available in the Factbooks.) But all I could surmise is that between 2009/2010-2013/2014, over 230 students who had entered as freshmen into the Honors College in Fall 2009 were no longer part of the Honors College four years later. But no way to tell which students, or reasons why. Students lose Honors College status when their GPA drops below 3.3, but the Honors College takes a long time to figure this out, and some students have remained classified as Honors even up to two semesters after they had missed that 3.3 GPA (I know this from my student’s Honors acquaintances.) There are Honors students who miss the 3.0 mark and go on scholarship probation. How many? No report I found revealed that. However, I know it happens, and OOS students are the ones who are most likely to leave if they cannot get off of scholarship probation. What is interesting is that they do get off of probation, maintaining their scholarships, but are likely to still be suspended from the Honors College and lose the only real benefits - early registration and Honors Housing. There must be a good number of Greek students in the Honors College because the Honors activities flyers often tout earning Greek points for attending.

I have been told that the male/female ratio among Honors students seems similar to the overall ratio - 45% Male/ 55% Female.

What I have told other OOS students contemplating Alabama is to make sure they bank a 4.0 GPA that first semester and don’t overdo it with a heavy schedule. Even Honors students underestimate that transition to college, which can be even more challenging for OOS students who have to go through it without having the option to drive home on the weekends to see family and friends. Don’t get in the position of putting that scholarship at risk, because as much as the university uses it to lure top students,and makes those students feel so valued that they are willing to come all the way to Tuscaloosa, the university puts very little effort into helping those students who give clear indication that they are at risk, and face losing that scholarship when things don’t go as expected.

3

Interesting questions. My daughter is a senior and I have to admit that I don’t know the answers to any of them.

4

thank you @chesterton - I will check out the factbooks.

Common sense would dictate that the Honors College 4 year graduation rate would be much higher than the general population, but it would be nice to see some evidence. My daughter is curious about Greek Life but will not sacrifice her learning – she is particularly curious about girls who juggle sorority life and rigorous classes.

5

@chesterton I was with you until, “the university puts very little effort into helping those students who give clear indication that they are at risk, and face losing that scholarship when things don’t go as expected.”
The resources are there for every student who finds themselves in the unusual situation of needing help be it academic, social, even mental. But the students won’t have their hand held the whole way if at all. The student must seek the help needed. For a great many it is a difficult lesson to learn.
I do find the gpa probation period is a very generous one compared to other universities to which my DS applied. There was one university that put you on probation while at the same time dropping your scholarship until you regained satisfactory standing or left the university. OUCH! A very big factor in not accepting the offer to that school.

6

Does anyone know or are there statistics available on how many students lose their scholarships their freshman or sophomore year and does that differ by major?

7

<<<<
What is the male to female ratio in the Honors College? (I have found the overall statistics but not sure if these % hold true for those in the honors college)

-What % of students from OOS transfer out of UA (first 2 semesters) each year?
-What is the 4 year graduation rate from the Honors College?

-What is the Greek participation rate for OOS? For Honors College students?
<<<<

I don’t think stats are published or even followed for some of those things.

Male/Female HC ratio…never heard of any mentioned stats. I assume that it’s close to half female/half male…like the school. No reason why it wouldn’t be.

OOS transfers? I don’t know of the number there either, but I would want the OOS scholarship vs OOS non-scholarship separated out. OOS w/o scholarships, whose families are really struggling to pay the OOS costs, would be more likely to require their child to leave after the first year.

I personally know a mom whose exhusband “promised” to pay half of their OOS non-scholarship student’s school costs, but flaked, and that student had to leave (not willingly).

At all schools there are students who get homesick or who really “weren’t ready” to be away from home, and likely some of those leave. I only know of one student, in all the years I’ve followed UA, transferred because he “hated UA,” and later he transferred AGAIN from his next school, and then later was Dx’d with severe depression and commuted to a local school from home.

Speaking of depression, as well as anxiety and ADHD…some of these issues tend to “pop up” or “get worse” when a child is 18-21, particularly when away from home. Anyone with a child who has or might have these issues should receive proper treatment and be on a proper plan before deciding to go away to college.

I’ve never seen the 4 year grad rate for the HC, but I doubt that it’s an issue…unless the student radically changes his major halfway thru. HC kids tend to come in with AP credits, and often can graduate in 3 years…but many CHOOSE to stay for 4 years. Some students CHOOSE to do a co-op, which does cause a delay, but they still graduate within 8 semesters of their scholarships.

Now that UA has the STEM to MBA program, I don’t know how those students are choosing to graduate. They would have the option of graduating at year 4 and then graduating with MBA at year 5.

OOS Greek population? No stats for that, either. HC students who are Greek? No stats for that.

My impression has always been that there are fewer STEM majors who are in the traditional single-sex Greek Houses. Most eng’g/CS students don’t have time to be in a traditional single-sex House. There is a co-ed Eng’g Greek House that is popular.

@pokerqueen I’ve never seen any stats for that. Bama is very generous about letting kids recover from a bad semester or bad year. I would imagine that Eng’g and CS students would have the bigger challenge, but that just means that parents/students need to be vigilant that the student doesn’t overwhelm himself by taking on too much any one semester. Some kids try to overdo and double/triple major, take too many credits in a semester, and then have a problem.

8

<<<
over 230 students who had entered as freshmen into the Honors College in Fall 2009 were no longer part of the Honors College four years later. But no way to tell which students, or reasons why. Students lose Honors College status when their GPA drops below 3.3, but the Honors College takes a long time to figure this out, and some students have remained classified.
<<<

I know from my younger son’s experience, that he almost dropped being in the HC because he was a ChemEng’g major and premed. He nearly didn’t complete the HC requirements. In fact, about a month before his graduation, he was told that he hadn’t completed the req’ts, even though he had 18 honors credits. At that time, all 18 credits had to be “seminar” HC classes, and one of his HC classes wasn’t. He appealed, and the HC accepted, and then changed their policy some time after.

That was a problem for many eng’g students who couldn’t fit the previous requirements. Since then, the requirements have been tweaked a bit to make it easier for Engineering students to meet the requirement.

I imagine that there are a number of eng’g students who are riding a 3.0 - 3.2 GPA and who no longer qualify for the HC. They still qualify for their scholarships, though.

9

Don’t see any break out for honors for UA (or other school’s honors programs).

About 14% of freshman overall at UA don’t return for sophomore year

About 61% of freshman don’t graduate in 4 years

10

@ClarinetDad16 just a theory here but may partially explain the 4 year undergrad rate:

In the past, students in a program called University Scholars were allowed to take graduate classes simultaneously with undergraduate graduate classes and get both undergrad and grad degrees at year 5. Posters with older UA children who are graduates may need to correct me on this, but I believe in the past students were encouraged to hold off on completing their final undergrad requirements until they were in their final semester to continue to participate in the program. Such a program would partially explain why honors kids might have CHOSEN to graduate in 5 years instead of 4.

Nowadays, it is different.

I suspect getting dinged on the four year rate is why UA now allows presidential scholars and National Merit Finalists to go ahead and get their undergrad in 3 years or less and use any remaining semesters for graduate programs or law school - something my kids are definitely going to take advantage of.

11

Thank you all for your input and experiences.

As we are OOS and my daughter will be part of the Honors College if she attends UA we were curious about retention and graduation rates. We were trying to explain to her that the published numbers take into account a very large range of students - some who are not ready for the academics of college, some who can’t afford to continue and some who leave for personal reasons unrelated to the school. The graduation rate is troubling as it is much, much lower than other schools that she has put on her list (some much smaller and certainly different types of schools).

We are trying to help her to be as logical and realistic as possible while making this huge decision. We don’t want her taken in by fitness centers, beautiful grounds, and the dream of college lifestyle - this is not directed at UA, this is our focus for all tours. She is 17 and fell in love with the idea of UA – and we suspect that our upcoming tour will seal the deal. We would be very happy if this is the place for her, but we want the decision based on real information about her real life goals for attending university.

12

While I agree that choosing a college needs to first and foremost be about the education, isn’t that why your daughter applied? My DD is having a very difficult time choosing a school but admittedly, she only applied to schools that would result in a good education for her planned major. The rest of the decision is the outer layers. Assuming that is the case, isn’t “fitness centers, beautiful grounds, and the dream of college lifestyle” the reason that kids choose and stay at a particular school?

13

@PhilaSkiMom - we haven’t applied yet (junior) so we are still in the narrowing down the list phase - we believe that this is the time that we should be looking at the numbers, strength of education, and career opportunities while at school and beyond. We want her to only apply to schools where she would possibly attend - we are not subscribing to the hoping and dreaming about schools that she would never reasonably attend (either because of academics, location, or distance).

14

One reason that 4 year grad rates aren’t a good measure is because they don’t take into acct the number of kids who do co-ops.

They’re also a poor measure for big state schools that have a good number of local kids attending. Local kids have little incentive to graduate in 4 years because they’re commuting from home, working part-time, etc. And, as mentioned above, some start w/o being completely college-ready, needing to take sub-100 math or English classes.

Students who come in with honors college stats, who have the necessary financial support, who don’t radically change their majors midway thru, who don’t choose to co-op, and who don’t have the anxiety/depression issues, should have NO PROBLEM graduating in 4 years.

Both of my kids EASILY could have graduated within 3 years. WE preferred that they stay the full four years. I know of many students in the same situation.

15

I will chime in with my sons personal experience, limited as it may be as a first year student.
He is in the honors college. He may or may not be graduating in four years. Not because he can’t but because he will likely choose to take in ALL the opportunities UA has to offer. This summer it looks like he will study abroad. Next semester he will begin to choose between co-ops and research at the university. I personally hope he gets to do both.
Bama has a wealth of experiences waiting for the student who is a motivated learner, not just in the classroom but well beyond. Each of our young adults has a great environment to challenge themselves and grow above and beyond their own expectations.

16

Thank you @mom2collegekids - My daughter should have many AP credits (taking 4 this year and another 4 next - already has 2) We have not yet made it to the point where we are checking how many she is eligible to use. She will hopefully be in good shape going in to graduate in 4 years. We are under the assumption that in Honors College the graduation rate would be much higher - but were looking for some statistics. She is not decided on her major (unlike so many of the STEM kids here) so the ability to get into needed classes and meet with advisers is important to us. From what I have read this really isn’t a problem at UA. The graduation numbers are similar to our state flagship schools (Pitt and Penn State) so we are trying to keep that in mind and compare similar populations.

17

To be honest, when we were looking at schools for my daughter (a UA senior), we were unimpressed with Alabama’s 4 year graduation rate. However, when I really thought about it, it was not a concern. I didn’t think the major reasons kids don’t graduate in 4 years applied to my child. Finances weren’t a problem. She didn’t need to work and could easily manage a full time course load. We had faith in her academic abilities and motivation. She had enough credits going in that a major change was unlikely to completely derail her. We weren’t worried about her being able to get the classes necessary to graduate in 4 years, as I’ve never heard that it was a problem at UA and she had Honors registration priority. 5 years after we first looked at the statistics, the graduation rate is still not impressive, but my daughter is graduating on time, which is the statistic that matters to me.

18

@novicemom23kids - I apologize. I did not realize that your D was a junior. I completely agree with you in that junior year is the time to consider those factors. FWIW, my DD plans to major in electrical engineering and she is choosing between Temple, Pitt, UMD-CP, Georgia Tech and Alabama. You did not mention Temple as one of the state flagships in your earlier post. Temple has a very favorable automatic scholarship program and an excellent honors program. (Just to add to your list :wink: )

19

I would love to see those statistics too, @novicemom23kids, so I hope you have some success getting that information from the HC!

I was probably derelict at the time, but I never spent a lot of time worrying about UA’s overall four-year graduation rate. We were comparing it to Penn State (my son’s other safety school) and, if anything, it seemed like UA engineering students had a better chance of graduating in four years than Penn State’s if only because there wasn’t as much competition for seats in prerequisite classes.

FWIW, my son is the rare HC student who started at UA with ZERO AP credits. (His HS did away with AP classes a long time ago, and as he was originally targeting highly selective private schools that used AP credits mainly for placement purposes, not credit, so it just wasn’t a major concern for us.) By the end of his senior year, when he decided that his safeties were worth a closer look, he was burned out and refused to prep for AP or CLEP tests. Nonetheless, he will have no trouble completing his studies in eight semesters over five years because he elected to do a co-op. So, technically, he won’t “graduate in four years,” but so what? He’ll have a full year of employment under his belt when he receives his degree and will have earned enough money to cover his living expenses for that fifth year in Tuscaloosa.

I do think it’s really important that parents let their students know BEFORE they ever arrive on campus that the expectation that they will graduate in four years (really eight semesters) is non-negotiable unless there are some VERY good reasons to extend that stay, e.g., taking advantage of additional academic programs/research opportunities and/or coops or unanticipated health issues. This applies to any school, but especially ones like UA where there are a lot of social distractions like football season, Greek life, or whatever. “Work hard, play hard” is a common description of big state flagships, but every student needs to know that the work part comes FIRST! :slight_smile:

I have seen some HC students get into academic trouble that puts their scholarships at risk, but UA is pretty patient with these kids. The only students I’m aware of leaving UA were either not HC students to begin with (so their parents were full pay and not inclined to be patient with a student who wasn’t making good grades) or they had serious health issues. (Two of those in that latter situation returned after a semester home, BTW.)

I recently met some fellow PA families who also have kids at UA. Most of them were the parents of HC/engineering students on full scholarships. Some of their kids were VERY impressive (NM finalists, a kid who chose UA over Swarthmore, etc.). You will find a range of students at UA and even within the HC. Some are just very good students; others, especially those in the elite honors programs (Computer Based Honors and University Fellows) were competitive for Ivies and other elite schools.

20

Here is the common data set a ton of info:
http://oira.ua.edu/d/content/reports/2014-2015-common-data-set

Only 6% don’t live on campus freshman year so it would seem there are not many commuters