UofH is a great OOS option. Major city and they will provide In-state tuition if you get any merit money.
@clarinetdad16 For S1, the oos option was primarily the best financial value, degree reputation divided by actual cost. Prestige was not really a factor. While he is at a top FB school, that was decidedly a turn-off for him. He had to have me explain to him that if not for the FB program, the money for scholarships would not be there. He has warmed to the sports programs a bit in his 2 years in college, but that was the opposite of a motivator for him. His other big factor was feel or fit. He felt more comfortable at OU than at 'Bama with essentially the same offer on the table. UT and A&M did not offer anywhere near the money because they are going to fill up with full-pay in state students anyway.
For me personally, part of going out of state was to distance myself from my HS peers. I didn’t want college to just be an extension of my HS experience. I also wanted to go to a respected school. (UMinn in my case)
Some professors definitely gravitate to schools where the academics are better. Teaching smart kids for many is much more rewarding that trying to get through to kids who are simply there to party. Your mileage may vary.
As for your last post…kids hated UH. Houston is a big, congested city. UH felt like just an extension of that (as opposed to Rice, in the same city, but feels like an oasis in a desert).
For D1, her dreams of A&M are not likely to happen as in-state if your class rank is not in the top 10, odd are decidedly low. SFA is a better option for her. The bucolic setting and professors who are actually engaged in helping students learn was more important than prestige to her. She is more label conscious than her brother, but since we made our kids be responsible for their own costs (for the most part) she found a great fit for a great price and good scholarship money.
@Torveaux you are correct it is about fit. A kid focused on music might gravitate to a city with a vibrant art scene. A very social kid might shoot for a school with a very active Greek life. A kid looking to escape the city might seek out a more rural campus. And some kids might really want to be in a certain location like Boston and then find their school there…
And another very real life factor is size. Although not a public school, you mentioned Rice which is small, and for
music very small. In contrast there are many more music spots for kids at UH, FSU, UNT, IU, etc. That definitely comes into play when Rice has one opening on an intstrument and the others listed might have 8 or 10 each…
@labegg Another essay fan here. Regarding the OP’s initial question, I thought it conveyed quite effectively why a young person might want to leave his or her state of origin. As @digmedia said, it showed why she thought Texas was a poor social and cultural fit, showed that she wanted to expand her horizons. She also worked in details about herself in the process, like musical training. Perhaps, better still would have been some coverage of pull factors - what drove her to her target schools, rather than what pushed her away from her home state. Regardless, she writes with humor and confidence, and it seems to have appealed to adcoms. Good for her!
Thank you! Exactly what I was thinking.
I, on the other hand, have lived in Maine for almost 30 years but will be a proud Texan until the day I die. 
@MaineLonghorn I’m a proud Texan too but I can definitely see how and why my kid wants out. She doesn’t get the football hype, she hates the heat and she would love to live in a city where you can reasonably hope on a bus or train and get around.
@carechel2, my main reason for leaving (in addition to the fact that there were almost literally no jobs to be found in late 1986) was the heat. I just couldn’t take months of heat and humidity. I much prefer zero degrees!
@MaineLonghorn I’ve heard the seasons in Maine are Almost winter, Winter, Still Winter and Summer. Sounds just the opposite of Texas. I love coastal Maine in the summer.
Sorry y’all, that was a copy of the first draft essay that I had on my computer. D16 sent me for initial review, so there are typos and grammatical errors. It was not the final submission, I did not edit the final drafts. She did make the corrections but as far as I know the content stayed the same.
@twogirls basically summed up my opinion of Binghamton. Bing is essentially viewed as a safety for many of the “strong students” that end up attending. The biggest reason that they’re able to attract those students is because the parents are either unable/unwilling to pay for some of the more powerful private schools. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s stronger than UNCW, a school that most applicants and admitted students genuinely wish to attend (and a school that’s more well-known, even). They’re the same size, but Binghamton has only a 20% yield compared to 38% at UNCW. And Penn State and Syracuse have some very strong students; in my mind, Binghamton certainly isn’t equal to either of those two schools.
I remember last year when Bing’s assistant provost visited my high school. He kept on ripping Syracuse and saying that “they cannot touch us” in academics. I found that funny, but kinda strange. Everyone in that room would have agreed the opposite.
In other encounters, my Microeconomics class had a guest lecturer last week who might just decide to come here from Binghamton, coincidentally. One of the things he said was that they’re snowed in up there right now. He’d honestly be making the best decision of his life if he does end up taking the job down here, at least weather-wise. 
Frankly, speaking for myself only, the Texas top 10% (really 7%) guaranteed admission rule is so skewed that I was more than happy to encourage D16 to look anywhere other than Texas. I will happily pay a few more dollars to send her OOS for that reason alone.
D16’s GPA would easily put her in the top 10% of a similar sized graduating class in one of our neighboring school districts (that school district is literally in the next neighborhood, less than 1 mile from our home). Both school districts have similar social and economic demographics and from what I can tell offer nearly identical course curriculum. So D16 is miraculously a more qualified/capable UT-A student if she just lived with her friend in a neighboring school district?
Not a Texan but what does this mean? Your second paragraph might help–a blunt instrument doesn’t factor in differences in school district–but skewed implies something different.
The Top 7% guarantee has nothing to do with admitting the “most qualified/capable” students, but rather to ensure a diverse representation of students from the spectrum of high schools in the state.
@labegg that is quite the assumption that your child would be in the top 10% in the neighboring district. I hear that a lot but don’t think its necessarily true. For example, in our school district, the neighboring district is thought more competitive but the grading system is different. My daughter’s GPA would be higher in that district because of their grading scale. I’m sure your daughter will have great options regardless.
@LBad96
Regardless of why top performing kids go to Bing, the point is, they go there. Bing is a better academic school. You like your school, and that is great, and it may give you nice weather and a great campus, but do not confuse the two.
And trust me, UNCW Has its share of kids who would rather go to CH.
Now how about “all y’all”?
@fragbot you are right skewed is not the best word for me to use. I am not sure what word I should use in this instance that would best describe my feelings on this rule other than to say I don’t like it and I am happy to not send my D16 in-state in a a small ineffectual meaningless protest.
I understand that it is meant to ensure diversity and I won’t argue that Texas needs to ensure diversity in its higher education. I haven’t done the research on how effective the rule has been in ensuring diversity. Overall, across the state, it may be a very effective policy, but in this instance, in comparing these two school districts, the policy is not ensuring diversity, except maybe academic diversity. The pool of candidates is very similar racially/socially/economically.
I do not want to derail this thread in a discussion of the merits of the rule.
@itsgettingreal17 - I said that her GPA in the neighboring district would be in the top 10%. If she picked up and moved today and imported her current grade transcript it would fall in the top 10%. How do I know? Her friend has a 4.5(something) GPA (D16 has a 4.68) her friend is ranked in the top 8%. Same grading system meaning same breakdown of grade. 55% of grade is based on major tests/quizes, 5% on district imposed writing test, 40% on daily grades. There are 4 levels of weighting; remedial on a 3 pt scale, regular on a 4 point scale, honors/AP on a 5 pt scale. Same # of AP classes offered in both districts.
Also a Texan, my DS applied to two OOS public schools because he would like to experience a different part of the US. I am all for this as long as the schools are affordable to us. He also applied to private OOS schools.
By the way, my DS was not an auto-admit to UT Austin (he is not in the top 10%), but he was accepted to UT LAH.
@labegg - Don’t apologize for your daughter’s essay. (Ever.) It was a good essay showing why she wants to go elsewhere for college and she’s ready to leave home. It was in her voice.
@HRSMom much of the reason that Bing is considered better is because it’s in the North. Now, what I’m saying certainly wouldn’t apply to any of the Ivies, MIT, etc - but Binghamton naturally gives off the impression of being better between the two because it’s a Northern school. Even if it is actually better academically, it certainly isn’t a better overall school to attend. If you ask people who have heard of the two schools, regardless of state residency, most would pick UNCW over Binghamton without so much as a second thought. The only outliers would be those who ONLY look at academics, or those who prefer harsh upstate NY winters to the gorgeous southeastern NC beaches for whatever reason. Those who are more social and want a more balanced college life would choose UNCW over Bing. Plus, even with the OOS mandate placed on the UNC system, UNCW (16%) still has more OOS students than Bing does (12%).
How about that?