^^^^^not at all. I got the answer to my question a while ago! Hopefully you find some answers that help you too!
Boomer1964 do you know that UGA has an acceptance rate of 53.
Much more selective… Higher quality applicants… An 21 ACT will not get you in.
Alabama:
Qualifications of Enrolled Freshmen
Average GPA 3.69
SAT Math 560 average
490-620 range of middle 50%
SAT Critical Reading 554 average
490-610 range of middle 50%
SAT Writing 539 average
470-590 range of middle 50%
ACT Composite 27 average
23-31 range of middle 50%
Ranked 110
UGA:
High School Core Grade Point Average
Middle 50% of All Enrolled First-Year Students: 3.88-4.13
Overall Average of All Enrolled First-Year Students: 4.0
Average of Admitted Honors Students: 4.12
Standardized Tests
SATR Middle 50% of Admitted First-Year Students: 1220-1360
Overall SATR Average for Admitted First-Year Students: 1344
ACT Middle 50% of Admitted First-Year Students: 28-32
Overall ACT Average for Admitted First-Year Students: 30
SATR Average of Admitted Honors Students: 1490
ACT Average of Admitted Honors Students: 33
Ranked: 54
To answer OP, the reason UA is popular here is because CC is full of high-stats kids (and parents). If you don’t qualify for the automatic merit aid, then UA is a bad deal for OOS students. If you are a high-stat kid, particularly a high stat kid who won’t qualify for need aid, UA is very popular because of the money they will give you.
The rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. Rankings lag behind actual details. Until UA tried actively recruiting top students, they were just another southern school better known for football than academics. It’s possible (likely, even) that this active recruiting of top students will result in UA’s rating going up.
One thing that I found funny is that, if I mention UA to a CC or similar board, people assume you’re a high-stat kid chasing merit aid. If you mention it to southerners, people realize that UA’s reputation as just a football school is improving every year. But if you mention it to non-southerners, they say, “why Bama”? (my employer has offices in GA and in New England. I mentioned UA to the GA people and got nothing but praise. The New England people were confused why D19 is considering top 30 schools and UA.)
No question asked in this thread hasn’t been asked by most of the current parents of UA students!
It’s the automatic, guaranteed-for-four-years scholarship money that draws most CC parents to UA. Yes, other schools offer decent, and even good, merit, but it’s not necessarily guaranteed for four years. Somebody mentioned Drexel. I live in Philly and went to Penn (next door) and my niece is a Drexel grad. Very good school, but they rarely meet full need and they are well known for downgrading merit awards as you move up through the years. That may not be an issue for your family, but it is for many. And my son refused to apply there - didn’t want to go to a “tech school” and thought the tiny campus was ugly.
In the non-CC (aka “real”) world, there are MANY parents who are happy to pay the out-of-state tuition to send their kids to UA. For a lot of them, it’s not much more than their in-state flagships (e.g., California, Illinois, Pennsylvania), and is an easier admit - so their kids get the big-school experience they want for maybe another $10k a year. But that’s not typically who you find here on CC.
The engineering school attracts some pretty high-stat students, BUT they allow anybody admitted to study there, so it’s unlike a lot of schools, where you have to meet a threshold to be admitted. They also offer a very good co-op program and do NOT charge tuition for the semesters those students are on co-op. My son made enough from his co-op job to cover his cost of room and board for two years.
UA is NOT the school for everybody, but it’s a terrific safety school for high-stat students and can be a happy home for the majority of them if that’s all they can afford. And for some, like my son, it’s a HUGE bargain, and he chose it over higher-rated schools once he had a chance to visit because it had everything those other schools offered for anywhere from a quarter to half the price. He’s now in his fourth year (co-op pushed back his graduation by a year) and having the time of the life!
One more thing: Granted I don’t spend as much time on CC as I once did, but I’ve never seen Bama touted as a great option for average students who need a big merit package. It is most definitely NOT that.
(Also? Roy Moore LOST. Roll Tide! 
)
@yearstogo @Boomer1964 Bama has been a fabulous school for our son. He was accepted into much higher ranked schools that we ultimately couldn’t afford. Bama offered him multiple stacking scholarships and he has attended on full scholarship (a huge blessing for our family.) He entered Bama taking 300/400 level math and physics courses (he graduated from high school with 5 in-major courses completed in each for both majors), and yes, Bama has offered him a lot academically. He has been taking grad level physics courses for the past couple of yrs. He is part of RRS (CBH). He has participated in research since his freshman yr. He has wonderful faculty mentors.
He is currently a sr in the process of applying to grad school. Zero regrets for his decision to attend Bama. It has a lot great opportunities to offer students who want them.
Conversely, our Dd didn’t find Bama a good fit. She is equally advanced as her brother but in different subjects. Bama only offered a minor with a limited number of courses in her areas of interest and she would not have been able to pursue appropriate level coursework.
But in terms of top students and challenging academics, Roll Tide. It has been great.
One other thing about Bama that I think adds to its appeal for many students (whether they’re attending on scholarship or full pay) is that 60 percent of the student body is from outside the state - something you usually only experience at an elite school. While the bulk of students are from the South, there are many students from California, the Midwest, and the Northeast. This creates a very different experience than many of the other schools that offer good merit packages. Something to consider.
There is not doubt that that Bama is a great deal for those students receiving these scholarships. I believe these students are also getting a good education and most likely would do well not only at UA but pretty much anywhere. I was just trying to make a point that It is not a good deal for the majority of OOS applicants It is not a very selective University and everyone who applies gets in which adds to diversity…
On the other hand, I’d guess that OOS honors students outnumber OOS non-honors students. Simply because, as you say, there’s no real reason for an OOS non-honors student to go to UA (excepting football players, of course). While there are literally thousands of reasons for OOS honors students to choose UA.
@Boomer1964 “everyone who applies gets in which adds to diversity…”
That is funny… Intellectual Diversity!!!
Actually, I think intellectual diversity in important
Actually the acceptance rate is 53% so this is not true. Bama likes to give in-state students a chance to attend their flagship and accepts them with stats lower than would be necessary at some more competitive state universities. This helps their recruitment of in-state URM students which is a very good thing IMO. Additionally, I suspect they are also more lenient in accepting OOS full pay students. This is not unique to UA.
@gusmahler, I’d be careful making assumptions about which there are more of. UA attracts a lot of full-pay out-of-state students, and that’s part of concerted effort on the part of the university to increase revenues.
https://nyti.ms/2jIVZ4q
That is demonstrably not true - the admit rate for 2016 was 53% and US News classified it as “more selective.”
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-alabama-1051
It’s really not that hard to get this information, so I’m not sure why folks are just pulling stuff out of thin air. It’s a large public flagship university and has all the perks that go along with that. No, it’s not an Ivy or a “public Ivy.” But it can hold its own against many flagship universities, especially in certain majors (public relations, accounting, dance, and all the engineering disciplines).
https://viewbook.ua.edu/quick-facts/
And the campus is beautiful, which you cannot say about all flagships. The university is still building, a sign of its aspirations. Just today they publicly announced their campaign for a new performing arts facility:
https://www.ua.edu/performingarts/
Going back to the original question, perhaps it might help to give an example of the kind of student who might apply full pay to UA. In California, if you are a B average GPA student with say an ACT 26 and come from a well off family who will not be eligible for financial aid the chances are good that you might consider an OOS flagship. Many of these students end up attending the University of Arizona or the University of Oregon (jokingly known locally as University of California Eugene). Both of these universities have a much higher acceptance rate than Bama by the way (79% and 78%). The reason for this is that competition for the popular universities in California is huge. From the high school my kids attended you need a GPA above 4.0 to be admitted to the most popular campuses UCB (4.31), UCLA (4.30), UCSD (4.24), UC Irvine (4.16), UC Davis (4.12), UC Santa Barbara (4.03). It isn’t until you get to UC Santa Cruz (3.92) that you can gain acceptance with a GPA lower than 4.0. The situation isn’t much better with the popular Cal State campuses such as San Diego State (they had 80,000 applications per year last time I checked) and Cal Poly SLO.
So, your options then are to attend a private school (and some I’m sure do this), a less selective Cal State campus, or go off to community college and hope that you are able to transfer into the major you want to study. This is not a given, and I remember being shocked at a community college counselor visiting for a high school information night telling us that a prospective accounting student trying to transfer into San Diego State with a 4.0 community college GPA was rejected.
The hypothetical student in this example might well look favorably on Bama. After all he/she would be paying less than a full pay student at University of Oregon or University of Arizona (they love full pay California students). If this student got into UC Riverside or UC Merced he/she would be paying $35k-$36k annually as a full pay student anyway and the campus and facilities in Riverside and Merced aren’t anywhere near as fantastic as the ones at UA.
Although UA isn’t a good choice for average stat students from less affluent homes looking for merit or financial aid, a student from a wealthier family doesn’t have that financial pressure. When my kids were taking their ACT/SAT exams I saw many students with driving new high end cars and talking about their international vacations. These students can pay their way wherever they decide they want to go.
Why are we comparing total COA for Bama with tuition only for privates? Is this kid going to commute everywhere?
I’m not sure what you mean? I didn’t mention tuition for private colleges.
I suggested it to D as an academic and financial safety (because she had the stats for the pres scholly and I already has been on CC so I knew about it). That year though, Temple also offered full tuition for similar stats and she much preferred North Philly to Tuscaloosa so she chose Temple as the “mom can sleep at night” safety. As it turned out, she had options she liked better and didn’t go to either one.
I wonder if Bama will become less popular now that full tuition is gone for the more common superkid stats of 32/3.5 or whatever it was. Temple dropped theirs too, made them competitive not guaranteed.
The automatic scholarship list was updated this year, by the way: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21015126/#Comment_21015126
@labegg I do know a student there who is not on the pres scholarship, probably full pay. She loved the weather, the size, Greek life, football, etc.
^^ Unfortunately, Temple got into financial trouble because so many students took them up on that automatic scholarship offer. It actually cost a dean his job as I recall.
UA no longer offers full tuition, but the $25,000 a year is guaranteed for four years and is still automatic. The $2,500 a year for engineering is still available as well. And I don’t think UA has jeopardized their overall finances with all that automatic merit money. They are cutting back now and raising the cutoff for the big awards, and they want to focus on other areas, but I suspect they’ll revisit the award if applications drop off substantially.
Nonetheless, someone who liked Temple would likely not care for UA and vice versa. Much to my chagrin, I couldn’t even get my kid to apply to Temple, but I think that’s because its reputation locally is different than its reputation nationally. It will be interesting to see what Temple’s applications are like after a record-setting year, given the change in scholarship requirements to a competitive award.
UA feels like a large University of Delaware or small Penn State (without the hills). Temple is an urban campus.
Yup, it did. They blew the budget quickly. And, like UA, took a lot of flack for prioritizing money for OOS high stat kids over state residents with financial need.
Not a knock on Temple, but if you look at the guaranteed full tuition scholarship college list there’s really nothing in the NE. I think that’s part of what was so appealing about Temple for many. That, and the location in a large NE city. (And for some the area is/was also a turn-off).
@Ohiomomof2 I would have picked Temple over Alabama too, Philly is fantastic! I don’t know anybody who has gone to Alabama that doesn’t love it! Clearly people here on CC are always ready to defend it’s honor and merit. I never said it wasn’t a good school, I just don’t know that I agree with many who feel it is the golden egg. But obviously everyone’s golden egg can be different. I even suggest Alabama to some on CC the other day to a parent with a high stat kid.