No Bama here either. Too southern and far for my western boy. The farthest east he is applying is OU, and that is because of the NMF scholarship. He really liked OU and they did a great job of recruiting. At S’s HS, only two kids have applied to Bama. Both were accepted. The average GPA was 3.7 and the ACT was 32.
The Bama folks who want to discuss Bama-specific stuff might consider forming a private Facebook group. You wouldn’t continue to be anonymous, but the private group wouldn’t show up on your regular FB feed either.
S is making me crazy with his procrastination. He had the ASU app ready to go, but it won’t let him input his electives. :-/ He is “working” on the three OU scholarship essays, and has been “working” on these for weeks. Hopefully he will do his Cal Poly app soon because this one require nothing difficult. I think I finally have the carrot to coerce him into action. He wants to add an after school activity (climbing) and I told him I needed to see adequate progress on his apps for him to participate.
@LMHS73 Your story sounds almost like it could be ours. Our son went where he got the top merit scholarship to study engineering, yet when kids would ask him where he was going they’d say “Oh, I thought you would have gone to something like .” It’s a USNWR top 40 school for crying out loud! Lots of prestige pressure.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek …One of Ds friends has heard her talk about how she liked UA and felt it would be a good fit and about the good merit aid, etc. So she applied and was accepted—and then shocked to realize she didn’t qualify for much merit aid there. I think this person somehow felt the school was beneath her and therefore it would be super easy to get a ton of scholarships. A 32 ACT is only common on CC–notsomuch in real life. D is trying to encourage her to take it one more time to get the score up but so far she is not budging.
@curiositycat333 that’s a good question. Maybe. Maybe some smart parent cracked the code on free Bama tuition and shared it with friends. Who knows? Not many kids enrolled though, and then the following year back down to 4 apps.
If we had a solid in-state option where the kids could get some reasonable merit aid based on stats (heck I’m not greedy, but a 34ACT and top 2% should at LEAST get you a guaranteed $3-4K???!!!) AND engineering major wasn’t so much of a crapshoot or a lock-in (at UT the chances of switching majors seems daunting and almost impossible) then maybe UA wouldn’t be on so many lists??
Not to be left behind, I searched Naviance for UA stats (CA school) and I am also surprised by the jump. Ours is a flagship school in the area with decent # of NMFs but I didn’t hear about anyone attending.
@curiositycat333 Well that depends. I do think you can define a school by metrics associated with the programs offered, as US News does. Merced and Riverside, by those data points are considered National Universities, versus regional. That is purely data driven. Other factors, such as a local admissions boost or perceived prestige are less easy to quantify. What I find unfortunate in general is that some on CC have very broad brush strokes dismissing regional schools or “directional” schools without knowing anything about the individual schools and I’m not a big fan of gross generalizations like that. Maybe that word should be banned lol.
In looking at the “rankings” that so many on CC seem to live by, I took a peek at the top 20 for regional universities west. Interestingly, only 3 of them are public schools, the rest are privates. But I don’t think anyone would consider the schools listed as directionals to the flagships. Interesting that the Cal States offer local admissions boosts, we don’t have anything comparable that I am aware of although given that the selectivity varies considerably there are lots of options for kids. I know there is the UC guarantee if you hit a certain EI (Merced right?) as well. I am sure many would not agree with this particular rank list, I don’t have an opinion one way or another really (especially since I have zero clue about a single school in texas!), but I do find it interesting. I think many people might put a fair number of LAC’s sprinkled throughout to create a more holistic regional, non-national university list in terms of how things are perceived locally.
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA
Mills College, Oakland, CA
Chapman University, Orange, CA
University of Portland, Portland, OR
Seattle University, Seattle, WA
California Polytechnic State University--San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo, CA
@carachel2 that was definitely our situation. S also looked at UTDallas and liked a lot of things about it and it certainly would be closer but that commuter reputation really was offputting for him. I think in a few years UT Dallas may be the place to be as they increase their on campus students. It just wasn’t the right choice for S right now.
I think the Bama talk has heightened lately because of the acceptances and housing deposits that are going on. I would expect it to be calming down in the near future.
I for one will try to limit discussion of Bama, since it seems to cause some consternation.
On another note, my daughter received her acceptance to Michigan State. Not a directional, not a flagship, not a regional. Roll Sparty.
The Alabama apps at our school cannot be explained by those seeking scholarships as the accepted students do not have the stats to receive the scholarships. (Every applicant was accepted for the past two years so the applied/accepted stats are identical.)
These things do go in waves or cycles, where a school will be ‘hot’ for a year or two with our HS and then another school becomes the ‘hot’ school. Sometimes this is prompted by a college panel presentation or a burst of athletic recruiting, and other times, who knows?
While the HS has many recruited athletes, including football players, they are not at the Alabama level of play, so these enrollees are not recruits.
Perhaps the increase in apps can be attributed to Alabama’s marketing? I have watched Northeastern’s ranking grow as they offered money to NMF, so perhaps the same is in play at Alabama, even for students who will never receive a penny from Alabama.
@youcee, we had an opposite reation to the school our D15 enrolled at. It is a top 20 LAC on the east coast (not an ivy). She was offered a full ride merit scholarship. When people asked where she was going, she got a lot of blank stares. Very few people out west had heard of it.
@ct1417 there is something to be said for wearing shorts year round and attending a football powerhouse. It certainly appeals to a decent amount of kids from the north.
Congrats to the Michigan State admit! My wife has family members who went there and UMich. There’s usually some sort of Michigan based apparel present when we celebrate holidays.
** College admission folks who refuse to deal with parents…**
Ok, so I admit that I have a heavy hand in this college application process, I get it. It is out of necessity. Partly because my son has not shown undying interest (which will change), and partly because he is so damn busy with studies, coursework, sports, and ECs. He doesn’t have the time that I have to manage all the moving parts of this process.
Occasionally I reach out to admissions departments to ask basic relevant questions about son’s app status, transcripts, test scores, etc. I am always respectful and courteous and I keep it light. Its amazing to me that some of these people refuse to deal with me (parent) and will either ignore me, rudely suggest that my son contact them, or go directly to my son and answer the question that I asked. The latter situation is tolerable, the former, not so much.
I get very irritated when AOs roll their eyes toward involved parents, especially when those involved parents are paying the enormous bill. There is one AO in particular that I am ready to unleash upon, and I will as soon as my son writes off the school. Honestly, any school that arrogantly shrugs off parents is not a school that I am interested in supporting.
Sorry for the rant, just needed to vent. Helicopter coming in for a landing.
Well, it depends on your in-state options, really. If you have very limited options for majors due to a small number of colleges (e.g., Wyoming, Alaska) and you’re not interested in the sort of stuff they offer, you start looking, you know?
@RightCoaster, was the surge immediately after Alabama’s national football championship? It’s pretty well documented that major sports championships do bring in a flood of extra applications (though the size of the surge you report seems out of step even with that).
I have a question I’m not sure anyone here can advise me on, but I’m going to throw a worm in the water anyway to see if I get a bite. S applied to two LACs on the Common App. Earlier I had advised him to not ever apply Early Decision as that meant he was committed (and I don’t think we could make the financial argument). These are not among his top choices, just a couple that could be good fits with the right amount of merit aid. He chose Regular Decision on the CA for both, not realizing that ED was different than EA, and that RD was different than the rolling admissions at all of the other schools on his list. Looking at their websites, one RD date is after some NMF commitment dates at other schools, and one is closer to the Honors deadline than it should be. (You have to be accepted to apply for Honors.) I know S cannot go back in and change the admission type on the CA.
So, has anyone tried or heard of contacting admissions to move an app from the RD pile to the EA pile? I searched the College Admission thread and see plenty of talk around moving from ED to RD, but not the opposite direction.
In other news, S got a very nice personalized postcard from OU yesterday that had a testimonial and photo from a previous Iowa NMF attending. However, it was encouraging him to apply, which he’s already done.
@eandesmom – interesting list. I looked at the first few in Naviance b/c Santa Clara caught my eye.
We have three/four/five attend there each year and it is clear across the country from CT. A handful apply to Loyola Marymount, and one has attended within the past few years. No app history to Trinity, Gonzaga, Mills or Chapman, however, we have a fair # apply to TCU and one or two attends each year.
Back to my musing about what places a school on the radar for a particular HS?
St. Andrews of Scotland has been coming to our HS every year for at least five years now. (I wasn’t watching before then.) Two students attending from last year’s class. I have to assume that St. Andrew’s is marketing to full pay Americans.
