The time has come to move Alabama into the CC Top Universities section of forums! UA should take its rightful place alongside the other top state U’s listed there like the UC’s, Virginia, Michigan, and UNC.
Who is with me on this?
I vote yes, anyway!
Roll Tide!!! Based on number of threads, posts, and views…yes!!!
How do we get this done?
@mom2collegekids as you pointed out, this definitely has to be one of the top state U forums as far as buzz and activity, not to mention caliber of top students drawn there. It is no wonder - UA makes you feel wanted.
CC powers that be: please move us to CC Top Universities!
Nice sentiment, but we all know it’s not going to happen. Those 19 “Top Universities” are driven by prestige, something Bama does not have at this time. Maybe someday…
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The sad part is that people hear “Alabama” in other parts of the country and automatically make assumptions about quality based on redneck stereotypes.
I truly believe it is one of the greatest public U’s.
Alabama partly suffers from the “Vanderbilt” problem. When I was an applicant years ago, Vanderbilt accepted >50% of applicants. It had trouble getting respect outside the southeast region partly because it is in Tennessee, a turn off for out of staters who immediately think about Dukes of Hazzard and Gone with the Wind stereotypes.
It took years of work for Vanderbilt to pull itself out of the muck and crack the top 20 list, partly by marketing itself aggressively and making politically correct moves like renaming the dorm formerly known as Confederate and pursuing a more diverse student body.
Alabama is no different. It is as good as any state U, but it suffers from the Vanderbilt problem IMHO. Eventually, UA shall overcome - just watch.
One good step CC could make is to move it to the top universities section not based on some artificial USNWR ranking but rather on CC user interest - a factor which would easily qualify it as a top CC university.
Just sayin’.
I agree that the 19 “Top Universities” are probably driven by some arbitrary idea of prestige, but as everyone knows, ‘prestige’ is hardly universally agreed on. USC should probably be in the same list… it’s certainly on the level with Virginia or Michigan.
But the reason I agree with the OP strongly is that College Confidential should not try to be some arbitrator of prestige, it should serve as a forum for all college students. As a website, their goal ought to be to improve the user’s experience (unless they are getting payments from prestigious colleges under the table I’m not aware of).
It’s simply lazy web design to set up 30 slots for “Top Liberal Arts Colleges” (none of which has even half the activity of the average “Top University”), but only have 19 for “Top Universities”, particularly when two slots could be added to Universities without any change in page layout or size.
Based on traffic for schools, the following schools should be added to “Top Universities”: USC, UC-San Diego, Texas and Alabama. Toss in Florida (just below the average traffic for the existing “Top Universities”) for an even 24 slots.
After all, from a usability experience, why should it be easier to get to Whitman college, which has had 4 posts on 2 threads this year so far, than to UA, which has had 7 posts on 3 threads just today (and it’s not even 10am Central)?
Alternately- I’d like CC to allow users to bookmark schools- not just individual threads. If I log in, there are 2 schools I want to check in on (Minnesota and UA), and both require an increasingly annoying amount of navigation to get to.
CC should have a list of top universities that award the most ‘Full Tuition Scholarships and more’ without regard to parent’s income…ROLL TIDE
And they should have a dedicated board for Bryant University.
By SAT scores, Alabama is tied for 221st in the Nation. This is far from a complete assessment of the overall quailty of the school. But on a statistical basis, Alabama would be out of place in Top Universities.
(Source: Business Insider)
We’re talking CC Top Universities.
The CC part means we CC users can create our own criteria, such as user interest, forum traffic, buzz, etc etc.
Also, Alabama does not superscore the SAT from what I understand - so its Average SAT scores may look lower than schools that do.
@Nerdyparent: I was also referencing CC Top Universities, hence my usage of upper-case. I don’t object to the debate. Though I’m also part of the “we” of CC users and think that popularity/buzz should not be a major criterion for determining inclusion in that particular list.
I was not trying to make Alabama’s scores appear low or high. But I’d say the figure is accurate in relation to other schools. When this type of data is obtained the reporting standards are usually stringently specified. Some colleges have been found to lie (Claremont McKenna, Bucknell, et al), but that’s another issue.
Before Alabama, I would place all the rest of the UC schools. Alabama may generate a lot of buzz just because SO many people apply there because of its sheer size, but it is by no means a top univeristy. I mean USC and other top caliber schools that draw top applicants are not on thatt list. It would be misleading to put them in the top 19 “top colleges” because that list is not for schools that generate the most buzz.
I agree with @merc81. By the normal criteria used to designate top colleges and universities – student test scores adn the like – Alabama does not qualify.
If it was such a competitive school, it would not have to rely on giving out so much merit aid to attract top students from across the country.
NO! I already consider it at the top. It’s under A. And then it’s at the top of the A list (ok, 3rd). If you move it, I’d have to scroll down. It’s SO convenient now. Smart out-of-state kids gobble up the opportunity to attend UA on a scholarship – why? Because it’s so good. Proof is in the pudding. @momfromme said it best “attract top students from across the country.” It’s what Bama does. Don’t be deceived data pools which dilute the impact that the University and the top students have. Small, more selective schools will win the data game, but the power that UA has been building is really incredible if you think about it more. The networking and opportunities that UA and its alumni will continue to tap into because of these incentives is phenonmenal. But…it’s not for everyone.
I personally don’t think UA belongs on the “Top CC Universities” list, but I do think there should be separate listing of “State Flagship Universities,” to make it easier to find these schools when searching. It shouldn’t be so hard to find popular CC schools like Penn State, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Georgia, Florida, and Bama.
The CC listings are ridiculously arbitrary. 30+ “Top Liberal Arts Colleges” (aka SLACS), a third more than the number of “Top Universities”? Whitman and Trinity in CT warrant their own special listings, but no Miami, USC, Tufts, Tulane or Brandeis? It boggles the mind.
Maybe that smaller number is because the Ivies get a separate space? (And apparently the “Ivies” are so special they can’t even be placed under “Colleges and Universities” lest they get tainted by the masses!) Whatever. The whole directory rationale appears quite random and kind of silly.
And, yes, why can’t you bookmark a particular school? That seems like the most basic of functions!
A few LACs may be included arbitrarily, but for the most part they deserve their featured position on CC. Using SAT/ACT scores as a quantifiable measure of academic quality, 15 of them would have higher scores than the highest-scoring public CC Top University. Taking those 15 LACs, and adding a few of the universities mentioned in the above post, the relative positions by SAT/ACT are as follows:
So I’m not sure what “bogles the mind” about the high number of LACs that CC has decided to feature.
(Source: USNWR Best Colleges, 2015 Edition. Bowdoin College is footnoted as test optional; Tulane for not fully reporting their scores.)
sp: boggles
Btw, @LucieTheLakie, I thought your post was fair. I just think you underestimated the number of high-quality LACs.
@merci81, just to be clear, I love LACs and spent a ton of time in those threads when my older son was exploring colleges. But look at how few posts many of them get. You could lump them all into one category “Selective Liberal Arts Colleges” and free up space on the main page for less elite schools that generate a lot more traffic if only because so many more students attend them.
I mean most of those LACs have fewer than 2,000 in their entire student bodies. Honors colleges at flagships have similar numbers and you can barely find information on a lot of them.