<p>“Another thing to remember is that at Michigan, your student will rarely see an actual professor until Junior year. At the ‘lower’ colleges, they actually get qualified people to teach Freshman.”</p>
<p>Torveaux, that is very inaccurate. Virtually all (97%) classes at Michigan are taught by faculty. The only exception are Freshmen writing seminars, introduction to Calculus classes and 100 level Foreign languages. That’s pretty standard at all universities by the way. Faculty teach all other classes. In addition to class, faculty have weekly office hours and any student who goes will be seen. Finally, classes get really small really quick after freshman year, not sophomore year. </p>
<p>Anyway, in the OP’s case, Michigan is prohibitively expensive, so the point is moot.</p>
<p>Chardo, most public universities offer merit scholarships, including Michigan. The main difference between Michigan and Alabama is that Michigan does not need to entice as many prospective students with scholarships. </p>
<p>I believe that Bama is the highest ranked school to offer full tuition assured scholarships for stats in the ACT 32/+ range. I don’t think there is a higher ranked school that will give assured full tuition for an ACT 32+…and also the add’l 2500 per year for an eng’g or comp sci major.</p>
<p>Sure, there may be higher ranked schools that have assured scholarships for much lower amounts. Purdue used to have smaller assured merit (about 9k per year for OOS), but I don’t think they do anymore. </p>
<p>And some of higher ranking OOS public schools may have very competitive awards. To get those awards can be iffy. A mom of a NMF child recently posted that her high stats student has learned that he hasn’t received any of the competitive merit scholarships that he applied/interviewed for. Very disappointing, but who knows what the down-selection process is…I think they’re awarded to help with regional and ethnic diversity…and maybe to fill spots in certain majors that need more students.</p>
<p>You are right…a full need school won’t work for you because you don’t have enough need. You’d be paying full or near full cost. I don’t know why people recommend those to people with unaffordable EFCs …unless the school is HYPS…because those 4 schools give super aid. The rest will expect you to pay your Family Contribution which is MORE that the big merit schools expect you to pay…so I’m scratching my head at the 100 need suggestion.</p>
<p>On Honors Day, there wont be any classes, but the campus will be busy.</p>
<p>There are many colleges nationally ranked below UA that do not provide the level of automatic scholarships for higher stats students.</p>
<p>As was discussed in this thread, colleges entice students in financial and other ways. Michigan has its own enrollment goals and I am sure they tweak it to meet their enrollment goals (and other goals, retention, degree completion, etc). Since Michigan is financially not in the picture for this family (nor mine), discuss it on another thread. It seems people want to bash other schools that are not as highly ranked nationally. Glad people love their alma mater or where their kids go but it would be nice to stay on a more positive note with the discussion thread.</p>
<p>Students with high stats do go to a variety of universities. Some universities have certain departments that make it a stand out for students seeking a particular degree. </p>
<p>I am also interested in seeing the 100% colleges list. It seems this family is willing to go through all the financial aid hoops…</p>
<p>@OP: It depends whether you’re “CC middle class” or “middle class”. If your family makes up to 130-150k (for a family of 6) you’re likely to get financial aid at most of these colleges. If your family makes 250k then those schools are NOT a good choice and indeed you need to focus on schools with big merit aid. Note that some of the 100% schools also stack on merit aid (I know that St Olaf does that for musically talented students, as well as for dancers, and it has some kind of academic competition too. Gettysburg also does but the merit does not stack up, it replaces the need-based aid.)
You can find the list by typing for instance college greenlight 100% need (it’s a website for first gen students) or college solution 100% need colleges (that list is interesting because it includes colleges that meet at least 95% need for all students) or as usual USNWR colleges 100% need. Essentially those 60-some schools are among the richest and most selective colleges in the country and anyone who manages to get in is guaranteed enough money to attend (although their definition of how much you need may not be yours ) Run the Net Price Calculators for EACH college since they all calculate differently. At the high end, like HYPS, up to 180K family of 4 is considered “needy” and wouldn’t have to pay more than $18,000. </p>
<p>I’m not just talking about full scholarships. I’m wondering about major publics giving any significant merit amount to OOS students. In some cases, even a few thousand can bring total COA down near their home states’ cost. If that OOS school is better than the home state, it may be worth that little extra.</p>
<p>“Yeah…that and the whole quality of education thing.”</p>
<p>We all know Michigan and Alabama are not in the same class academically. Just wondering, why is that? What exactly makes any school better than another?</p>
<p>^ that’s the kind of info I want. That can get Indiana down to the low 30k range, which compares favorably to many in-state options. Any others?</p>
<p>@chardo there are 2-3 threads on that very thing in the FA forum. One for guaranteed full tuition/rides and one for competitive ones and in a different forum, schools “known for good merit aid”.</p>
<p>Which on those list are “better” is, of course, subjective.</p>
<p>Alabama (#36 in the US News ranking of public universities) may not be on par with Michigan (#4), but it’s not like it’s some off-the-rails, state-related directional college in outer Podunk. In spite of some of the potshots boosters of other schools want to take (and I detect a distinct anti-Southern bias in some of these comments), UA finds itself amongst some very respectable company in the rankings, including Auburn:</p>
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<p>We did our homework: Just as mom2ck stated, Bama was the top-rated school we could find that offered AUTOMATIC, stats-based, full-tuition scholarships for out-of-state students over a certain threshold. </p>
<p>We live in PA, and our state flagship (#8) dispenses merit aid according to the most opaque, seemingly arbitrary “methodology” anyone will ever see. My kid (admitted into their engineering school with 1500 CR/M and a 3.9 GPA, having taken all the most advanced classes his school offers, including Calc II) was offered none; his friend from a nearby school, with an 1180 CR/M and a slightly higher GPA, received $6,000 a year of merit money to sweeten the offer of admission to the Eberly School of Science. The kid never took Calculus or Chemistry and his parents own two homes and have an annual income of $250,000/year. </p>
<p>So say what you want about Bama, but they’re very up front and transparent about how they award merit money. They’re generous to high-stats OOS students, even more generous to in-state students (who need to meet a much lower threshold to receive a scholarship), and have several well-regarded departments. </p>
<p>The only scholarship offer we could find on par with Bama for our situation was that of Temple, another perfectly fine school, but much lower ranked in the USNews ratings at something like #111. Bama seemed like the better opportunity.</p>
<p>Michigan is a great school, but it’s not worth $50,000 a year to my family. Not when my kid can go to Penn State for $33,000 or Bama for $16,000. That’s just crazy talk unless you can afford to be full pay pretty much anywhere. And if you can afford anywhere, you have lots of choices, and this entire discussion is pretty much moot.</p>
<p>Hi szvx4x, As you start looking for your other children I would encourage you to look at some of the “Colleges that Change Lives” (book and website). Many are close to you in the Midwest, Wooster, Ohio Wesleyan, Kalamazoo College, Hillsdale, Hope, Knox and Lawrence are some of the ones in Ohio and neighboring states. They are all smaller LACs and are known to be strong academically and many offer academic merit scholarships. I don’t know the specifics of all the schools, but my D is planning on attending Lawrence and received significant merit aid so the cost of attendance will be slightly higher than in state, but not exorbitant and she will be able to graduate without loans. I have friends whose children have received good merit scholarships to Kalamazoo and Wooster also. Hillsdale has a lower starting cost than many private schools and has strong merit aid opportunities. Case Western RU in Cleveland is strong in STEM and also offers significant merit scholarships. Since you may have more than one child in college at a time it is worth looking at some of the ivies and also some of the more elite LACs in the NE such as Swarthmore as they define need differently than the FAFSA and can be quite generous. For example we found that Swarthmore would have offered us significant need based aid (based on their Net Price Calculator on their website) for the one year that my D was in college before my son graduated, but then it would have likely dropped to nothing for the next 3 years. (Our EFC based on the FAFSA is $55,000) Oberlin is also known for strong academics and providing merit scholarships though I don’t know the specifics. Good luck to your D, I’m sure she will do well at either UA or OU, as others have said it’ll be all about what she makes of the
opportunities she has.</p>
<p>I think many would agree that sending a child to Alabama in that situation would be a very respectable decision. That doesn’t, however, change the fact that Alabama is a mediocre public university. Just because it’s mediocre doesn’t mean that you’re a bad parent for sending your child there, or that you’ve doomed your child to a life without success. It just means that Alabama is not exceptional compared to other public universities like Michigan.</p>
<p>From the recent comments I’ve seen from the 'Bama bandwagon on CC, you’d almost think they consider it to be an elite, prestigious public university that has UCLA, Berkeley, and Michigan as its peers. Now, there’s certainly nothing wrong with having pride in your university. There is something wrong with distorting facts. Alabama’s a fine school, and it’s certainly better than several of the public universities in the United States. But at the end of the day it’s a fine state flagship, it just isn’t in the same league as the best public universities in the U.S. (which I stated in an earlier post in this thread.)</p>
<p>Who here claimed that Bama was the equivalent of UCLA, Berkeley or Michigan? Please quote the “distorting (of) facts” because I must have missed that. </p>
<p>" Please quote the “distorting (of) facts” because I must have missed that."</p>
<p>Here’s one example:</p>
<p>“Alabama (#36 in the US News ranking of public universities)”</p>
<p>Comparing that to Temple which is, “much lower ranked in the USNews ratings at something like #111.”</p>
<p>Making the casual reader believe that Alabama is significantly better than Temple based on the difference between 36 and 111. In reality, 'Bama is ranked somewhere in the 70 something range of national universities. Certainly a bit higher than Temple, but not to the extent the poster made it appear. </p>
) Run the Net Price Calculators for EACH college since they all calculate differently. At the high end, like HYPS, up to 180K family of 4 is considered “needy” and wouldn’t have to pay more than $18,000. </p>