Wooster (for STEM) and Sewanee are underrated. People also don’t give a lot of love to Whitman in WA.
Agree about Whitman, it’s a perennial favorite with seasoned CC’ers. It consistently ranks highly for student happiness, good profs, etc…and has many admirers.
I agree with U of Richmond. I’ve seen kids in my town choose it over Tufts, Johns Hopkins. Seems to have great opportunities.
I’d also say U of Alabama is heavily recruiting all over. They’re aiming to be a UVA. Out of smaller, more regional schools Quinnipiac, Marist.
Also agree with Santa Clara. Again, they are aiming for a national reputation. Suddenly kids from my area are looking at it. Appeals to a lot of different sectors-- stem, silicon valley, beach, Jesuit.
U of Alabama might be aiming to be UVA? They might be aiming, but please, there’s no comparison. You’re talking the #2 public university vs maybe #100.
^ UF says that too. They have cracked some ranking systems into top 10 public, but there really is no comparison to UVA. Massive vs. manageable (UVA’s a small school compared to UF).
Santa Clara and beach? I guess it’s relative. 
@marykate Richmond is terrific. I can see why so many are choosing it.
@VHFather I think you missed @marycate 's point. She said “a UVA” - not UVA. Alabama (and South Carolina for that matter) are working tirelessly to up their games and are recruiting a ton of smart out of state kids to help elevate their profiles. SC is having great success with its #1 ranked International Business program and its top-tier Honors College. And, FWIW, the most recent rankings for public universities have UVA at #3, SC at #46 and Alabama at #51.
UVA is a great school but it’s not the end all be all for all programs. It likes to snub its nose at Virginia Tech, but VT’s engineering programs are superior to UVA’s, though many Hoos hate to admit that.
UA isn’t even ranked higher than UAB. It has a long way to go to get anywhere near the ranks of UVA.
@lastone03 No, I don’t think I misunderstood. “A UVA” would still imply a top public school in the country, which at #51, is no where near UVA. All of these “Up and Coming” schools have a target in mind I would imagine. To your point, I agree strongly that many, many schools will have a (some) program as good as the top schools in that same program. However, if the purpose of this thread is to suggest up and coming schools, and then compare them to others, then U of A should not be compared OVERALL to UVA. BTW, who mentioned SC or VT?
@VHFather UA is aspiring to get there. The poster didn’t suggest they were peers - today. Up and coming suggests schools that are rising in the rankings or are making moves that are successfully putting them in a position to move up. The other schools in my post were mentioned for context. It’s a well-established trend.
@socaldad2002 no one is suggesting Alabama is nipping at UVA’s heels.
You can see that U of Alabama’s rank has dropped from 96th in 2015, to 110th in the last year, Its dropping in rank, not raising.
But i do believe thats a bit political, so not sure what it actually means. Schools in the deep south are never
going to get the ranks they deserve, when we are asking professors on the west coast and northeast to rank them.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/1809387-alabama-96th-in-latest-usnwr-rankings-p6.html
Yes I was in no way saying U of Alabama was comparable to UVA. Not even close. That’s why I said “a UVA”.
Alabama may aspire to be a UVA (as do many schools) but so far it’s only managing to nip at Auburn’s heels for the title of best public university in the state of Alabama.
US News overall rank: UVA #25, Auburn #103, Alabama #110
US News public university rank: UVA #3, Auburn #46, Alabama #51
6-year graduation rate: UVA 95%, Auburn 76.6%, Alabama 67.9%
SAT-R: UVA 660-740, Auburn 570-650, Alabama 530-640
SAT-M: UVA 650-760, Auburn 560-660, Alabama 520-640
ACT composite: UVA 29-33, Auburn 24-30, Alabama 23-32
Student-faculty ratio: UVA 15-1, Auburn 19-1, Alabama 23-1
^ Graduation rate says a lot about the culture of the school. Some will say that’s self selection but that ALSO says a lot about the culture of a school.
Both UVA and William & Mary, although public, have a long tradition of expecting kids to graduate in four years.
Is 16K to 17K undergraduates more “manageable” than 33K? I don’t think anyone at UVA thinks of their school as being small. I’m sure plenty of folks that choose the University of Richmond (3,400 undergrad) think UVA is far to large…
UVA seems to think UF’s is “comparable”, since they selected UF as one of the 25 “peer” institutions it uses to benchmark faculty salaries (based on criteria such as enrollments, academic program offerings and degrees awarded, research funding, and other factors).
http://research.schev.edu/policytools/peergroups.asp
The Chronical of Higher Education put together a nice graphical tool on “Peer” institutions.
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/peers-network
Here’s the list of 6 colleges that selected UF as a peer, and were also selected by UF as a peer.
Ohio State U
Texas A&M U, College Station
U of Michigan, Ann Arbor
U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
U of Virginia
U of Wisconsin, Madison
Without a doubt, UVA is a top 5 public university. UF aspired to be a top 10 public university, and now that it is one, it aspires to be a top 5. Based on historical trends (and the state of Florida’s growth), that’s not an unreasonable long term goal.
Of course, no one really thinks, for the purpose of this thread, that UF or UVA is an “underrated college on it’s way up”, so this was all a bit off topic… [-X
Wow, talk about off topic. How did we go from underrated (up and coming) colleges to hating on The University of Alabama?
FWIW there are some amazing programs at Alabama - their Honors program is top notch, truly impressive in scope and depth - not to mention class sizes for Honors students average around 18; and the Blount Scholars Program is amazing - gives those impressed by the living learning communities at private schools like Duke a place to thrive (only 380 students are accepted) . The Business School/MBA program, Nursing school and Law School are tops and, to stay on topic, the Engineering program is definitely up and coming. When you have a student body THAT large it is difficult to manage the graduation rates as they both recruit NMF from all over the country as well as try to give those who might not be as prepared for higher education an opportunity to ‘come up’. Unlike UVA who only takes the cream of the crop from their state, Alabama extends a hand to those who have the desire but maybe not the scores, which can lead to the stats presented by @bclintonk
Is it any where near UVA or UNC as far as overall selectivity? Absolutely not. But if you took only the TOP 15,000 students out of the 32,000 at Alabama I would be happy to wager they would have the same stats and GPAs and ACTs as those at UVA and UNC. The size was a turn off to my very smart D18 (although she did apply as a safety and was admitted to the Honors and Blount Scholars programs) and she also applied (and got in) to UVA, Wm&Mary and URichmond and will be attending Vanderbilt this fall.
Just had to get that off my chest… carry on. oh, and Roll Tide!!
as @sevmom points out, four yr graduation rates are strong at the top. When (and why) did 6 yr graduation rates become an envious data point? Again I think this speaks to the culture (which includes self selection) of the school. It becomes the expectation to graduate in 4 yrs.