My DD really liked UMD. She would be going to UMD if she had been offered the Banneker Key, but she only got the partial tuition scholarship, so UMD is her most expensive option along with PSU and UVA.
My DD eliminated Temple because she prefers Pitt. Progress!
Alabama is still around $100-150,000 less than every option. It’s really hard to justify going somewhere else when she views Alabama positively, but right now I’m laying low and letting her work through it.
@tpike12 That’s where we ended up in our decision too. My son applied to Virginia Tech, Clemson, and Alabama.
Virginia Tech even with a scholarship was going to be $150,000+
At Clemson he was offered $25,000 per year, plus he had a corporate NMF scholarship, so his tuition difference was about $7,000. We told him we would split that with him and cover room and board. We wanted him to have some skin in the game if he chose it. But even with the nice scholarship, we felt like we would still spend $75,000 at least over 4 years.
Ultimately he realized that he really liked the Stem to MBA option at Alabama and loved that the scholarship would give him money to cover all 5 years.
Once he decided for sure to go to Bama, he has been getting more and more excited about next year.
Also, my son and husband had a wonderful scholars weekend at Bama in Jan., and I think that was really helpful too. They met some of the Deans and really liked each person that they met.
@tpike12 I just wanted to say that I absolutely loved Bama after my visit and honestly there’s no other school I visited that offers the same facilities and passionate faculty. And they want me there so much that they’ll nearly pay me to go.
On the other hand, with your DD considering Pitt…
I live in the area and applied to Pitt and found that it was a confusing and disorganized school any time I interacted with them. I couldn’t even find my admission status online, then when I did it was quoting me OOS tuition, and wouldn’t tell me whether I had any scholarship money whatsoever. So I called them, got juggled between admissions, Financial Aid, Admissions, back to Financial Aid, then to some IT guy, then back to Admissions. I had to hang up because I’d been on the phone for 3 hours at that point, but I did not find s single person who seemed to be willing or able to tell me that I should be paying in-state tuition because I live in Pittsburgh. I called back a month later, directly to the Pittsburgh area representative who was somehow even less helpful, and told me that it was, in fact, quoting me correctly $52,000 and change for my in-state tuition. This is obviously VERY anecdotal, but I have many friends who applied and went through similar struggles, and I know plenty of people who went there and found themselves left high and dry in terms of class selection or being able to graduate on time, or even with professors literally telling them that they are as intelligent as a child and reading a kids storybook to them for class one day (yep, really). I’m not saying it happens to everyone, but I am saying that Bama seems to handle its classes and students better than Pitt can.
We’ve had a much different experience with Pitt so my DD feels pretty positive overall about it, though she isn’t crazy about the food. Also, outside of the fabulous view, she wasn’t that impressed with the Honors College or the Honors Housing.
But she really likes the engineering program, the city, the international studies program and the co-op program.
Going to be a tough decision for her. Are you definitely choosing Bama?
@tpike12 Yep, I committed right after my visit actually. And yeah, Pittsburgh is an awesome city and I’m definitely a fringe case for Pitt in this scenario. Either way, your daughter will have an awesome education and do well after college. Best of luck to you!
Also, just curious - what’s different from Bama’s study abroad and co-op to Pitt? I haven’t looked too deeply into either, so I’m just wondering.
Well we got back from vacation to find our DD acceptance to UA for Eng. She still has yet to complete the Honors application : ) We visit UA on 5/1. Talk about down to the wire. We visit UMD tomorrow.
@Henloo - not entirely sure how Pitt/Bama are different on international studies and co-ops, I just know we were both impressed by the Pitt programs. I imagine that Tuscaloosa would not have the same number of co-op opportunities as the city of Pittsburgh, but I do not have data to back that up.
Co-op opportunities for UA tend to be all over the state rather than just Tuscaloosa. Many use the alternating semester co-op plan. I have a number of friends who co-oped at NASA in the spring with on-campus classes in the fall (for football season, of course). Now they’re retired NASA engineers who are still working as consultants! One of my husband’s scouts co-oped at Mercedes Tuscaloosa…after that he transferred to the business school. Now he’s working at Mercedes as an accountant.
While a lot of UA’s engineering co-op jobs are in Alabama and other southern states, there are students placed with Boeing in Seattle and other locations further away from the university.
Also, UA’s co-op program has expanded beyond engineering, so if a student does change majors to business (MIS and Finance seem to be popular choices) or something else, they still may be able to continue a co-op they’ve already begun or get a different one.