<p>UCF and UAB both have strong financial packages for NMF's so I wanted to share our experiences with visiting these two schools in case others are trying to decide if it is worth a visit or not.</p>
<p>UCF Visit
Did an all day tour in January. The NMF package is different than most. It includes an $18,000 allotment per semester for out of state students. This is plenty enough to cover tuition and fees for a normal class load, a medium housing cost option, (but not the Honors housing in Towers - more on that later), and a pretty decent meal plan. The $18,000/semester doesn't go up in future years so would require some choices (drop meal plan, move off campus, etc. to keep it as a "full ride") . The 3 NMF students we met with were sophomores and juniors and all of them made choices they were happy with to continue to have no out of pocket college costs. </p>
<p>The UCF lists a NMF contact person, Luke Van Blairicon. Luke is great about arranging for everything related to the visit and to follow up with after the visit with any additional questions.</p>
<p>The school was great: beautiful campus and not nearly as much of a commuter school as I thought it was going to be. None of the students we met with lived in Towers it was very expensive and they found other honors students to live with in cheaper on campus housing (and they still got single bedrooms) freshman year. They all moved off campus after freshman year (the $18k can be used for off campus housing).
I was especially impressed with the Honors college and the faculty mentoring for NMFs. They also have very strong theater arts, engineering, and natural sciences programs. Not sure about the others as we weren't checking out business, education, etc. </p>
<p>UCF is hosting an NMF dinner with its president in March. Don't know if this is for all NMF's or just admitted student NMFs but it may be worth checking out. </p>
<p>Of all the school we visited UCF seemed the most interested in providing school resources to insure development opportunities for NMF's. </p>
<p>UAB Visit</p>
<p>The NMF scholarship includes tuition and all mandatory fees (including the mandatory $225 dining dollar fee:)). One downside is any hours above 15/semester must be paid by the student. Hopefully UABs generous AP/CLEP/Dual enrollment policies will make this a non-issue for most. The scholarship also includes all 4 years of housing (Well, sort of. Whatever the freshman dorm rate is the incoming year it includes that amount of dollars for all future years) The upperclassman dorm (really a full apartment full kitchen, private bedrooms and shared bathrooms) is only $200/semester more than freshman dorms so not a big deal and a full meal plan is not required past freshman year. There is honors housing for both freshman and upperclassman dorms.</p>
<p>Just did the UAB school visit last week. It was also very informative/impressive. I liked the slightly urban but still seems safe feel of the campus. While not as "Roll Out the Red Carpet" as the UCF visit, the UAB visit provided enough insight into the departments my son is interested in to be the current favorite for him. The theater department, while not big nor prestigious, is very undergraduate student focused and has strong ties to the Birmingham community. Kelly Allison, the head of the department, is amazing! The engineering was also good lots of work/internship opportunities with local industry.
UABs biggest academic strength is medical. In addition to nursing and MD programs they had a variety of other majors for the medical field. There are at least two hospitals literally on campus. If one is interested in anything in the medical field UAB should be on the lets visit list.</p>
<p>All in all both great schools for the budget-minded NMFs!</p>