re: Does LSU not give a crap about smart, in-state high school students?

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Mississippi State sent a thing that says a 34 is basically free OOS tuition and first year of housing. Kid wants to be an engineer, so definitely will check them out.

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You should get him to go for national merit. It’s still actually merit based, it’ll be easier to get in Louisiana than say New Jersey, and at least when I was going, UA and OU gave free tuition, books and tech stipend, a MacBook, and a free dorm reimbursement 1st year.

I had multiple friends in college who were children of LSU fans/Louisiana natives that went to UA for scholarships. That said, I’m not the type to sell UA over other schools. I loved my college experience, but UA has it’s flaws and there’s a lot of other good options out there.

Since he already has an idea of what career path he wants (engineer), I recommend going back from what type of place he wants to work.

Want to work at Space-X? Research what type of schools Space-X recruits from.

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Kid wants to be an engineer, so definitely will check them out.

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If he wants to be an engineer you should send him to GT

We applied by in December 15th still have not heard a word. Admissions department takes days to return any kind of email or phone calls. Have heard from every school except LSU and it is pissing me off. We are out of state fyi.

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You should get him to go for national merit.

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Appreciate the feedback. He took the PSAT in October and scored a 220 which is above the cutoff in Louisiana. Unfortunately, it didn’t count because he’s not in 11th grade yet. So he gets to do so it again this Fall but with more pressure.

All these unis want as many OOS students as possible (not just LSU) because they can charge them much more.

I am no socialist, but sometimes I think our for profit university system sucks for the reasons already stated in this thread. It's not about fairness to the best potential students, but about who is willing to pay the most tuition.

Tell your son to take the Bama scholarship.
A 34 ACT guarantees you a full ride to Bama, and if he can be a National Merit Finalist, he will get even more, including free rooming for four years.
My son is graduating from Bama in May, and every semester the school gave him back $500 from his stipend.
In four years, I never wrote Alabama a check, and it was wonderful.
The LSU Homers will get pissy, but his experience at Bama was infinitely better than his friends that had to cobble scholarships together to get Tops + at LSU.
The fact is that LSU would rather bring in lesser qualified kids from out of state (and out of the country) than reward exemplary local kids.

Ans FWIW, the local Bama parents complain about the same exact thing, too much University money going out of state,

A lot of the kids in the panhandle choose Auburn, Bama or Ole Miss. These are good students who didn’t even get a look from FSU or UF. If they stay in state they are more likely to end up at UCF or USF.

I used to work in recruiting for LSU. I can tell you we were ALWAYS behind other schools with this exact thing and it was infuriating. There’s a 90% chance they have student workers responsible for inputting things like scores for 10th graders into the system and your kid’s info is sitting in a pile somewhere in a student worker’s office, forgotten about.

I would call them and raise hell. 100% of those working there have never held a real world job for more than a year and have no idea what actual accountability is.

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Is the wrong color for LSU’s admissions department to even raise an eyebrow.

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This too