The UAH 4 year graduation rate from a Google search is 17 %. The link to check the rate on the UAH site is not working. Does anyone have any insight to the reason for the very low graduation rate? Also, when we toured the school, someone mentioned that quite a few of the students lost their merit scholarships, due to not keeping the 3.0 gpa. Do any UAH students have info on how hard it is to keep a 3.0, particularly as a computer science major? Thanks.
Another source that backs the info up: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=huntsville&s=all&id=100706
Lower graduation rates at non-flagships are frequently related to lack of good financial aid (students having to work).
I thought the four-year was around 22% but, granted, still low.
I wrote the provost several months ago the same question you asked, and she wrote a lengthy response that basically said she’s been at UAH just under two years (I believe all the top administration–she, president, vp student affairs have all been at UAH only two or three years) but has been researching the cause and believes it is not just one reason; the two things she pointed out are that they have a fair number of first-generation college students and/or students that have to work part-time to help their families with college expenses.
She said they have implemented various tutoring programs (I believe their PASS program is new.), increased institutional scholarships, increased OOS recruiting, becoming more of a student-centered university with additional extracurricular activities including undergraduate research, service learning activities, and leadership development programs as well as wholesome fun activities, are starting a Quality Enhancement Program this year that focuses on collaborative learning that engages students to be active participants in the classroom learning process, and also raised expectations for students and profs–class attendance and such.
Moreover, she said that they are making progress in these efforts and are starting to have an effect on student retention. Because of the time lag in graduation rates, it will take several more years for our four- and six-year graduation rates to move upward to where they should be.
I personally think that their efforts to recruit outside of the area will have a great effect on their retention/graduation rates. We just attended orientation and met families from nine different states (and not the states contiguous to AL).
As an aside, I have had a couple of email conversations with the president and have queried various staff when we have visited and have been impressed with the president, Dr. Altenkirch. He seems to be very active, detail-oriented and on top of things. He has never gone more than 24 hours without responding. The staffs comments are that he is very involved and student-centered. I always believe that the top person sets the tone by which others will either adopt or move on.
I have never heard anything about difficulty in keeping a 3.0. From whom did you hear that? If it is from one student, I wouldn’t make much of it.
One other thing. A mother in my orientation group was from northern VA, and her son will be an entering freshman in CS. She seemed well-educated and well-researched and had visited several colleges. (Her son actually skipped ahead a year in high school because he was advanced.) She seemed very confident with his choice of UAH.
Good luck! Is your student a senior?
My son is finishing up his second year at UAH. Loves the school, particularly the academics.
That said, he knows some students who did lost their scholarships. There are many reasons, he said. One, this is a challenging, academic environment, and they may have not had a much challenge during their high school years. He dated a girl who had a 4.33 GPA and graduated third from her high school. But, her study skills are weak. She has struggled the first two years. She bears some of the blame, but she pointed out that her high school teachers really did not challenge her.
UAH is a tough school, my son said. You need to work for your grades. When he talks to high school students in our area (we live in VA), he tells them that they need to do their homework, even if it is not collected for a grade. They need to read the textbook (that advice came from his AP Biology teacher, and he just loved her). They need to attend class. He does these things, and he has been on the Dean’s List each semester. He will intern this summer at a local financial institution, but he has had interviews with several top companies as well as the Department of Treasury.
He also tells students that professors have office hours. If you are struggling, go to office hours. He repeatedly told his former girlfriend that. She has never gone to see a professor of a class where she is having difficulty. He has done the opposite – when he had to miss a class because he needed to be at an important event, he e-mailed his math professor and asked if he could come to office hours so she could explain the work she assigned. She was more than helpful.
Another reason why graduation rates may be low is the credits required for graduation. The school recently dropped the 128-credit requirement with some majors back to 120. This is good, my son said, because not every kid enters college with a lot of dual enrollment/IB/AP credit. So it can be tough to juggle 18 or more hours for some majors and working. He has a friend who carries 15 hours as an engineering major and works 20-25 hours a week.
Fortunately, my son said that his high school teachers did challenge him. He entered UAH with 56 credits. He is a double major in finance and economics and minors in math.
That makes sense @momreads thanks for posting
Edit: S/posing/posting/
Thanks for the helpful comments. My son is a senior and qualifies for the tuition and housing scholarship at UAH. He has a lot of AP credits and a 2 duel enrollment math classes. He plans to be a computer science major. It is helpful to hear from parents and students attending UAH and why they think the graduation rate is low. I wanted to be sure that it was not because of poor teaching, or attempts to “weed out” students from programs. My son is bright and always go to classes and participates. His high school is challenging. I want him to have professors who are supportive , with a warm, friendly college experience. He will be far from home and I want him to feel comfortable gong to professors, and engaging in the campus community.
Do any students or parents have insight to the computer science program?
My son did not like the big road to cross, with the computer science building on the other side. He would need to cross it frequently.
I shall ask my son about the computer science program. I believe he has a few fraternity brothers majoring in that area.
As for weed out classes, UAH has its share, and truthfully, some students really do not belong in their prospective majors. My son knows some students who come in as STEM majors, but they do not last long, because the academics are challenging. He had a physics class as a freshman where the professor told them that nearly one half of the students would drop out before the midterm. The material was difficult, especially if you had not had any physics or calculus. My son had, and he had no trouble with the class.
Have your son attend the fall career fall. It is usually in September. The career center releases a list of companies that will be there recruiting for internships as well as permanent jobs. He will have an opportunity to speak with representatives and maybe land an internship for next summer.
As for getting involved on campus, there is plenty to do for attending sporting events (my son is a huge hockey fan and goes to the games all the time) to club sports to lots of clubs to movie nights. There’s stuff to do in Huntsville. Bridge Street Mall is beautiful. And, if your son has a car, Nashville is about two hours away in one direction and Birmingham is about two hours away in the other.
DS is a current freshman at UAH. Last year, when looking at the low graduation rate I determined it was likely caused by two factors. A lot of UAH students participate in co-ops. These are typically 1 or 2 school semesters plus 1 or 2 summers. The other factor is that it is/was more of a commuter school. The age skews a bit older than other universities we looked at, so I figured there were more students with jobs and families. These students would likely take lighter loads and stretch out their education over a longer time frame.
Addressing some other points made above:
Merit Scholarships:
I don’t think losing scholarships is much of a factor. If you look at the numbers from the Common Data Set, particularly H2A (n), it certainly appears that the vast majority of the students with academic scholarships keep them.
Commuter School:
In my son’s honor classes, particularly Honors English & FYE, the classes that all honors students must take, he found a lot of OOS students. He has friends from all over the United States, plus a few internationals. Like him, most came for the awesome scholarships. He does have friends from the local area as well. It is a nice mix. Among his friends & suite mates, I don’t think any of them regularly go home for the weekends. I think all, certainly most, of his friends are planning to live on campus next year as well.
I imagine that the non-honors student body is less geographically diverse.
Weed Out Classes:
My son is in the college of engineering. He came in with lots of dual enrollment classes, and at a sophomore level for the engineering specific classes. If there were any weed-out classes, he either came in at a level above them or he just hasn’t noticed. He had 2 years of excellent, high level, college instruction from dual enrollment, so he has not experienced any transition problems. He already knew how to study at the college level. Some of his UAH classes have been mostly review for him, but for the other classes he has put in the time and effort to earn his high grades.
“I want him to have professors who are supportive , with a warm, friendly college experience. He will be far from home and I want him to feel comfortable gong to professors, and engaging in the campus community.” :
Yes, my son is also far from home & I wanted those things as well. I think UAH has been very good in these areas. It is a nice, comfortable, friendly campus. He does feel welcomed and he is engaged with other students and professors. His complaints have been the weather (we are from a climate with very dry air), that it is so far from home, and the food (“everything is fried”). Otherwise, he is quite happy there. One interesting remark he made was about Dr. Wilkerson, Dean of the Honors College. My son said that, after meeting him once at a campus visit in the spring of his senior year, Dr. Wilkerson remembers him and greets him by name every time they pass each other on campus. Son is very impressed by that!
Job Opportunities:
Yep, I’m impressed. We chose UAH for the awesome merit scholarships, friendliness & size of the campus, reputation, and the job opportunities in the community. Sure enough, he was offered a great summer internship with a company in Huntsville. And a great perk is that we don’t have to scramble trying to find a place for him to live during the summer. He can stay on campus. Now, if he was a “true freshman” I think it would have been much more difficult to land an internship, but with all his dual enrollment courses he is a sophomore for the engineering sequence.
My son, like ThreeKidsMom’s son, is also in the Honors College, but he has yet to take a class there. The big reason is that there is nothing offered he can use for either degree or his minor. He is hoping that does change. Someone in the HC had suggested that he consider giving up some of his AP credit. If he did, he pointed out, he would have to consider spending an extra semester there (that is not an option) or dropping one of his majors (again, not an option).
I will say that my son also complains about the food. He has not trouble going to Fried Chicken Wednesdays, which is a tradition on campus. He just wishes there were more variety in the food offered. Living in the fraternity house, however, gives him the chance to cook for himself. He is known to go to the supermarket and purchase ground beef. He makes a mean taco and loves his meat sauce for pasta. He even made a pork roast in his crock pot earlier in the semester.
As a mom of a future computer science major, I appreciate hearing the “real” stories of what is happening at UAH. I am curious about the CS professors and how much they interact with the students. Anyone have knowledge of the Maker Club on campus? How active is this club, and do they have a maker space that is well-stocked with tools and supplies?
If you have a kid at UAH, or had one graduate from UAH, would love to hear your stories, good and bad. I get the whole “commuter campus” and understand that the university is pushing to change the culture. Honestly, that is not a troubling aspect for our son who is introverted and wouldn’t mind having some peace and quiet on the weekends.
To clarify last post, S will be considering UAH, along with Georgia schools, and will most likely be a CS major. We haven’t started the college process yet, but it is great to be able to “watch” for info here and get a better understanding of the reality of campus life at the different schools.
Thanks for all of the information. It is very helpful. I think we will take another visit, but my son seems to be set on UAH. He needs to commit somewhere soon.
A big negative sounds like the food. We ate in the hotel on the UAH campus and thought the food was pretty bad and not very healthy. When we took the tour, the guides said it was the best place on campus to eat. We eat healthy at home, and rarely eat fried food. We were hoping some of the places on campus were better. It sounds like they are not. He is turning down the honors program at Virgnia Tech, which has a top food campus rating. He wants to leave school with no loans so UAH is attractive, but much further away. We live in Virginia.
I don’t know the extent to which this is an issue at AUH, but transfers out count as non-graduates for the federal graduation formula. This means that if someone starts at UAH but transfers to, say, UA, they count as a non-graduate for UAH (and they don’t even count as a positive for UA—they don’t factor into the formula at the school they transfer into at all).
This is widely recognized as a flaw in the statistics, and there is widespread recognition that the method of counting needs to change. The odds of that happening within even a timeframe measured in decades is low, however.
Hi momto2020s
We are also from Virginia and my son is going to attend UAH in the fall! We visited twice and loved our time there. Just a note on the food, we ate at the dining hall for breakfast and lunch a couple of times and it was great. For breakfast my son had oatmeal and I had eggs and sausage. For lunch, I had soup, salad and food from the fresh station that is prepared right in front of you. One time, it was a shrimp dish and the other was stir fry. It was fresh, healthy and delicious! The soup was great too.
We researched the school first and after our first visit my son knew it was a great fit for him. We both felt very much at home. Everyone is so nice and the possibilities at UAH are endless!
The admissions team and the honors college have been so welcoming. Honors orientation was fantastic! The honors dean, Dr. Wilkerson, knew my son’s name after the first day and when he met him he recalled something from his application.
I’m so pleased he picked UAH!
Hi momto2020s,
Regarding the street crossing for tech hall… It seems pretty safe. My son will have a bike and he set his classes so he’s only going over there on Tuesday and Thursday. Since it’s such a distance, he made sure either his first class was at tech hall or he had an hour between classes to be on the safe side.
Check out these great articles on Huntsville! This was the icing on the cake for us!
http://www.huntsvillealabamausa.com/images/News/headlines/business_headlines.pdf
And the nonstop flights from Dulles to HSV for around $200 are nice too!
Pinewood CC - Thanks for the reply. We missed the April honors orientation and signed up for the regular May orientation. We have tentative plans for a visit in a week to see the campus one more time before that final May 1st commitment deadline. He liked UAH best of the schools we toured, but he saw it during UAH’s Spring break. Few students were on campus and the dining facilities were closed.
Do you know if there is a date you need to sign up for housing to get in the honors dorm? Did they talk about housing and roommate machine at the orientation?
Is your son doing the summer incentive and taking a class for summer term? My son was looking to take one in the second mini session. His high school finishes too late to take the longer summer term. We talked to financial aid when we visited. They said his scholarship would cover housing for the summer session, as a rising freshman. The scholarship would not apply in other summer sessions.
Thanks. I think we just need to plan ahead to get the flights. The prices jump without lead time in planning. We researched UAH a year ago and it looked like a good match. The distance kept us from visiting until March. With the direct plane flight, it seems closer. I think we are a little behind you in coming to a final decision and working out the details.
It is nice to know other kids from VA are making the trip to UAH.
Momto2020s,
They didn’t give a date, however if you think he’s interested I don’t think it would hurt to sign up now. They said Frank Franz would likely fill up and they would probably have to take two floors at North Campus which is right next door I believe. They said they would match roommates based on the questionnaire when you applied for housing. I would be fine with him at either dorm. I think the main difference is North has larger showers and different furniture.
My son is not doing the summer incentive. Like yours, he graduates late and only has 7 weeks of summer.
If you visit in a week school should still be going on. I think finals are at the end of the month. That should give you a good idea. My son will be a CS major too!
We really love it! I hope you guys do too!
We had the same problem with making travel arrangements and made our first visit in February. Our second was for honors orientation. Yes, the short flight does make it seem closer. I would be happy to hear another student from VA will be attending! I think there is a couple more on here. Let us know how your trip goes and if I can answer any other questions!
Good Morning momto2020s,
PinewoodCC is correct. That is what I understood at honors orientation also. I pulled aside the housing person who had given a talk mentioning that the honors dorm will fill up this year because the Fall of 2016 freshman class looks like it will be their largest freshman class ever–and that is after the Fall of 2015 freshman class was their largest up to that point. I was concerned because I told him I hadn’t deposited for my son’s housing as I didn’t think housing shortage was an issue at UAH. He said that the honors students will still get honors housing but that it might be in the dorm next door, where they are planning a floor or two of overflow honors housing. He said they will be building a new dorm in a couple of years. Like PinewoodCC, I don’t think the other dorm will be a big deal. However, it took me by surprise. The word is getting out about UAH, helped no doubt by their excellent merit awards!
Regarding the summer incentive program, there are other students we met at orientation who will be doing the second summer session only for the same reason as you mentioned.