<p>I have trouble with this one. Friends have recommended pubic univesrities out of state. Why would someone who lives in California attend (for example) University of Oregon and pay so much more than residents pay for presumably larger class size?</p>
<p>If it costs less because they give you a scholarship or in state and they want you to provide geographic diversity. People do go because they really like specific schools and some happen to be OOS state schools like Berkeley, UCLA, UT, or university of Oregon.</p>
<p>It does seem cheaper OOS in oregon than UC OOS.</p>
<p>[2011-12</a> Cost of Attendance | Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships](<a href=“http://financialaid.uoregon.edu/11_12_cost_of_attendance]2011-12”>http://financialaid.uoregon.edu/11_12_cost_of_attendance)</p>
<p>If one can afford to go to an OOS public without it causing a burden, I don’t see the problem as long as they have a good reason for choosing that school (good for intended major, they love the feel/culture of the campus, etc…). Besides out of state public schools are about the same price as private schools, even though privates are much more generous with FA.</p>
<p>Sometimes you could get a good merit scholarship that wouldn’t make it so expensive, and because a school has a great program for one’s intended field of study so they would go there then. That’s why, or because they just want to get out of the state they’re in and away from their parents.</p>
<p>Those living in California may not have as much incentive to look at OOS publics, since UC and CSU and the community colleges offer numerous schools of all levels of selectivity and a large selection of majors and campus environments.</p>
<p>But residents of some other states may not have too many choices of in-state public universities, so they may look to OOS public universities, as well as private universities, for a better fit in some way. Some public universities actually do give scholarships to OOS students, and not all of them are as expensive at “list price” as private universities or the more expensive OOS publics (e.g. while the OOS “list price” of UC is comparable to that of expensive private universities, the OOS “list price” of CSU is significantly less).</p>
<p>Also, some states have arrangements with neighboring states to allow students to enroll in the neighboring states’ public universities at a lower tuition than the normal OOS tuition.</p>
<p>Finally, some students come from wealthy families who would be full pay (and willing to pay) anywhere; they may consider all of the public (IS or OOS) and private universities in one big pool, and it could very well be that their top choice of those they get into is an OOS public.</p>
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<p>I have found this to be true also. Where I live (MN), we have that agreement with a few other Midwestern states- Wisconsin for sure, and then I think it’s ND, SD, and maybe NE, can’t remember. I know there are a few Wisconsin public universities where it’s actually cheaper for MN students than U of MN in-state tuition.</p>
<p>Well, it depends on the OOS cost. </p>
<p>The University of Alabama has about 45% OOS kids now …and rumor has it that this fall’s Frosh class will be about 50% OOS. </p>
<p>The reason is that the school offers amazing scholarships for high stats students. </p>
<p>Families have “done the math.” When an Illinois family realizes that Illinois State University or U Illinois Chicago will cost them $25-30k per year (and neither school is a flagship), but Bama will cost them only $12k per year for room, board and books, etc, because Johnny or Susie will get free tuition with their ACT 32 or 1400 M+CR SAT and a 3.5 GPA…then they are thinking, " my kid can go to a Flagship for less than half the price." </p>
<p>The instate tuition for those Illinois schools is about $12k per year, so even if the student has an ACT 30, he gets a 2/3 tuition scholarship which brings OOS tuition down to $7k at Bama. And, if that same kid majors in Engineering or Comp Sci, then he gets boosted to a full tuition scholarship plus 2500 per year. </p>
<p>When I went to Parents Weekend at Bama last fall, I met 8 or 10 families from ONE California high school. I asked them what brought them to Bama. They said that their kids didn’t get into UCLA or Cal, and they wanted the “flagship/big-school/football” experience and the cost was either the same or much cheaper depending on what scholarship their kid got. </p>
<p>and…if you’re a NMF, you practically get a free ride.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s a school out there with a better ranking that can match these scholarships</p>
<p>this link may say “college of engineering”…but the page includes the above mentioned university-wide scholarships as well.</p>
<p>[Scholarships</a> - The College of Engineering - The University of Alabama](<a href=“http://eng.ua.edu/undergraduate/scholarships/]Scholarships”>Scholarships – College of Engineering | The University of Alabama)</p>
<p>*pay so much more than residents pay for presumably larger class size? *</p>
<p>Why do you think that the class sizes would be larger than those at UCs? I would imagine that in most cases, the classes would be smaller…maybe much smaller.</p>
<p>
I agree that they are amazing and are quite attractive to students, but I think there are other factors at play as well.</p>
<p>A couple of points:
[ul][<em>]According to the Office of Institutional Research, Alabama was 70.4% in-state as of fall 2009. Although that number has been steadily declining in recent years (it was 75.4% in 1999), it is highly doubtful that number will decline precipitously.
[</em>]Students from bordering states make up 14.9% of undergraduates, and other southern states make up 8.6% of undergraduates. In all, 94% of Alabama students are from the South. [/ul]</p>
<p>Two reasons strike me for this low percentage of non-southern students, one or both of which may be true:
[ul][<em>]Despite making outreach efforts, Alabama is still far from having a national draw.
[</em>]Something in addition to (or besides) merit scholarships is drawing southern students to Alabama in large numbers. I strongly suspect it is the [Academic</a> Common Market](<a href=“http://www.sreb.org/page/1304/academic_common_market.html]Academic”>Academic Common Market - Southern Regional Education Board), through which students in southern states can get in-state tuition for certain programs at Alabama.[/ul]</p>
<p>As ucbalumnus mentioned, there are a number of such exchanges:</p>
<p>[Midwest</a> Student Exchange Program](<a href=“http://www.mhec.org/MidwestStudentExchangeProgram]Midwest”>http://www.mhec.org/MidwestStudentExchangeProgram)</p>
<p>[Western</a> Undergraduate Exchange](<a href=“http://www.wiche.edu/wue]Western”>Save On Tuition | Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE))</p>
<p>UCs do have very large class sizes, for the most part.</p>
<p>I’m a California resident and I’m applying out of state simply because
- I don’t like any of the schools in California (except UC Davis, but it’s not very strong in my major)
and 2) I want to live in the seasons, with snow and etc.; sometimes the mild weather gets very boring here.</p>
<p>Also, based on the UC estimated yearly costs and UOregon’s estimated yearly costs (both from their website) it’s only ~$2000 more to go to UO. And this is without financial aid, which will probably be far greater than from UC’s.</p>
<p>*Alabama was 70.4% in-state as of fall 2009. Although that number has been steadily declining in recent years (it was 75.4% in 1999), it is highly doubtful that number will decline precipitously.
*</p>
<p>Well, their prediction is wrong, instate rate is dropping…and who cares what it was in 1999 or even 2009. It’s now 2011. The trend is clear…the OOS numbers are increasing.</p>
<p>Collegeboard (which doesn’t have last Fall’s data), has OOS listed as 42%…and instate at 58% (again, even this data isn’t the most current).</p>
<p>* I strongly suspect it is the Academic Common Market, through which students in southern states can get in-state tuition for certain programs at Alabama.*</p>
<p>No…because there aren’t many majors that Bama has that other states don’t have…which is a req’t for ACM. so, what you strongly suspect, isn’t so. </p>
<p>*In all, 94% of Alabama students are from the South.
- </p>
<p>This is counting Florida and Texas as “southern states” and they really aren’t. I think it’s also counting Virginia…which technically is south of Mason-Dixon but hardly really a southern state…it’s more mid-Atlantic.</p>
<p>and…again…you’re using the 2009 data…that’s not current, and the numbers have changed.</p>
<p>You’re also not accounting for the fact that the junior/senior/and last year’s senior classes had less OOS kids, so their stats are softening the overall numbers.</p>
<p>the 2010-11 numbers have been delayed. </p>
<p>And the 2009 link is missing some important pages that were there not too long ago. Pages 46-59 aren’t there as well as some others. That page was recently redesigned and some links seem to have dropped off.</p>
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<p>Northern Florida is as “southern” as it gets. And Virginia may be mid-Atlantic geographically, but the overall lifestyle is quite southern, especially outside the DC area.</p>
<p>While Alabama is a total bargain for high-stats OOS kids, I wonder about the fit. Will a top student from the North really fit in at a school in the deep South where 75% of the kids got under 1840 SAT or 29 ACT, and 40% were below the top 25% of their HS class?</p>
<p>Very helpful answers–thank you! I should have specifed that I assume any public university has larger class sizes than any private school (not vs. UC). </p>
<p>And thanks for pointing out that UO for OOS is cheaper than UC for in-state.</p>
<p>I am just trying to work with my daughter to narrow down her list --she is very open-minded and likes every campus she’s seen ranging from Williams to UC Davis–and I’m trying to avoid paying 50+ applic fees 
. </p>
<p>I know that, being middle income, we’ll do better financially w private school financial aid than at UC. Was wondering what would attract people to public schools w OOS tuition if it’s comparable to private schools w financial aid. I realize now that specifc academic program and overall campus culture are big factors, even if it’s a large public U.</p>
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<p>For students resident in states with relatively weak state universities, Alabama may be a better safety (with the generous merit aid) than their home state universities.</p>
<p>Your assumption would be very wrong, bb. Actually most privates are not all that good and have to give away lots of scholarship money to fill their classes. They also recruit very aggressively with mass mailings, etc.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily so. At Cornell, for example, 18.1% of the classes have 50 or more students. An intro psych class there has 1300 students.</p>
<p>A number of top publics, including UC Berkeley (14.8%), UVA (15.1%), Michigan (17.1%), UNC Chapel Hill (11.5%), and William & Mary (7.2%) have a smaller percentage of large (50+ students) classes than Cornell. UNC Chapel Hill has a smaller percentage of large classes than Stanford (12.2%) and MIT (12.6%). William & Mary has a smaller percentage of large classes than 7 of the 8 Ivies: Cornell (18.1%), Harvard (8.3%), Princeton (10.9%), Columbia (7.3%), Penn (7.3%), Dartmouth (9.4%), and Brown (10.3%), as well as a number of other top privates including Stanford, MIT, Caltech (9.2%), Johns Hopkins (11.2%), WUSTL (9.6%), Rice (8.0%), Vanderbilt (7.6%), Notre Dame (9.3%), Emory (8.9%), USC (10.9%), and Carnegie Mellon (10.6%). </p>
<p>A lot of the public v. private stereotypes just aren’t true, at least not for all publics and for all privates. Another one that’s largely just a fable is that privates give better FA. Not necessarily so. Certainly the wealthiest privates give generous FA, but the vast majority of privates don’t meet 100% of need. It’s only a tiny handful that can afford to be that generous.</p>
<p>Public universities, even for OOS applicants, can also be a bargain for full-pays. OOS COA at Michigan (my alma mater) would have been about $8,000/year cheaper for my daughter than the private LAC she attends. Since it’s almost certain she’d have been in the Honors Program at Michigan, I think she could have gotten a comparable education there for a lower price, but she wanted a small school and the one she chose was a great fit for her. I’m happy with her choice but I would not have been disappointed had she chosen Michigan. And some publics are even cheaper. Total COA for a California resident is actually lower OOS at the University of Minnesota than in-state at UC Berkeley or UCLA.</p>
<p>Univ of North Carolina, at $41k for OOS COA, is reasonable in comparison to other publics at OOS prices (which can exceed $50k). And of course, UVa is one of the few (only?) publics that meets full financial need for OOS students.</p>
<p>UNC is 100% need-blind and meets full financial need for OOS students. I think UNC was the first do this, then UVa followed. </p>
<p>I’m a low-income oos student who is NOT on the Carolina Covenant.</p>
<p>University of Miami is a private school and has amazing financial aid, they give full-rides to I think 200 people per year? And if your SAT/ACT is above a 2100/31 then you’re most likely going to receive merit aid, which is supposedly very generous. They also let you do interviews for more aid.
I just had this information relayed to me by an incoming Freshman at U Miami.</p>
<p>OOS COA for some leading publics:</p>
<p>Minnesota $27,385*
U Pittsburgh $37,602
U Washington $38,670
UNC Chapel Hill $38,920
Wisconsin $38,934
Georgia Tech $39,308
Penn State $39,988
Purdue $42,126
UT-Austin $45,960
UIUC $47,170
William & Mary $47,654
Michigan $48,331
UVA $50,528
UCLA $53,354
UC Berkeley $54,444</p>
<ul>
<li>2010-2011 figure; 2011-12 will be slightly higher</li>
</ul>
<p>Keep in mind that colleges use widely varying estimates of travel costs and incidental expenses in their COA estimates.</p>