Why Roll Tide?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
81

Full tuition is gone. But not by much. Presidential used to be “full tuition”. Now it’s $25,000 per year, while tuition is $28,000 per year. So it’s still substantially cheaper than many schools.

I live in Texas and Texas has a well-regarded flagship state school. But in-state tuition at UT is much more than the $3,000 I’d be paying at Bama. And UT doesn’t give out much merit aid.

And to reiterate a point made earlier, a huge advantage of the UA scholarship is that it is known. The Temple full tuition scholarship was mentioned here. I just went to their website. It gives no details, doesn’t say how many are awarded, what the qualifications are, if it’s competitive, etc. Not to pick on Temple, but lots of other schools are the same. They say they award merit scholarships, but don’t tell you how you get it or how much you get. The UA page says, “get a 33, you get $25k. Get a 30, you get $19k.” That’s a huge factor for people here.

We aren’t set on Bama yet, but another school will have to give D19 a lot of money to do so.

82

D18 is giving Bama a very close look. She’s eligible for the NMF package and that covers a whopping 10 semesters of tuition. Bama’s dorms are the best we’ve seen so far. The campus is very clean and well-maintained. The Greek houses are stunning (take a look on Google Maps Street View) … and we’re not “Greek” people. There’s a certain freshness and up-and-coming feeling with all the new construction. I don’t know, it wasn’t anything like what we expected. The main downside for D18: it isn’t near a big city.

83

My dd was considering Temple as well as UA. She is a good student but not high enough to qualify for Pres scholarship at either school. That being said, UA gave her more than 3x what Temple did. She honestly would have been happy at either school I think. She loved many things about both campuses. Had Temple given her more money the decision would have been more difficult. Needless to say (with grad school being necessary for her career goal) she went for the money at Bama and is very happy. —I want to add that she has quite a number of friends on campus from OOS that did not qualify for any scholarships and are there paying full price.

84

@droppedit Up until we saw Bama my dd would only look at school that were in or near a big city. Once she saw Bama that was all out the window. She is happy with the restaurants/shopping etc that Ttown offers however when she comes home she is quickly out the door and into Manhattan with friends!

85

While $25,000 is better than most any other school, that still leaves a fair amount of money and is not nearly as good as full tuition. Like everyone knows, the scholarship stays at $25,000\year while tuition will go up. Tuition is $28,900 this year so next year it will be around $30,000 most likely. If tuition goes up $1,000 a year and the student goes 4 years, starting next year that is a difference of $26,000 ($5,000 + $6,000 + $7,000 + $8000). I think my son will chose another school because of this. He visited last April before the scholarship change had been announced. He sees a lot of good opportunities at Alabama but there are lots of good schools in our state that are more expensive but have other things that he likes better than Alabama. Sure they are more expensive but the extra $26,000 is enough to possibly tip the scale away from Alabama.

86

@gusmahler that’s because Temple doesn’t offer the automatic scholarships anymore. The top end one was full tuition plus a couple of $2k stipends for summer research or travel abroad. I think 2016 was the last entering class to get those.

What happened was too many students took Temple up on the offer and the program cost way more than anticipated. They tried raising the score/gpa threshold but still too many students were accepting it. It was a victim of its own success, you might say.

http://temple-news.com/news/university-limits-merit-scholarships/

87

DS15 also was awarded the Temple scholarship before it was pulled. I couldn’t convince him to consider it in any way shape or form, despite the opportunity of coming home more often.

DH & I went to visit, DS refused to go, & I actually was OK w/ the campus, not so much the surrounding area.

While waiting for the engineering session, we were poking around and in the lower levels the place looked archaic. Also, at the time DS was interested in Computer Engineering and the speaker blew right past that; clearly the school was more focused on other disciplines, and pretty much said so. So it was dead in the water on all fronts for us.

As far as being in a Big City, someone who went to school in Philly made a good point. She didn’t have the money to do all the city stuff, so kids on limited budgets can’t really partake in the city life like some of their peers. That would have been DS unfortunately.

88

@Windows16, I am interested in which schools you are looking at that provide full tuition scholarships?

I have been very interested in people posting that the awards brought costs down to half, then when you look at the school the COA is over $60K, which still leaves a $30K shortfall. They are often disappointed as what they really need is a full tuition award.

89

What happened at Temple also happened at Oklahoma (which recently cut back on their merit program). And if the change to the Presidential award is any indication, it will end up happening at Alabama eventually. While merit aid is a great way of raising the stats of the school (I believe the 75th percentile ACT score at Bama went from 27 to 31), it means that the school is losing a lot of money on students it’s bringing in who aren’t paying full tuition.

The football program brings in a ton of money, but I’m sure the Oklahoma football program does also. Not enough to make up for all the free they were giving out.

90

@laralei - Ole Miss is the only school he is looking at the he will automatically qualify for full tuition scholarship.

Some of the schools in our state offer competitive scholarships that cover most of tuition but he is not interested in them. If he stays in state, he will most likely go to one that gives out very few academic scholarships.

91

My daughter is a sophomore. She is on full tuition so I understand your reply as we removed several schools such as Penn State (OOS for us) as their financial package Was minimal. Having said that, if you are a top student, it is hard to beat their academic packages. Their academics are improving each year (40% of the class of 2020 had an ACT over 30 and included over 140 national merit finalists). The university is investing tons of money into the Infrastracture (new dorms, academic buildings, an entire new performing arts campus to die for) which can we done when you have a top notch football team. They have a flourishing OOS student population, a breathtaking campus, great weather, a school spirit that we joke willl sell out not only our stadium but yours too as well as their gymnastic team events, basketball games, etc. It is a big school but easily able to be navigated by foot although there are buses and. there are so many ways the University makes the campus feel like it is a small college rather than a big university so your child does not get lost in the numbers.And the Bamaly… what’s the Bamally you ask? It is the FB family of parents that will show up to give your kid a hug if they need one, leave their home in any state to pick up your child if they are stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire, show up at the hospital if your kid gets sick, it is a loving, active parent group the likes of which I have not seen at any other university. You have a need or a question, it is answered and met within the hour. The family should be on the marketing brochures. Oh, and did I mention we have a pretty great football team? I am a Dartmouth grad but I think I would go to Alabama if I could do it all over again…

92

PS: for those who were wondering why high achieving students chose Bama: my daughter is on full tuition in UAs Honors College on pre-med track already doing research. She could have started last year with a leading research professor who taught her freshman bio class. UA allows their top professors, and top research professors, to teach freshman…

93

@Windows16, which college at UA was he interested in? The College of Engineering still offers a $2,500 a year scholarship to students who qualify. This is stacked on top of other scholarships unless the student receives the NM or Academic Elite scholarship.

https://eng.ua.edu/admissions/scholarships/

And UA also does NOT charge extra for engineering, business, and nursing programs like a lot of big public schools do (Penn State and Temple, for instance, here in PA). This can add several thousand dollars a YEAR to the cost of tuition.

http://tuition.psu.edu/tuitiondynamic/tabledrivenrates.aspx?location=up#up-NonPA
https://bursar.temple.edu/sites/bursar.temple.edu/files/documents/Tuition_Rates.pdf

94

And virtually EVERY public university has an annual increase as well - some schools (and years) higher than others.
https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-fees-room-and-board-over-time
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/07/penn_state_board_approves_274.html

95

You are seemingly trying to find reasons NOT Alabama.if it’s not a fit for your child, that’s totally ok but the schools you listed above are all over the place. Someone interested in Drexel - very urban campus, 5 year internship program university with no football team, is unlikely to also be interested in Alabama if they truly know what sort of university they are interested in. Both are great schools for different reasons. I honestly can’t see a kid visiting both and saying both are a perfect match. So shouldn’t you first narrow down the search to schools that got and then do a “net cost” and pro con? The students at UA and their parents (like myself) are passionate about the school for a reason. There are many intangibles. First, however, it has to be a fit for the student. I believe any student can succeed at any school if they are happy there any work hard.

96

@dmccnj You are so spot on w/ the FB Bamally. Wow, the support & help you can get there is amazing! DS is 16 hour drive, often 8 hour day even w/ flying, so knowing there is someone who could step in and help out if needed is a true blessing.

DS had never flown before going to Bama. On a return flight to ATL airport, he could not find the shuttle he needed to get and it was past pick up time! He was “concerned” and I was panicking for him. :slight_smile: I posted on the FB page and within minutes, he had contact numbers, directions and offers of kids meeting him to show him where to go; it should be in the marketing brochures.

97

For an OOS student, UA is somewhat of a no-brainier choice for someone like my NYC daughter who wanted a traditional, big-school-spirit, collegiate experience, and who had the stats of a 30 ACT and 3.7 GPA on 4.0 only scale.

While her stats may have been good enough for her to get into a decent private college, those stats are unlikely to get her, as an OOS student, into a “public ivy” such as UVA, UM, UCLA and UNC. And, at the end of the day, she wanted a big-time collegiate experience.

So my daughter applied to Big Ten, ACC and SEC schools. Of those accepted, she received sizable automatic merit scholarships at Ohio State, Florida State, University of South Carolina and Alabama.

UA stood above those other public universities offering sizable automatic merit scholarships because UA also uniquely offered the following: (1) automatic Honors College Admittance, (2) a 60/40 OOS/In-State student ratio, (3) a stunningly beautiful campus. (4) incredible freshmen honors college dorms, (5) over-the-top school spirit, (6) warm weather, (7) top-notch / reputable Greek life and (8) very friendly people.

She just completed her 1st semester and loves UA. They do a great job there. It was a great choice for my daughter, and an extremely fair choice for our pocket book given the automatic merit award.

So, why choose UA if no merit scholarship? I guess I would really have to understand the other choices offering merit for an OOS student with B stats. But I would still have to say that there are certainly a lot of reasons (as noted above) for an OOS student to choose UA over comparable state universities offering a “similar collegiate experience” with the National Brand. Knowing what I know now, I would be totally fine with my daughter choosing UA with no merit scholarship. We would make it work out. But everyone’s financial situation is of course different. Never an easy choice. But know that UA really comes thru with what it offers. So far, it’s been a terrific experience for my daughter.

98

I would like to emphasize that when a student is looking for a large public state university as an out of state student that one of the potential hurdles is being out-numbered and feeling isolated by the large number of in-state students who have high school buddies and strong legacies. Surprisingly, UA’s student body is 60% out-of-state students. And moreover those students are not just from surrounding southern states. My daughter’s best friends are from LA, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut and PA. In that regard, UA almost uniquely mirrors National Private Colleges on this geographical demographic. Even the public Ivy’s such as UNC, UVA, UCLA and UM, do not approach the same OOS / In-State ratio of UA. Granted though those public Ivy’s do have a larger international ratio. Anyway, it’s something to consider, as that ratio is something that can really make a difference to an OOS student’s collegiate experience at a State University.

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Does UA publish the OOS vs in-state ratio for each college? Does UA publish the number of Presidential Scholars ?

100

I am thinking out loud …

From what I read on CC, many pointed out that in-state students seldom see their classmates in the in-state flagship, has it been wrong?

I wonder how many students who were accepted to UM, UCLA, UNC would choose UA because of the OOS/ In-State ratio? (other reasons may be)