Wow ~ I've never responded on here but as a mom whose daughter WAS accepted at Texas but chose Alabama I had to respond to Pvgord's somewhat snarky comments. I still remember my daughter coming home from Texas and saying she liked it but she LOVED Alabama and it had been 6 months since her last visit. It was Ok with us since they paid 100 percent of her school! She was from a high profile, academic school listed above! My daughter and our family had a lot of connections at UT through school and business and DD attended one of the high profile camps. I had no concerns about a Texas rush for her rather than the usual concerns. She DID NOT attend Bama because she had no other option nor do most of the Texas kids we know there. Most do not want to go to school with the same kids they have been with since pre-school. My daughter had a fabulous Rush at Alabama and was not dropped from even one sorority. The football has been a lot better at Alabama, too! And we ARE Texas fans but we love cheering for a winner!

Our daughter was also a high profile grad from a competitive school who was automatically admitted to UT (she was top 4% of 1350 students with a heavy math/science AP curriculum) but chose to go out of state due to the scholarship offered at OU. We aren't originally from Texas so not an issue for us, but many of our friends were very surprised that she would turn down attending UT (and paying for it...) vs having her education paid for at a different school.

That was true 20 years ago when schools like Bama and Arkansas were known for accepting just about anyone with a pulse. Now many of the top PNM's from Texas attend these schools- and a lot of them are on major academic scholarships.

There are dozens of elite Texas public high schools like Dallas Highland Park, West Plano, Austin Westlake, Houston Memorial, The Woodlands, etc where being ranked anywhere in the top 20-25% of the class means you had close to a 4.0 and took AP/Honors classes. Only the top 7% are guaranteed a spot at UT so many choose to take their talents out of state. My dear friend's daughter had a "perfect" rush at Bama 3 years ago. Her class at Bama had close to 500 kids from the Dallas-Fort Worth area enroll. I'm thinking at least 100 of the girls went through rush that year.

I rarely post, but here goes. I am the parent of a daughter attending UT. She worked her a** off to get the grades to transfer there for sophomore year. That said she would not even consider recruitment at UT due solely to the brutal reputation. Her brother's GF was Greek at UT and we heard the stories of her rush and many of the "rumors" posted here about treatment of PNMs at some houses were quite accurate according to her.

The great thing about UT, which others have mentioned, is there are SO many other options. Happy my daughter has found her niche there and, while I would have loved for her to experience the sisterhood I did, she is beyond happy in Austin. :)

I would have loved to have been in one of those spirit groups had I gone to UT!

"Its" is the correct word. "It's" is the contraction for "it is."

Public high school, OOS university. :)

And this is probably why recruitment numbers aren't climbing at Texas. My niece went to Alabama and she had a psychotically high GPA, bilingual, was accepted to many universities like Vandy, Duke, etc, but Bama would give her more scholarship money. She could go there debt free. She chose Bama, and despite doing a semester abroad, she graduated a semester early. But she only attended Alabama. SMH Oh and she was a Theta there, but if you ask that particular site (and a mom poster here), Theta at Bama sucks and takes losers. Tell that to my stunning niece.

I wrote recs this year for a couple of girls from Plano/Allen area who are going into UT as freshman this fall. I have now found out that one decided not to rush before it even began and the other two dropped out of recruitment somewhere along the way. I think UT is a hard recruitment because all the incoming freshman have the idea that they are the best of the best. Which they are usually in the top of their hometown, but at UT so is everybody else.

I've seen this as a wider trend, where Southern state schools are offering high scholarship packages to lure students from up north with promises of big Greek life and a fun football team. It worked on me-Clemson gave me the max out-of-state scholarship and that made it almost as good a financial decision as URI, so I went to Clemson instead for the big rah-rah college experience URI couldn't offer me. I imagine that's part of why recruitment numbers keep rising at these states schools.

As a high school teacher in Texas, let me put in my 2 cents.

Because of the competition to be in the upper 10% of graduating classes, it is raising the bar for all the students. This is causing out-of-state and private universities to actively recruit Texas students to come to their schools.

I am at a pretty well-known school district in the northern suburbs of Dallas. We have college recruiters asking to specifically meet with our 9th and 10th graders in order to get them interested early in their specific schools.

So, yes, we are sending many of our best students to other states.

Yes, I've noticed many schools like Alabama, OU, etc are offering huge academic scholarships to bright Texas students. UT Dallas does much of the same. These schools want to change their academic reputation and use bright OOS students to help accomplish that. Some families won't pass up a free education while other students won't apply to those schools, free ride or not.

It all comes down to the type of college experience that a student wants to have. Texas is not generous with academic scholarships but it's allure is strong. Students that get in are happy to pay to be part of it.

And once more with feeling - "it's" is a contraction for "it is." It is NOT the possessive of it. Believe it or not, I majored in English at Alabama and know that!

Wow! That's pressure.

One of my pet peeves - that, and writing "alot" instead of "a lot". My students know better than to do either!

THIS. Way back in 2008 when I graduated in the top 10 of my 600+ student class, I was offered a spot in in the UT class of 2012 thanks to the 7% rule. I declined my spot due to lack of financial aid. I was offered a measly $4000 academic scholarship spread over 4 years and a one time $500 grant for my freshman year. I instead chose to attend a small, Jesuit college in the northeast that offered me a 90% tuition scholarship. The amount of student loans I wound up taking to cover my room and board the first two years (my campus had a 2 year live in requirement) and the remaining 10% of tuition were less than the amount I would have had to shoulder for an education at UT. For me, it was not worth it financially to shoulder that much debt for a public education. Had I been offered more aid, I may have considered attending.