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[quote=Anonymous]You're overstating the generosity at Arkansas.  The rule applies only to residents of states that border Arkansas, is only for those with high GPA and a 24 ACT, and all it does is give them the right to pay in-state tuition rates, instead of out-of-state tuition rates.  Of course, for kids with ACT's in the high 20's and 30's Arkansas will also typically offer one of several academic scholarships on top of the out-of-state tuition waiver, which will often cover the reduced tuition and some/all of room & board, depending on the level of scholarship.  Arkansas also has a couple of really small/competitive full ride scholarship prorgrams that can be used to attract kids from any state--similar to the Jefferson Scholars at UVA or Morehead scholars at UNC.

Flagship schools in the deep South have always tended to have very generous merit scholarships compared to other states.  If they don't offer generous merit scholarships, they will lose all of their best high school students to more prestigious private schools out-of-state, then those kids never come back home and the state loses its best human capital.  So the high merit aid is actually designed to reverse brain drain.

Arkansas' program designed to attract kids from neighboring states began after Texas passed the 10% rule (allowing any kid in the top 10% of high school class guaranteed admission to U.T. & Texas A&M) as a way to boost black/hispanic attendance after their affirmative action programs were struck down as illegal.  This wound up leaving a bunch of academically strong Texas kids from competitive sububan high schools who just missed the top 10% of their classes being denied admission to U.T. & A&M in favor of less qualfied kids from innercity and rural high schools who made the top 10% of their high schools.  UA and OU started targeting these highly qualified kids from the Dallas/Houston suburbs who were being shut out of the best public universities in their state.  I think Arkansas included all neighboring states in its program, just so it wouldn't seem so obvious that they were poaching all the Texas kids.

The scholarship programs geared toward out-of-state kids are great for Arkansas because they boost the school's U.S. News Rankings.  It allows a university in a state without a lot of high school academic talent to attract more kids from out-of-state with higher GPA's/SAT/ACT who will be more likely to graduate in 4 years, thus boosting all the important US News statistics.
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