@TrendaLeigh my son is currently a high school senior and will be going to Alabama in the fall, so we don’t have lived experience at the school, but I can share why he chose them.
When my son got his PSAT scores they were above our state’s national merit semifinalist cutoff from last year, so I encouraged him to look at the schools that give large (full ride or close to it) awards just for being NMF. I told him he would have to pick at least one to apply to so that he had a “sure thing”. Shortly after that, we were at a regional college fair and he stopped to talk to the Alabama recruiter and once she knew his stats/GPA/potential NMSF she was able to tailor what she shared, so he found out about RRSP, Blount Scholars, Emerging Scholars, the NMF scholarship. He came away from that encounter with a positive feeling. Immediately after that, we walked directly across from the Alabama table to the UF table and it was a completely different experience! She asked his stats and when he told her she said something like “why are you even talking to THEM then” with a chin toss Alabama’s way. It just reminded him of all those kids who think they are so great and never miss a chance to remind you about it…and he hates that. He asked her about research opportunities for undergrads and the answer was that they are hard to get because they usually go to grad students. Anyway–the whole encounter was a turnoff.
Over the next few months, we dug in to both the UA NMF scholarahip and the OOS Benaquusto found pros and cons for both. But on the whole, UA’s scholarship seemed so much more flexible (lasting 5 years rather than just the number of credits for a bachelor’s, can be used for grad school if you choose). There were certainly other considerations as well–my son loves hiking/biking/outdoors and UA seemed to have better opportunities for that, and RRSP and Blount Scholars sounded like great programs.
During my son’s fall break we visited Vanderbilt and UA. We flew into Nashville and visited Vanderbilt first, just to see if a T20 school might be “worth it” (he goes to a school where a lot of kids attend T20, teachers encourage them to apply, etc.). Vanderbilt was pretty, but he came away disappointed. He thought the level of discussion in the class he sat in on wasn’t even to the level of his high school and when he had lunch with some students and asked what they liked about Vandy he heard things like “well, Nashville is a cool city” and “not the school spirit, that sucks”–and these were the kids acting as student ambassadors! As we drove down to Tuscaloosa he let me know he would NOT be applying to Vandy. He was worried he would never find what he was looking for.
The next day we started our UA visit. He had let our regional recruiter know what he was interested in, and when we arrived there was a full schedule of meetings/tours/presentations for the Honors College, RRSP, Blount, engineering, admissions/scholarships, etc. He also got to sit in on a class. The experience was great, and as we left for the airport he said that if he could get into RRSP and Blount, he didn’t see any reason to go elsewhere. He thought the students were engaged and happy, the class he sat in on was good, and that all the adults he talked to were really dedicated to making sure the students were able to achieve what they wanted to. It was a complete 180 from how he was feeling after leaving Vandy. He thought Alabama was almost too good to be true–that it was just how they act to get kids in the door, but then decided it was the real thing.
When all the decisions were in, his final 2 were UA and CU Boulder (our flagship). He chose UA for a lot of reasons including the ease of double majoring and taking classes outside the major, RRSP and undergrad research, Blount and the liberal arts minor, and of course the scholarship.
As we went though the process, I periodically would go back and look at UF, given its higher ranking. The equation is different for you since you are in-state there, but some of the drawbacks I saw for my son were uncertainty about continued funding of the OOS Benequisto, the summer requirement, the comparative difficulty of accessing undergrad research, the less-generous AP credit, the way AP credits count against the hours covered by the scholarship, the way credits above the amount required for a degree are a higher cost, the higher percentage of in-state students, and so on. Since we are further away and our state flagship is fairly expensive ($25k per year after all of the higest-level merit scholarships are applied–we don’t have anything like Bright Futures or Benacquisto, and no scholarship for NMF at all) we didn’t get the pressure it sounds like you are getting.
My son is also somewhat of an introvert and I am happy he will have Blount and RRSP as places to “belong” from day one. As a mom, I might have rose-colored glasses on, but I do think that these programs, and also the Honors College serve to make UA feel a little smaller.
Good luck in your admissions journey!