Thanks for all the great advice and comments… Roll Tide is in our near future!!! Very happy with her choice.
OP, my D was an OOS applicant to UIUC ChemE last year with 35 ACT, 4.0 uwGPA, 800 in both SAT2, 5 in all 6 AP, 200+ hours volunteering, state level award, long term commitment to music instruments and she only get less than $1800 from UIUC. We knew their FA sucks but we still gave it a try. Let’s face it. They simply have no money to give away.
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I know 31 is not the top ACT score for Engineering but her other stats are wonderful plus she works and does several extra curr which are reflected in her resume.
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To tell you the truth, “her other stats”, “she works,” and “several extra curr”" don’t really matter to schools in regards to merit.
Those other things don’t help a school’s profile. Their ranking is not improved by having a student body who did “ECs”, “jobs”, etc.
Test scores are what merit scholarships are usually buying. The rest might be used for down-selection, but usually it’s the scores that put a student in the scholarship game.
As for comparing to what Alabama is giving…
As a big fan of Alabama, having 2 kids graduate from there (one in Engineering), what Bama is doing with these generous awards sometimes gives people the impression that they should get the same or similar elsewhere. When the awards don’t come, then there’s confusion.
Bama is very unique that such a huge award for an ACT 31, when the top 25% of the frosh class has an ACT 32+.
For her ACT 31, she’s got 3 awards…2/3 tuition 1/3 tuition, and 2500 per year. That’s $110k in awards…for an OOS student!
Since the top 25% at Bama now has an ACT 32+, I don’t know how much longer Bama will be this generous to those who have stats in the middle quartile. You’re very lucky.
UIUC is notoriously bad with merit. If you want your D to go to school with her
You don’t have to fear anything about Bama’s eng’g. Rankings mean nearly nothing when it comes to eng’g. It’s not like a UIUC grad will get paid more upon graduation. No. An eng’g employer is going to pay a new UIUC grad and a new Bama grad the same…the SAME.
I don’t remember specifics but I think Illinois has been hurting for years in terms of state budget woes. Their university system needs all the full pays it can get!
I can’t help but believe that Alabama will ultimately win the “ratings” wars some day when it comes to engineering. They are doing it right with their commitment to wooing and rewarding worthy students with very significant merit aid. That program is on the rise, while programs like UIUC will lose talent due to the sad-but-true budget woes in that state. A degree from Alabama will increase in value over time and, as stated above, even in the short term, an engineering degree from most any ABET school is valuable.
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That program is on the rise, while programs like UIUC will lose talent due to the sad-but-true budget woes in that state.
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The state of Illinois is #6 in sending students to Alabama (behind California). The merit awards offered to high stats IL eng’g students makes it hard for many parents to justify paying $30-35k per year for UIUC, when their child can go to Bama on Free Tuition PLUS $2500 per year…and only have to pay about $12k. For a family that can’t pay a lot towards college, their child can borrow $5k and the parents can pay the remaining $7k.
I agree that Bama will win the ratings war. With the money that has been pouring into the school, the amazing facilities, and the huge number of high stats kids enrolling (36% of frosh have an ACT 30+), few state schools can compare. (for comparison, 32% of Purdue’s frosh have an ACT 30+)
I don’t want to sound like I’m dissing the OP’s D’s test scores, they are very good (I think they’re around 96th percentile), but seriously, it is only due to Bama’s extremely generous merit awards that she has been awarded $110k in merit (free tuition plus) when you consider that her scores aren’t even in the top 25% of the school.
If the OP wants her child to attend school with her cousins, then she can pay $45k-50k per year for the privilege. Is it worth that much money? Doubtful, very doubtful. If she went to UIUC, she may find that she’ll have a different social circle than her cousins. And even if she did hang with cousins all the time, it’s not worth paying $200k for the fun.
And, yes, no worries about any good school with ABET accredited eng’g.
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Also wondering if anyone has any current information about Alabama
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Have you visited Bama? If not, you should. You will be amazed by its new mega-sized Science and Engineering Complex.
My eng’g son graduated from Bama in 2013. He received a very good education. He had to work very hard for his grades, very hard, but it was worth it. While he was always a bright student, his critical thinking and problem solving skills really took off while in college…and that’s what engineers need to have. It’s not enough to just be “brain smart,” an engineer needs to have an “engineering brain”…which is a “think outside the box - problem solving” brain.
@deb922 when did your D apply to colleges? what year?
Where does Alabama get the money for its generous scholarships?
As an Illinois resident, we hear about UIUC budget woes all the time. I too agree that at some point, UIUC will not be able to maintain its reputation. We knew from the start that no merit aid would be coming from there so it was pretty much taken off the table from the start. Our kids applied to both Bama and Mizzou- both are great schools and I would not hesitate to send a child to either one. At NHS night this week when they announced where the seniors would be attending, I noticed fewer UIUC announcements than in the past- maybe a reflection that parents are realizing the value of merit aid at OOS schools compared to high in-state tution.
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Where does Alabama get the money for its generous scholarships?
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It has a license to print money…
Seriously, the money comes from two sources…donors and athletic profits. So, the Nick Saban effect is helping generate all this money…alums are super happy and Crimson Tide sports is a money machine.
M2ck, she was high school class of 2008. Her brother was high school class of 2006. I don’t think Alabama had the merit aid they have now or if they did, I missed it. It seemed at the time, I was trying to leave no stone unturned!
I am so glad I had CC at that time. We never would have applied to many of the schools she applied to. We knew nothing about meet need schools before and this forum was so helpful. I try and pay back occasionally but my knowledge is getting more and more obsolete lol!
I do wonder how long Alabama will be able to offer such a generous scholarship program. Years ago Florida offered a similar scholarship for NMS. But that was changed. Michigan Tech also would offer an OOS waiver to those who had a certain ACT score but I think that ended around 2006. My S received an OOS waiver but his was because his father is an alumni and I think that is still in place.
Thanks again for the great feedback. We have visited Alabama and it was awesome!! The Engineering campus alone was awesome. She has roommates chosen, Bama bound dates selected and I think the Illinois depression is over. I think she applied there to see if she was a good enough student to get in and she was, but not the right candidate for any assistance. It was a long shot at best.
And just think… I get to do all this over again next year for her sister 
@deb922 Yes, you missed it. Bama has had these fab offers for much longer than that. My son was HS class of 2007 and the awards were not new then. My friend’s son was class of 2004 and the offers existed back then (and lower scores were needed back then! An ACT 30 got free OOS tuition back then)
I don’t know how long Bama will offer these awards…it’s been going on for over 10 years.
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We have visited Alabama and it was awesome!! The Engineering campus alone was awesome. She has roommates chosen, Bama bound dates selected and I think the Illinois depression is over.
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Oh good! Well then…Roll Tide!
Have you visited the Bama forum here? Have you joined the UA Parents Facebook page? tons of great info there. PM me if you want to join it. It is a closed group, but any UA parent is accepted.
OP, this whole merit aid thing is a farce. Very few kids get anything near what is needed or they deserve but if you have done nothing with your life or better yet created your own problems, they want to throw tons of money at you.
The reality is that if you’re a stable middle class 2-parent family with no drama in your life, you will get squat in aid; any type of aid/scholarships - public or private except at very few colleges (such as Bama). @mom2collegekids is dead on when she indicates where the money comes from.
The process is broken because it teaches good, well rounded kids from stable families that you won’t be rewarded for working hard. You’ll just be asked to work harder and give more to support the other two ends of the socio-economic spectrum.
Menefrega- if you are begrudging a kid who grew up in a homeless shelter but somehow managed to squeak out the stats for Harvard his/her need based award, then you need a reality check.
How nice to be a stable middle class 2 parent family with no drama in your life.
Merit money is used to recruit, period. Need based money is a different animal.
A school is not going to offer merit money to a kid if they can get another kid with similar stats without giving them a dime. So if you are looking for merit money, just be sure to apply to schools that are looking to recruit kids like you! If you are at the top of who that school enrolls, that’s a good start.
I suspect Alabama (and many other schools that offer generous merit scholarships) is full of students who were accepted at the likes of UIUC, UT, the Ivies, etc. Congrats to your daughter, @jokerdog! She will get an excellent education among other brilliant students!
@mom2collegekids Post #29 I was going to guess football. LOL But for OOS students, does t really cost more to educate them? Our merit from Maine basically brings us to their instate/no merit rate.
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@mom2collegekids Post #29 I was going to guess football. LOL But for OOS students, does t really cost more to educate them?
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No, it doesn’t cost more to educate OOS students. The state isn’t subsidizing OOS students. The school isn’t educating instate students for $10k per year.
BTW…even before Saban came to Bama, Bama was offering huge awards…which were funded by donors. But at that point the school was MUCH smaller and the OOS numbers weren’t what they are now. So, not many OOS students were getting those huge awards like they are now.
Bama can’t really stop the merit until the lowish-populated state itself can provide enough high stats students to put enough warm bodies into the STEM seats. The state just doesn’t yet have the population numbers, especially since the state has a high number of public univs for its population size.
My daughter also had top stats and and wanted to study engineering. Of the seven colleges to which she applied, UIUC was the only one that did not offer merit aid… and we’re in-state.
She took the generous scholarship offered by another mid-west school. In her four years there, she learned lots in her engineering classes, participated in campus activities, did a semester abroad, and interned for two great companies.
Next fall she will start a master’s program with funding…at UIUC 