re: Why does University of Alabama have so many out of state students?

I don't think we're on the level of Texas or Florida (how could we be, that applicant pool is unreal), but we're definitively better Auburn and Bama academically. I'm not even trying to come off as a dick and not trying to create an argument, but you don't need to compare acceptance rates to know this. Acceptance rate is an extremely narrow stat that merely makes for good press. This is common knowledge. Those schools are certainly not bad and they certainly have their programs (AU engineering comes to mind, Bama law has come on strong recently depending on the ranking you look at), but, on the whole, Bama is not on our level or even very close right now.