@aeromom - thank you for the nice post. I think maybe the best part of our visit (although hard to say for sure, and then of course there is Steel City Pops) was meeting with the engineering students. I need to send a note to the engineering dept. because they impressed the heck out of me, and I just wished I had friends like that in college. I went to a state school and was a good student, but I don’t remember anyone being particularly excited about learning or thinking about the future, serious goals, etc. These kids were cute and fun - not some nerdy types! AND they just had it together. One of them had the next several years planned out, with the ultimate goal of a job at Intel, which I’ve no doubt he’ll get. The girl was in training, and she just had answers to my questions that really made me think Alabama would be a good choice. And I love the idea of my son being around students like there. Where were they when I was in college?! I really think kids are different that way today - am I wrong? One girl asked my husband and I what kind of service projects we were involved in during college. WHAT? I don’t even think we had stuff like that back then, did we? You’d really have to search it out, anyway. Not sure they had Honors Colleges back then, or at least I hadn’t heard of them.
Now I sit and nervously await word on how the Presidential/NMF Scholarship might change next year!!