Every year the frenzy to get into highly selective colleges seems to intensify, and every year the news media finds and fawns over the rare students offered admission to all eight Ivy League schools. This year Ronald Nelson, from the Memphis area, was one of those who sopped up that adulation. But his story had a fresh wrinkle. Nelson turned down Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the rest of them and chose instead to stay in the South, at the University of Alabama, where he’ll begin his studies later this month. The lower price tag of Alabama, which is giving him a bounty of aid, was one reason. He also cited another: He’ll be taking classes at its honors college, which promises him an environment of especially dedicated, high-achieving students within a larger, more diverse community of more than 30,000 undergraduates.

August 8, 2015 ・ From The New York Times