@DavidPuddy we also scheduled our tour through the Honors College - it was GREAT! I’ll include the link to my report on that trip, which includes my advice to consider skipping the general official tour if you are at all short on time. It was just ok - mostly riding around on a bus listening to a guy I couldn’t understand very well (acoustic problems on bus) about stuff I didn’t care about (random buildings, their purpose and history). I think it’d be better to do the virtual on-line tour or drive around to get the lay of the land. Then just walk around on your own at your own pace, stop students to talk with. We did that as well, so I felt like we sort of spent double the amount of time seeing all campus. We did have enough time, but we’d scheduled 2 full days on campus, with travel on 3rd day. If you only have a day, would definitely just walk around on your own. It is fun to see the dorm, but if you don’t want to spend the time to walk there you can see it online.
Don’t miss a meeting with the Engineering Co-op office! Definitely higher on the list than official campus tour or seeing the dorm. GREAT info.
My son is also a NMSF (praying for finalist!!), but we decided not to look at Oklahoma even though it is a LOT closer to us. I spent a lot of time comparing the financials from all angles, and I can’t even remember anymore how Alabama won out, but it did by a bit. Not that that would have been the deciding factor since it wasn’t a big difference, but it makes me feel better about Alabama! I have also read that fees at Oklahoma are very high, and those aren’t covered by scholarship. I think their webpage shows over $2,000. Alabama’s estimated fees are $800/year. Really the main reason though is that my son is more interested in going somewhere further away and out of the midwest. Seems more exciting to him. If he’d been interested in Oklahoma we would have checked it out.
And the t-shirt: I guess we weren’t worthy! No t-shirt. No problem - we bought one!