Will UA be a "public Ivy" school?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
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<p>*and just for the record, representing for those of us out there in the field…
Does anyone care if the awesome artist, actor, or musician has a low ACT? Who cares?</p>

<p>======================================</p>

<p>I do, and while it’s arguably 50/50 academics/talent for admissions to the good programs, colleges do too. Great art is not created in a vacuum. (end of tiny rant!) *</p>

<p>Do you really care if some great artist, dancer, singer, actor, musician has an ACT 22? Why? Someone with an ACT 22 isn’t stupid…they’re not imbeciles. They may be slow at tests, slow at reading, and/or may not know the “fine” rules of grammar. That it no way suggests that they are not intelligent enough to create art/music, choreograph dance or perform.</p>

<p>I have a foster-niece who probably could only muster an ACT 21, but she has a voice and vocal range that would rival Mariah Carey. She’s a B/C student (couple of As)…never fails a class. Bama would be crazy to keep her out for her ACT score. </p>

<p>Bama knows that not every kid is going to be on the Deans List. One of my son’s friends from high school has never been close to being on the Dean’s List. His parents are thrilled when he hovers 3.0 (mix of A’s, B’s, C’s). He’s got a great head for business and his parents own 5 restaurants. His parents own one of those “suites” in the stadium…and he’ll probably own one too someday. He’ll be a life-long alumni donor like his parents. </p>

<p>Schools need those kids, too. </p>

<p>Again…we have to realize that the STEM majors are just one part of the school. </p>

<p>I see Bama more like 3 schools. I realize that there are different “Colleges” but I see the school as divided differently than that. I see the STEM majors, Nursing, B-school, the Humanities, Education as one school, the artsy/performing majors as another school, and the rest as another school. (I may be forgetting some)</p>

<p>I see the first “school” I described as being “the Public Ivy” school.</p>

<p>*I don’t have a problem with UA not accepting instate kids with a 20 ACT. What I don’t want to see is a time when UA becomes so prestigious that it’s unattainable for good (25 ACT 3.2 GPA) students to gain admittance. And that’s why I said I wasn’t sure I ever wanted it to become a Public Ivy.
*</p>

<p>That will never happen. Even the UCs accept kids with those stats. :)</p>

<p>Bama, like the UCs, will likely ALWAYS use GPA as a tipping point…and the greater weighting factor.</p>

<p>A side note…I wonder if Bama is going to need to start Super-scoring (not for scholarships, but for admission)?</p>

<p>Other schools are super-scoring which allows them to declare higher numbers for their middle quartiles.</p>

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<p>^ agreed. and BTW did I ever tell you you’re the best big brother? :)</p>

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<p>i like yds’s information about top 10% of each school…as i have been saying i dont have a problem with how it exists right now…the best of both for instate and out of state… i just dont want it to swing too far</p>

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<p>Part of the importance of offering generous OOS scholarships isn’t just ultimately attracting students with decent to high stats… it’s about making OOS students aware of the University of Alabama to begin with.</p>

<p>An important aspect is recognition, especially for OOS students like me, who are not related to UA alums or are not from southeastern states. Seven months ago, I had never heard of UA (except as far as football went). With the volume of college mail I received, many letters (including early mail from UA before I became a NMF) went straight to the recycling bin. It never would have occurred to me to go to UA. Neither would it have occurred to any of my family or friends to consider this school. </p>

<p>The scholarships UA offered greatly contributed towards my decision to attend, and has made my peers aware of the school itself. I have several younger cousins and friends who are all now considering UA because they have done research on what the school has to offer and are impressed by it. My situation made perhaps 10 younger individuals, all of whom are intelligent but not all of whom will receive the scholarship money I have, aware and seriously consider UA. If you take into account the steadily rising number of OOS students attending, my story is one of hundreds, so the number of individuals made aware of UA to begin with greatly increases with the current policies. </p>

<p>Ultimately, OOS scholarships attract high stats students. But they also attract OOS individuals with mid-line scores because those scholarships made the students aware of the school to begin with, especially in states that are not in the southeast. UA can both increase its stats and profitability by making themselves more visible in an academic sense to students across the country. That is something that will ultimately benefit the university, and that would be lost if not for the OOS scholarships UA offers.</p>

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<p>Publics almost have to use GPA and ranking as the heavier weighting factor otherwise their top tier school(s) will become over-enrolled with Suburbia’s Children of White and Asian faces…and that’s just not a good idea.</p>

<p>Kids from the more rural areas may not have had the best K-12 education and may not have adequate scores, but to suggest that they don’t bring anything to the table is silly. They’ve seen and have experienced things that city kids have no idea about. And, I don’t mean “bad things”…I mean just different things. </p>

<p>I met a young lady at Bama who has guaranteed admission into UAB Med school because of her commitment to later serve in Rural Alabama as a Primary-Care physician. To qualify, she had to be from a rural area in the state. She will adjust well when she practices in Rural Alabama because she won’t be a “fish out of water” when she gets there. </p>

<p>This also bears mentioning. By bringing in more high stats kids into Bama, it actually serves as a motivator to the other kids. These kids serve as Peer Tutors and also contribute to classroom discussions in a way that the others in the classroom benefit. All the teaching and learning cannot just come from the profs.</p>

<p>i like yds’s information about top 10% of each school.</p>

<p>I think that is already informally in place. While Bama doesn’t use that as Texas-like rule, there probably are few (if ANY) top 10% kids who don’t get accepted to Bama. As I’ve said, Bama weights GPA higher than test scores. So, a top 10% kid is going to have a 3.0+ at virtually any school.</p>

<p>*i dont have a problem with how it exists right now…the best of both for instate and out of state… i just dont want it to swing too far *</p>

<p>Parent56…the state’s population is far too small for it to ever swing too far. States like Texas and Calif have to have those rules because they have a gazillion instate kids and they each have 2 “top schools” that everyone wants to go to.</p>

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<p>I feel the need to highlight the fact that a lot of rural students DON’T have this; or I should say maybe they do, but they don’t even realize it. Many rural students don’t have internet at home; they also don’t have internet access via cell phones because if you look at coverage maps, anyplace past 20 miles away from an interstate has spotty if any cell coverage (because cows, chickens & horses don’t have data plans :slight_smile: Add in the fact that even in good suburban HS’s, many GC’s aren’t that great (go read almost any thread in the Parent’s Forum.) GC’s in rural HS’s are focused on a lot of things, including trying to keep kids in school to graduate. </p>

<p>The public library isn’t necessarily close; gas is $3.50+/gallon. No internet at home, no local Barnes & Noble. If you’re first generation considering going to college and that’s the reality of your local area, it’s not necessarily a matter of choosing not to take advantage of what’s available; it may be that you have no idea that it’s even there.</p>

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<p>mom2ck… when did UA get the early admission to med school? i thought uab and usa were the only ones that had that? havent checked in a while though</p>

<p>agree robd!!!</p>

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<p>If that was meant for me, AL34. I thank you. If it was meant for Mom2ck well then she has some explaining to do… :-)</p>

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<p>I don’t think that there’s much risk of Alabama’s 2 top schools excluding instate students. When you look at the state’s population and the size of its 2 top schools, there’s plenty of room for instate students…especially when many instate students opt to go to other instate choices. </p>

<p>Alabama pop: **4.7 million <a href=“23rd%20in%20population”>/B</a></p>

<p>Bama: 24,900 undergrads (BTW…Wikipedia has updated Bama’s size to 1800 acres! This is very spacious for a non-ag non-land grant school.)</p>

<p>Auburn: 22,100 undergrads (land grant - 1800 acres.)</p>

<p>Calif population: 37 Million </p>

<p>UCLA undergrads: 27,000 ( 419 acres…yikes!)</p>

<p>Berkeley undergrads: 25,500 (1,600 acres)</p>

<p>Texas Population: 25 million</p>

<p>UT-Austin undergrads: 38,000 (on only 423 acres…yikes!!!)</p>

<p>TAMU undergrads: 37,000 (5500 acres…land grant Ag school)</p>

<p>Florida population: 18 million</p>

<p>UF undergrads: 32,000 2,000 acres</p>

<p>FSU undergrads: 31,000 450 acres</p>

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<p>*mom2ck… when did UA get the early admission to med school? *</p>

<p>Bama itself doesn’t offer “early admission” to med school (although it should since the medical school is The University of Alabama School of Medicine.)</p>

<p>This guaranteed admission is something that is offered thru the med school thru some kind of application process. The student told me how she had to qualify but I don’t remember the particulars…except that she has to work in Rural Alabama for a certain amount of time. Her med school costs are also paid for.</p>

<p>I agree that those who live in rural areas don’t have the same access to things. The schools need to help compensate for that by offering after school ACT classes, or lunchtime ACT classes, or summer ACT classes (with bus service) etc.</p>

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<p>I do, and while it’s arguably 50/50 academics/talent for admissions to the good programs, colleges do too. Great art is not created in a vacuum. (end of tiny rant!)</p>

<p>AL34 – I dunno; when I was looking into RISD many moons ago (as a youngun), I was surprised to find that it admitted a lot of kids with SAT scores (Verbal or Math) in the 400s. But maybe that has changed since then.</p>

<p>I also looked into, applied to, and was admitted to the Boston Museum (of Fine Arts) School. Although it was (and is) affiliated with Tufts, it also let in low-stats kids if they had artistic talent. Again, that was many years ago, so perhaps it has changed since then. </p>

<p>I ended up bagging art and getting an MA in English instead. I probably should have stuck with art. :)</p>

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<p>That will never happen. Even the UCs accept kids with those stats.</p>

<p>So does UNC-CH (from in-state applicant pool). But shhhhh…don’t tell that to the folks at the CC UNC forum. :)</p>

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<p>thanks m2ck… i didnt think it had one… EMSAP is the best known one and that is through UAB not UA…UAB also has the rural program, not sure about UA having that but it could</p>

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<p>This may be the rural med program that’s being discussed: <a href=“http://cchs.ua.edu/wp-content/cchsfiles/crm/RuralScholarsPrograms.pdf[/url]”>http://cchs.ua.edu/wp-content/cchsfiles/crm/RuralScholarsPrograms.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>RobD – good points about kids in rural areas!</p>

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<p>thanks robd… i was getting confused…knew ua didnt have an early acceptance…i guess this is a college senior that got accepted just before med school…i was thinking it was the early admission that uab and usa have…guaranteed place in med school when in senior year of high school</p>

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<p>*EMSAP is the best known one and that is through UAB *</p>

<p>This gal is in something different. Those who do EMSAP don’t promise to do Rural Medicine. The program that this girl is in has such a commitment. </p>

<p>This program is different…it doesn’t happen in high school. It happens during junior year of college…which in some ways is better since a number of EMSAP kids decide against med school…since high school students often change their minds. </p>

<pre><code>That said, there’s really no reason not to let UA have some kind of guaranteed admittance program as well for high school seniors.
</code></pre>

<p>*Ten qualified students from rural areas are chosen each year to enter the Rural Medical Scholars Program, a highly selective premed and medical education program of The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama School of Medicine (UASOM). </p>

<p>The tenth class of Rural Medical Scholars graduated from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in May 2010, and began residency training. </p>

<p>The fifteenth class entered the program in August of 2010. Including the 2010-2011 RMS class, 154 students have become Rural Medical Scholars.
*</p>

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<p>FWIW, UA’s Rural Medical Scholars program is housed on the 3rd floor of Nott Hall right across the hall from some Honors College offices.</p>

<p>lol m2ck, I can name all the state flagships from memory also. NY is a tough one though.</p>

<p>I cut this out from my previous post, but I’m very familiar with a state flagship that doesn’t admit many students with lower stats and is known to prefer OOS students for the lower-stat slots over in-state students because of the higher OOS tuition. My home state’s flagship, the University of Washington (UDub), does this. I know that even with my stats, admission was not a certainty and that the primary factor in my admission was the fact that I would likely enter with an associate’s degree and had a high GPA. Like many of my friends, I was expecting to go to a directional state university on a very small ($2500 for each of my first two years) merit scholarship. I got no merit money and only loans from the UDub and would likely have had to commute in order to afford tuition and other costs. </p>

<p>I completely agree that many rural students lack access to libraries and the internet. I’ll also mention that many other states have large rural populations and minority populations and are able to do better than AL when it comes to test scores, while some do worse. I firmly believe that a child who lives in a rural area can still succeed, they just might have to try harder and make sacrifices. Life for most everyone ain’t no crystal stair, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from climbin’.</p>

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<p>LadyDi -
I was thinking more specifically about the music performance students I know from here. In the last two years we’ve sent students to Eastman (U of Roch.), Julliard, Curtis (free tuition!), Oberlin, Northwestern and U. Indiana, all very competitive music programs. Every kid that got in from our area was 30+ ACTs. Of course that doesn’t mean that talent doesn’t trump academics in the decision, but I think the majority of applicants are also high stats kids. Maybe it’s coincidence but I don’t think so. The same factors that make a great music student, dedication, perserverance and hard work are also the marks of a good student so obviously there is some corrolation there.
Also RISD, at least when we looked for DS early on, was very competitive academically.
I think in general there are so many high stats artistically talented kids that that bar has also been raised. Much different than when I went for my BFA.</p>

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<p>There is no degree requirement for acting, art, design, dance, photography etc.
Plenty of musicians and artists make a living without ever attending college.
But getting a BA should be more than vo-tec training, the same for all other degrees.</p>