re: Percentage of First Year Enrolled Students

I live in a very high academic area outside of the SEC. There are enough superstar academic kids here to fill the Ivies and the Next (Stanford, Vandy, NW, Duke, UVA etc) but they can’t get in SO….. they have decided that Bama, etc are cool and Bama and others offer free tuition for good grades (benefits the schools too since the incoming student stats are going up) so it is incredibly cheap compared to what they thought they were going to be paying. I have to admit I was shocked to hear that this was a strategy now.And by saying that these are the new hot schools to go to it lessens the sting of not getting into the schools they thought they would get into. I know lots of kids heading to the SEC now.

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"Flutie Effect"

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I'm sure Bama's football success has had some to do with their growth of out of state kids... however, this started back in 2006. That was the year they decided to kick their enrollment into overdrive. That was 2 seasons before Saban started to have any success.

They keep a lot of their out-of-state enrollment data off their public website because I think they know they get a bad wrap from some of the alumni who are tired of feeling like they are out in South Philly when they go back to Tuscaloosa.... but you can see it in the overall student growth numbers by year:

Alabama Total Student Enrollment Growth by Year:

1997: +2.1%
1998: +0.5%
1999: +1.7%
2000: +2.9%
2001: -0.8%
2002: +2.4%
2003: +3.6%
2004: +3.1%
2005: +4.1%
2006: +9.4%
2007: +7.1%
2008: +5.8%
2009: +6.5%
2010: +4.9%

You can tell they sort of started easing into it in about 2002 and then by 2006 they were like, "screw it, accept everyone!"

For students going back for a 5th fall in the Fall of 2009, their university was +32% enrollment since the day they started school their freshman year. That is just insane growth.

And the state of Alabama doesn't have enough population growth to do this with instate kids, so almost all of that growth was done with kids from out of state... particularly kids from outside the South.

I got bored - checked our enrollment from Fall 2025 / Spring 2026 for Carolina -

https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/institutional_research_assessment_and_analytics/uofsc_data_dashboards/enrollment/us_students.php


30205 of the 38731 (78%) enrolled across all graduate - undergraduate - professional - are from SEC states or states below the Mason-Dixon - so Maryland & West Va are included -

2053 New York
1705 New Jersey
1154 Pennsylvania

top 3 non-Southern enrollment origins -

was surprised Maryland wasn't at or near the top - those people love them some USC -

23863 of the 38731 are South Carolinians - 62%

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You became a bama fan around 2012 or so?

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2003, actually.

Holy shite, the influx of Yankees invading Bama over the last 20 years is ridiculous. “Native Southerners beware of Yankee influence.”