@healthandmusic No, I am a parent of three college age sons. We live in Arizona and my sons all attended BASIS Scottsdale. We are white and hardly minorities (although BASIS Scottsdale is 47% Asian, mostly Indian-Americans, and just 43% Caucasian). Son number one is studying engineering at Texas A&M and son number two just started at Miami (Ohio), also in engineering. Son number three is leaning toward Arizona State/Barrett Honors College and Michigan State Honors College for engineering, although he has not yet been admitted. With three in college at the same time, cost is definitely a factor. We have just started looking at Alabama and have not visited yet. Concerning whether Alabama would be a good fit, one thought. Texas A&M is (I am not exaggerating) 95% Texans. Alabama’s freshman class is 65% out of state, so almost everyone will be trying to fit in. High School cliques will not the barriers to meeting new people that they are at some schools like TAMU. My oldest is pretty outgoing, so this has not been a problem for him. It would likely have been an issue for son number two.
I see from your threads that you are considering a lot of colleges and are interested in Biology. I hesitate (for about five seconds) in discussing another college on the Alabama forum, but have you looked at ASU/Barrett? It’s the number-one public honors program. ASU is 6.9% Asian and Barrett’s percentage is higher. I think you’d qualify for some merit money. Check here: https://scholarships.asu.edu/estimator One of our BASIS friends who is Indian-American just graduated from ASU/Barrett summa cum laude with a degree in Biomedical Engineering. He studied abroad in Hong Kong and has had some great research opportunities. He is going to intern for a year at the Scottsdale Mayo Clinic (which partners with Barrett) and then intends to be part of the first class at the new Scottsdale Mayo Medical School, which opens in 2017.