What if scores and grades from girl from Birmingham are same as Tennessee kid that gets denied with out of state being double the revenue.
Admissions weighs that against the probability that that kid stays in state, so as to spend half as much on a degree.
Kids out of state are getting in with same scores as Tn kids that are denied, so UT makes double. And I've known several families with kids that went to Bama paying 45k a year. They didn't qualify for UT.
If you think the state should be paying more to support the university, I agree. But they don't. There's a BS lottery scholarship that is a sort of "funny money" way of "funding" things. But it funds the whole state system, which means MTSU, ETSU, etc. Meanwhile, OOS student pays the actual full price of tuition. I'm going to state something plainly: a student is entitled to an education at a state university if they qualify. They are not entitled to go to the flagship. That's the point of it being the flagship. It's an honor.
It's two different buckets at any flagship state school. Out of state balances the books. In-state doesn't, because the state, lottery money, and out of pocket tuition doesn't necessarily cover the actual cost. And if they can afford to pay 45k to go to Bama, they clearly could have gone to ETSU or MTSU or Chattanooga and received a similar education for far less. Hell, they could have tried to transfer in to UT after a couple years of demonstrating their value.
Getting in and attending are two different things. Your logic is flawed. Admissions doesn't know who is going to attend. So accepting an out of stater and rejecting an in stater based on revenue is the biggest of gambles, because if the out of stater doesn't attend, because they'll spend half as much attending THEIR state's school, then admissions has lost money by not covering their loss. That's why in state students are always admitted at a much higher rate.
It comes down to numbers, too. How many out of staters are in a UT class, compared to in-staters? They're a minority. The number of applicants to a state flagship always far exceeds space. This same complaint can be heard in North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and YES, Alabama. I've heard it. I heard it like crazy in Colorado. I've heard in California. I don't know where it doesn't happen. It's the first "I'm not special" moment for many kids, and a reminder for their parents that not everything that happens is due to "hard work," but sometimes circumstance.
one way to get into the state flagship most anywhere is to be your school's valedictorian or salutatorian. That's the mark one has to meet sometimes. Remember the lawsuit in Texas because that one girl was mad she didn't get into Texas but others did with lower grades? She claimed it was because they were black. In reality, it had to do with where one ranks in your class, because obviously every school's grading and situation is different. It is the only way to control for grade inflation and differing availability of test prep resources.
Instate kids shouldn't be denied entry with the same scores that earn the acceptance of out of state students, imo.
UT's out of state is only 11%. As a comparison, Bama is 53% OOS. UT's acceptance rate is like 77%. If your kids don't get in, maybe higher education isn't for them.
Big school isn't going to be the thing for a couple of mine. But telling a kid with a 25 and 3.5 gpa higher learning may not be for them is something Butch would say.
I disagree on that last point. ETSU, TT, MTSU, any number of other schools and community colleges are great places where you will get out of it what you put in. Not every student can go to the flagship, is all.
I agree that a kid with 25 ACT and 3.5 gpa is very well prepared for university and can succeed at that level if they maintain the effort that got them to that point. That doesn't mean they should get priority at a flagship school. There a lot, A LOT of kids who do better simply because there's like hundreds of thousands of kids. It's a population thing. Let me tell a personal story. When I was in high school, I was very excited to apply to Governor's School. My sister had gone for the sciences the year before as a Junior. I had applied as well, but sophomores had lower priority and we both attended a small rural high school. But the next year figured to be my turn in my eyes. I had a perfect GPA, had already taken honor's classes and performed literally as perfectly as one could up to that point. I was actually a stronger candidate than she was the year before. But I didn't get it. Why? Well, as it turns out, they couldn't accept two students in subsequent years from the same small rural high school. They said it wouldn't be fair to other small schools. There was only room for a couple of hundred students in the whole state, and there were more high schools than that. So I wasn't even being considered due to my sister having been selected the year before. Is that fair? Not to me. But it was for the state as a whole. That's reality. Your kids are four among hundreds of thousands of high school students. 25 and 3.5 is better than average, but still in the bulge of the bell curve. Nothing exceptional. It wouldn't put them in the top 10% of most school's graduating classes. That tends to be where the line is for good flagship schools of states.
