I’d be interested to know what portion of that 22.5% transfer out rate is out of state freshman scholarship recipients who either decide not to return as sophomores because of factors including never feeling a part of the university due to lack of community-building opportunities (football only goes so far), or who are compelled to withdraw due to the loss of scholarship funds. I know that if my son were to lose his scholarship, he would not return to Alabama unless he figured out a way to pay for it (and we all know he could not get loans on his own to cover the cost.) The price differential is just too great for us and we are not willing to take out loans to pay that tuition. He would have never accepted an offer of admission without that scholarship money in the first place, so the financial stakes for OOS are quite high.
It is quite unfair to compare UA to UF, though, because UF requires far higher stats across the board just to get an offer of admission. UF gets the cream of the cream of the cream of Florida students (as if the entire university is one gigantic Honors College), and once they get in, they aren’t going anywhere. The fact that very few students transfer out of UF does not surprise me at all. Besides, with Bright Futures and the low cost of in-state tuition, they aren’t facing the kind of financial stakes that UA’s OOS do. While UA has a large Honors college (maybe too large), the stats allowed to get into UA’s Honors College and to receive significant scholarship money are far more generous than the stats required just to get into UF as a regular admitted student (and UF does not even offer scholarship money to most of the students it admits.)
So, like I said, I’d be interested to know which students are transferring out: OOS who never find their place in Tuscaloosa (and there are many challenges that face OOS there), or who lose their scholarships, or are the transfers primarily in-state students who choose to transfer to other in-state schools for whatever reason.
@paul2752 Grad rate is “outcome” data, so you can’t measure 4 or 6 year graduation rates, until that group of students graduates. This year’s group of freshman may end up having a higher grad rate, but we can’t tell for 4 or 6 years. 
“Graduation rate performance” (worth 7.5%) would award points for higher than expected grad rates. So if UA improves it’s rate each year (beyond the predicted rate) it would be “rewarded”.
@Chesterton Come on! Last year they beat us 42 to 21 in Football…you have to give me Grad rates!!
Looking at a few schools in Alabama (UA, AU, UAB, UAH), they all have high transfer rates. For example, UAH, with 81% in-state students, has a 31% transfer-out rate (and 48% grad rate). So in Alabama, it’s not unique to UA. I really have no clue on what’s causing the high transfer-out rate. It could be financial (in-state tuition is high for the southeast, and Alabama doesn’t offer Hope/Bright Futures), or perhaps it has something to do with how these schools are calculating the transfer-out rate?
Florida’s upper 25% looks a lot like Alabama’s upper 25% on the ACT according to College Navigator (and may be even closer as the upper 25% ACT at Alabama is now 32 composite). It is the bottom quartile where Florida significantly outperforms Alabama in admissions. Florida has successfully accomplished what Alabama is hoping to accomplish – transform the institution into a nationally respected academic institution by heavily recruiting accomplished students. (Not all that long ago Florida was executing a similar strategy by offering generous scholarships. They now no longer need to offer generous scholarships to maintain their standing due in part to the success of their strategy but also due to Bright Futures which helps keep the best and brightest in Florida).
@paying4collegex4, seems like FL can accomplish this because of its large number of highly qualified in-state students. We have a similar situation here in Texas for UT-Austin and Texas A&M, very large student base. Does Bama have the population base to this? I think that Bama will have to continue to rely on providing a large number of OOS scholarships to attract highly qualified OOS students.
@chesterton, I think you made a keen observation respecting the possibility that the transfers are OOS students who either lose their scholarships or find that they aren’t the right fit. I will note that Bama’s continuing eligibility requirements for the scholarships are very low, I believe its simply a 3.0 GPA and a minimum of 12 hours. Now, I can forsee that their may be a number of OOS students from FL and TX who aren’t accepted into their in-state engineering programs who go on to Bama due to scholarship money and pursue engineering majors and find that they are truly not academically prepared for that major, at least at the level to maintain a 3.0. Also, I do think that Bama has a unique culture that some students from outside the southeast may find is not the best fit for them. I think that number however is very low as Bama’s student body is now majority OOS.
@fatherof2boys – We are actually from Texas, too, but I grew up in Alabama and went to UA while kids’ Dad went to UT. All three of my kids choose UA with NMF scholarship-- one applied to UT and got in, one was an auto admit to UT and didn’t apply, and the third wasn’t an auto admit and didn’t apply. We might have pressed UT or TAMU more heavily but for the significant scholarships at Alabama.
Their Dad was in total agreement with the choice of Alabama over UT. He vastly prefers Alabama’s campus to the UT campus – he’s right – and thinks that I had a better overall college experience than he did. We received comparable educations. We had the same major (accounting) and had exactly the same types of opportunities coming out of college – multiple offers in big cities from the then “big 8”. We met in law school, where I had a very large scholarship and he did not despite the fact that he graduated from the Business Honors Program at UT while my degree was from Alabama. The big difference – I emerged from college and law school debt free having been on full scholarship for both. We spent the early years of our marriage paying off his law school debt. (His dad had paid his college tuition.)
To be sure, Alabama is not a heavily populated state, so it does need to attract out of state students to fill its flagships. It is unlikely that there will ever be a “top 10%” type cap at UA or Auburn. I do think that Alabama could reach the point where its academic reputation doesn’t require the same number of extremely large scholarships to attract high quality students. (Look at the numbers of out of state students who would kill to pay full out of state price to attend UT, UVA, Michigan or UNC.) Not sure that Alabama can reach those heights, but it isn’t unrealistic to expect it to compete with Georgia and Florida.
Great points @paying4collegex4, my son will likely have to make a similar choice between Presidential Scholarship as an OOS to Bama or paying the full in-state rate for UT-Austin. We are concerned about student loan debt because he plans on going to law school. If you don’t mind me asking, where did you and your husband go to law school? I’m a lawyer as well, did both undergrad and law school at UT-Austin. I did not get much merit aid at UT-Austin as an undergrad; however, the law school gave me a scholarship that paid 100% the cost of my tuition and fees so I had an odd situation where my student loans were almost all from my undergraduate rather than law school.
I do anticipate that Bama will have to continue to rely on a large OOS student body due to the fact that Alabama just doesn’t have the population base of either Georgia, Florida or Texas. However, I also suspect that the will start raising the eligibility on the OOS scholarships. For the last few years, I believe that the cutoff for the Presidential has been 32 on the ACT and 1400 on the SAT CR+Math. I think that Bama may tighten that number up a little bit going forward. As you stated, I think that, if the current trendlines continue, Bama can put itself on a course where it is competitive with the top public institutions in the SEC - Georgia, Florida and Texas A&M.
We went to SMU. Funny story about that – at the point I was applying to law school I was living and working in Texas, so I figured I would apply to UT since it was my state school at that time. I did apply, but somehow forgot to enclose a check with my application – a huge advantage of electronic applications is that couldn’t happen these days. By the time UT got back to me to let me know that I needed to send a check before they could act on my application, I had already been admitted to Yale, given a half scholarship to Vanderbilt and a full scholarship to SMU (along with many other nice perks). I figured I wasn’t meant to go to Texas – and it appears that my children aren’t meant to be there either. (I’ve tried to convince my middle daughter it would be a good choice for grad school since they have a top ten program in her discipline, but she has an irrational dislike for the school!)
However, will this raise bar higher for in state student with lower stat?
I think and hope so. And why not? UGA has certainly raised its requirements such that the great majority of GA residents arent qualified to be accepted there. GA too has a high percentage of poor and lower class residents. If UGA can do it, so can UA. Alabama has an excess of HIGHER ED alternatives for those not able to gain admission to UA, or Auburn.
I am more than supportive if UA wants to increase its bars. What do you mean, “Higher ED”?
The capitalization was unintentional. Higher ed, as in college.
@paying4collegex4 I think one of the unique aspects of Texas is that the state is so big that not everyone here is a Longhorn or even Aggie fan. With so many quality institutions such as Rice, SMU, Texas A&M, Baylor, TCU…no institution has a monopoly on fan support.
@Atlanta68 & @paul2752 I know that one of the things UA has stressed in the CW articles I’ve read is that the high number of OOS students has not resulted in a single qualified instate resident being denied admission to UA. If UA were to tighten its admission standards I assume that the students who would be most adversely affected by that would be in the instate applicants, only because a larger proportion of the OOS applicants are scholarship eligible as they are attracted to UA in part due to the merit aid which helps to defray the cost of OOS tuition.
Can Bama raise the admission standards (which will most adversely impact in-state residents) when over half of the student body already comes from OOS? Georgia was able to raise the standards there; however, there probably was no perception that doing so would result in reducing any admission slots for Georgia residents. Georgia has at least twice the population of Alabama. Last year’s freshmen class at Bama had more OOS students than instate; in comparison at Georgia that number was 14%.
I think it is going to be politically difficult for Bama to raise the admission standards in the immediate future if doing so would further decrease the number of instate students at Bama. I’ve already seen a few articles in the CW and AL.com where the high number of OOS students at Bama has been called into question and as not being in the best interest of instate applicants.
Well the only problem with that argument is the example of AU. Last Fall, Auburn enrolled more freshman Alabama residents than did UA, and while the stringency of its admissions standards are exaggerated, it’s middle 50% percentile last Fall was 24 -30 . UAs was 22 -31. I have no doubt UA would attract a good number of the middle and higher performing type of students who choose AU, if it’s in state rep (at least in having stricter admissions standards) was as good as Auburn’s. The sad reality is that too many parents and students in Alabama believe that UA is still seen as the party school, while AUBURN is the more serious school. Guidance counselors within Alabama in fact, have traditionally held a higher view of AUBURN. Why can’t UA have the same or higher admissions standard as AUBURN? Auburn’s higher minimum standard didn’t seem to hurt its ability to enroll in state students last Fall. Finally, wouldn’t raisng the bar at such a popular school as UA encourage Alabama in state high school students to prepare better for entrance exams?
Very good points @Atlanta68, I did not know the info about Auburn.