Thanks for the clarification. I agree that the OOS 25th percentile stats at UCLA, UCB, and UVA are higher than the UA Scholar recipients at Bama. In general OOS students in the UC system have higher stats than the lower level of in state applicants. It should be noted however that UA Scholar is not the highest level of scholarship at Bama.
As far as the calculation methodologies go, I strongly suspect that Bama isn’t the only university adversely affected by a rapid increase in enrollment. Despite this, I think the increased weighting for first generation/Pell and social mobility has helped some of these other universities in the rankings.
The Issue with Alabama is that the state of Alabama consistently ranks as one of the lowest States when it comes to education. In order to attract those high stat students, the University needs to have great incentives to attract those students. This could explain why they have a high number of OOS students.
As @cptofthehouse had posted above, “The USNWR ratings, regardless of how valid they are , get used by the masses to the point that drops translate to huge impact. Has nothing to do what you, I or anyone here thinks. That’s the reality. Not so much Forbes , the Times, the world ratings” Everyone pays attention to this. and let’s not forget the amount of marketing that goes into this.
Another school is opposite direction, FSU is now ranked 57. It did not take long for the president to say:
“The number is significant in the sense that this is a university that stands out among all the public universities in America,” Thrasher said. “For that reason, it will help us continue to attract outstanding faculty and students.” FSU shares the No. 18 spot with three other public universities: Penn State University, Purdue University and the University of Pittsburgh.
States such as Florida, California, NY, etc have a larger pool of in-state students to choose from. But obviously a lot goes into these formulas. It is a little surprising that the University of Alabama which has been a top 5 Football program for years and years (incredible marketing} and they are not able to sustain a higher educational ranking with all the resources they have.
I believe statements like these miss the mark as anecdotally anyone can find some examples of UofA grads outperforming a few other grads at top 10 colleges. What I think is important is, as a student body, will the group get a better education and have better outcomes that will stay with them for the rest of their lives or is college about getting a degree as cheaply as possible?
In addition we need to be careful about confirmation bias. I used to be friends with an attorney who went to a regional law school in FL who is fond of saying “I have interviewed many attorneys from colleges like Harvard Law School but I have not been impressed and overall they are pretty weak practicioners…” implying that his law school was just as good, if not better, churning out attorneys as the ivies. What my friend fails to realize is that most of the better lawyers at Harvard, UPenn, University of Chicago etc, are not interviewing for a job at his small boutique firm, they are interviewing for and getting jobs on Wall Street, working for Big Law firms, top consulting firms (e.g. McKinsey, Bain, etc), Fortune 500 companies, etc.
So to summarize, while some much lesser ranked colleges might be graduating some top flight grads, one needs to look at the overall educational experience of not a few, but the graduating class as a whole, when looking at career outcomes. There is more to the story than “my engineer lad from San Diego State is working alongside MIT and Stanford grads”.
Be wary of anecdotes except those recounted by the poster in #42. Ok LOL!
Look, nobody is claiming that the entire student body at UA is headed for Wall Street. Firms like Goldman Sachs recruit students who have the skills they are looking for and are interested in working for them. They do recruit at Bama as you can tell if you search Linkedin.
UA has over 38,000 students. Some go to
while others become doctors, nurses, lawyers, school teachers, engineers, bank managers etc. This is entirely normal at most universities so you don’t need to feel concerned.
You clearly missed my point. A disproportionate group of graduates from the top colleges will be getting the higher paying, most coveted jobs in certain industries. By sheer numbers, will some of the UofA grads get some jobs at these firms too, yes but not in the numbers of the top college grads.
I’ve used this point before but I used to work for one of the Big 4 accounting firms in LA. Our firm (and the other Big 4 firms) heavily recruited from UCLA and USC, giving 90% of the coveted summer internships to students from these two colleges. On rare occasion we would interview and accept accounting students from say Azusa Pacific University (regional private college in SoCal). Can someone from APU get a job at one of the Big 4 accounting firms right out of college, yes it’s possible but not likely, but the odds are much better if you attend one of the top accounting and business schools in the U.S. In addition, the depth and breadth of the accounting program is much stronger at USC, for example, and is the reason all of the Big 4 firms recruit at their campuses.
Can you work as an accountant (or get a B.S. in engineering) attending APU, yes, but will you get the same education and have the exact same exact career opportunities as an accountant (or engineer) from USC, not likely.
Sigh…back to the anecdotes again.
We’re going round in circles and this is no longer productive. Some people are going to believe what they want to believe regardless of the fact that they know nothing about the academic programs at Bama so I’m out.
I do think this ratings drop will have an effect. We have a very likely NMSF (exceeded state cutoffs in 7th, 9th and 10th grades), and Alabama is off the list for us. I know it’s shallow, but I am being honest.
I suspect there are other parents and students like us out there.
As for academic programs, the only info we have here to go by is the rankings drop and at least some of that decline is due to resources for academic programs.
Especially with UF and FSU offering full rides to even out of state NMF, you’d really have to love Bama to pick it over the Florida options if you are hunting for full merit rides.
The fairly recent expansion of the Benacquisto program to OOS, coupled with the dramatic rises in the Florida schools’ rankings, has got to be having an effect going forward on the other merit schools, at least for the NMF group.
I am an alum, and agree that UA should do what it can to improve its ranking, even if I don’t think it is an accurate reflection of the quality of education at UA. However, some of you are exaggerating the effect this drop in ranking has had on UA’s ability to attract top notch students. I also think that UA exceeds (smaller class sizes in the Honors Programs, more interaction with faculty) most schools in offerings for top students, and perhaps lags a little (larger class sizes, less faculty attention) for the non elite students.
UA has never had so many top students (ACT of 32 or higher), AND, if you saw the thread I posted ( http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/2156466-university-of-alabamas-2019-fall-freshman-class-has-256-national-merit-scholars.html#latest) about this Fall’s record number of National Merit Scholars, you might not be so pessimistic about UA’s ability to continue to attract top students. UA enrolled 256 National Merit Scholars this Fall. Really folks, get a grip. Not everyone sees these rankings as holy writ. When UA was about to crack the top 30 among publics just about eight years ago, the avg ACT score and number of NMS students was far lower.
By the way, I was a grad student at FSU from 2010-2012, and taught my last summer there, and at that time, it was significantly lower in the rankings than UA, despite having a somewhat higher avg ACT. Do we really believe the quality of education shifted so dramatically at both schools? One up and one down?
Kinda bizarre that this thread has so many views and the one I posted about the record number of NM Scholars enrolling at UA in this Fall’s freshman class has so few. I guess the negative gets the attention.
That’s ok, @Atlanta68. People will believe what they want to believe. For all those top students attending Bama, they know the reality of their time there and their real life outcomes. Just in my ds’s close knit friend group, he is at one of the top grad programs in his field. One of his friends is in Harvard’s MD-PhD program. (Both of those programs are extremely competitive and rejected numerous applicants from top UG institutions and accepted Bama grads.) The rest of his friends are currently working at jobs they are excited about and all of them have zero regrets about walking away from top schools and attending Bama on scholarship.
You’d think these low-ranking Bama grads receive such a poor quality education that Harvard med school and top physics grad programs would know better than to admit them!! How could they be so oblivious to the rankings!!
Is there a tool available to derive your own personal college rankings? For instance, if I wanted to decrease the weighting of social mobility and increase weighting to SAT scores, etc is there a way to see the shift in rankings? It would be interesting to play around with to see your personalized top college list.
First of all, unless something has changed, I don’t think UCLA has an accounting degree. Yes, some students, including my cousin, go there and eventually sit for the CPA exams. But I’m not sure how heavily the Big 4 recruit at a school that doesn’t have accounting. Probably they’re recruiting at CSUFullerton which does.
Anyway, as someone who has long-followed UA’s accounting dept, there is no doubt that the Big 4 heavily recruit at Bama. They also donate to Bama. Time and time again I see Bama graduates with Big 4 internships and permanent job offers.
As for the USNews Rankings… they keep changing the assessments to fit the results they want. Bama was rising quickly and got into either the high 70s or low 80s several years ago, and then suddenly and continually, USNews has been tweaking their assessments so that Bama drops, drops, drops. Probably one area that hurts Bama is that it doesn’t provide any institutional need-based aid…and that’s a beloved trait of folks like USNews.
It’s still the same wonderful school that turns out successful, educated and well-prepared graduates as it was when its ranking was well-above 100… Actually, I would say it’s now even better than it was during those much better ranking years.
All USNews is doing is showing its bias towards the schools that THEY want to rank high. Bama was daring to step off the plantation and USNews placed roadblocks to shove Bama back down. #FreeBama
Seriously? You’re taking Bama off the list because USNews has dropped Bama in ranking?
I don’t think this will reduce Bama’s NMF numbers because most people have thoughtful critical thinking skills. I know it’s harsh, but I am being honest.
Of course it’s possible to get a great education and experience at almost any university. But part of the value of a degree is the esteem with which it is held by the public, as uninformed as they might be in looking to rankings. My only point is that in looking for a merit option for a high performing student, it would seem that the large rankings drop is going to affect that perception.
Most achievement has to do with the individual. No doubt the UA grad in the Harvard MD-PhD program is exceptionally bright, but I doubt UA had anything to do with it. (Similarly, @Mom2aphysicsgeek son would have done just as well, if not better, at any number of universities.)
But if anyone is counting on UA to provide an education that gets her to that MD-PhD program, she should take account of the odds. The overwhelming number of kids in that program have been from elite schools - dozens from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, etc. I could only find one from UA in 11 years of the program.
I can assure you the Big 4 in LA recruit heavily from UCLA. I worked in Tax for over 15 years and interviewed 100’s of recruits over the years for both summer internships and experienced recruiting. UCLA has a Business Economics degree and Minor in accounting. The Big 4 love students from UCLA and are highly sought after by the Big 4, only a close second to USC in the area. You mentioned CSUFullerton; my friend is the director of development (Alumni giving) at the Business school at CSUNorthridge (which has a accounting degree) and he would always complain to me that my Big 4 firm didn’t actively recruit from his college.
Look, can you get a good education at UofA and find good paying jobs, of course you can, but let’s not pretend that the programs, resources, internships, and recruiters at all college campuses are the same, they are not and the top employers in the field know this.
I think the positive of people applying for the merit at Alabama is that high stat kidsy/families are starting to look at lower ranked schools and finding out that there are many that are really good. No disrespect at all and I know several recent graduates from UA at Tesla, Amazon etc. With respect to engineering it’s just not the same education as say UIUC, Purdue or Michigan. Take any discipline and look at the facility, facilities and research
I just looked at Industrial at Michigan VS UA and looked at the professors and their education. I just did this quickly and like 10 professors each school. All of Michigan’s professors were from MIT, Stanford and Cal Tech. UA… Not so much. I didn’t need to go further. So yes they will both graduate with degrees and get jobs. Also coming directly from engineering students at UA that have worked side by side with the above they say that the kids from the schools mentioned are generally better prepared for situations.
Again, I mean no disrespect at all and anyone graduating from UA should be proud. At the end of the day the student makes the school for most students.
I went to a no name school and still got to my endpoint goal.
You can doubt all you want that UA had anything to do with that student’s achievement getting into the MD/PhD program at Harvard. Bama did provide her some valuable opportunities and mentored her.
At Bama, while in CBH she conducted physics research and was a Goldwater Scholar. Bama is very aggressive in helping students become Goldwater and Hollings Scholars. As of this year, the number of UA students who have received Goldwater scholarships is 56. Bama typically has 3-4 named each year.
Sure she is a gifted student, and she’d have done well anywhere, but that could be said of any tippy top student. The fab student at UCLA, UMich, an Ivy or similar would also be a fab student elsewhere.
No school gets any student into a MD/PhD program. No school gets any student into med school. It’s always much up to the student.
When my son was applying for residencies, we heard scuttlebutt that the NE elite programs and other elite programs would ignore him because he was from a “southern school.” Those people could not be more wrong. Every elite and strong program that he applied to invited him to interview…Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Mayo Clinic, NYU, UCLA, Northwestern, UWash, WashU, Emory, Duke, UTSouthwestern, Baylor, USC, and more. He had 46 interview invites, and had to decline 19. As some here know, my son is doing his residency at Harvard.
The bottom line is…attending Bama will not hold you back.
@yearstogo Yes there is a personalized ranking tool for the types of factors you mentioned in your post.
The most recent WSJ college rankings has a customization tool. Just look on google for the link and when you navigate there - on the page you’ll see the option to customize.
It allows you to rank each from no importance to very high. In any and all of the combinations you wish to play with for your student.