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The University of Alabama
Office of Undergraduate Admissions
Box 870132
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0132
(205) 348-5666 or 1-800-933-BAMA
e-mail: admissions@ua.edu
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KeyFacts
The University of Alabama is ranked among the nation's top 50 public universities in U.S. News & World Report's 2002 edition.
The University of Alabama's graduates include 15 Rhodes Scholars, 15 Goldwater Scholars, and nine Truman Scholars. Our most recent Rhodes Scholar is Bradley Tuggle, an English major who received the award in 2001.
The University of Alabama's chapter of the prestigious liberal arts honor society Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest of the three chapters in the state.
Approximately 66 percent of UA's undergraduates receive some type of financial aid.
UA ranks as one of the top public universities in enrollment of National Merit, National Achievement, and National Hispanic Scholars. Our fall 2000 freshman class accounts for 94 of these 300 outstanding undergraduate students.
For over a decade, The University of Alabama has been one of the top public flagship universities in the Southeast in enrollment of African-American students. In fall 2000, African-Americans comprised 14.9 percent of freshmen and 14.5 percent of total undergraduate enrollment, and 13.6 percent of the student body overall. Enrollment of African-American students in UA's Graduate School has increased by 44 percent since 1996.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked the University of Alabama School of Law among the top 50 in the nation for three consecutive years while our undergraduate business program has made the top 50 nationally for two years.
Across our beautiful 1,000-acre campus, several buildings dating back to the founding of the university are still in use today—alongside other historic structures and recent construction housing state-of-the-art technology. We offer excellent facilities for study and research, including campus-wide computer labs, multimedia classrooms, and online libraries.
More than 20 percent of the university's entering freshmen and 22 percent of all undergraduates received merit scholarships for the academic year 2000-01.
The University of Alabama debate team holds 14 national championships—two more than our football team!
UA offers 215 degree programs.
Founded in 1831, The University of Alabama was the state's first university.
UA Student Inspired by International Mission to South Africa
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - “I had never been in a place before where God was everywhere,” University of Alabama student Ashley Ragsdale said of South Africa, where she recently spent 15 days as the state’s only delegate in the National Youth Leadership Forum’s International Mission on
Medicine.
Ragsdale, a Huntsville native and member of that city’s Willowbrook Baptist Church, said it was difficult to imagine so much pain and so much beauty in the same place. “I’ve never seen so many wonderful, beautiful, friendly people. We saw many people who were living in filth and were coming up to us and asking for shoes, but yet they were the happiest of people. You see the most peaceful
faces.
”The point of the program was to educate students on the staggering medical issues facing South Africa. Ragsdale said the group visited public and private hospitals daily, talking with doctors about the conditions under which they work and interviewing patients to gauge their perceptions of health care
issues.
“Every single patient we interviewed had AIDS, and they all denied having AIDS,” Ragsdale said. Most of the infected deny having the disease, as the social stigma associated with admitting it in South Africa is almost unbearable, she
said.
What she saw inside the walls of some hospitals, including the level of overcrowding, was previously unfathomable, Ragsdale said. “Patients wait outside … for days,” Ragsdale said. “They wait outside, and it’s 100 degrees.”
Smoking is allowed in some hospitals and some days the norm was to see two patients sharing each hospital bed. Signs were posted along hospital walls reading, “Do not buy cures for AIDS” and “Do not leave your babies unattended, they will be
stolen.”
“I got to see the best and the worst,” the biology and pre-med major said. “The doctors are so innovative. They do so much with so
little.
”The visit has reinforced her plans of becoming a doctor, but it has adjusted her thinking as to the area of medicine in which she hopes to specialize. Thoughts of becoming an obstetrician/gynecologist still occupy her mind, but Ragsdale says she’s now thinking more about focusing on infectious
diseases.
Not all of South Africa was bleak; in fact Ragsdale said one of the startling things was the income disparity between
neighbors.
“On one side of the road, you will see mansions and directly across the road, you’ll see shacks.” She saw the country’s modern cities, which included health care facilities rivaling those in the United States, and she saw areas where 600 residents shared a single
toilet.
She talks of trips in taxis where steering wheels were missing and the driver steered by grasping and turning a wrench fastened onto the steering
column.
“It’s a whole different world,” said Ragsdale, who attends Tuscaloosa’s Calvary Baptist Church while at UA. “You are being placed outside of your comfort zone, outside of your culture. It really showed me how blessed I was to be from the United
States.
She said her parents were initially adamantly opposed to her taking the trip, fearing for her safety. She admitted she encountered some frightful experiences, but relied on Joshua 1:9: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou
guest."
“I would say to myself, ‘He’s still with me in South Africa, so I’ll be fine’,” she said.
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