Auburn University is winning the war for Alabama’s students.

More undergraduates from Alabama went to the Plains in the fall of 2018 than went to any other four-year college or university in the state, according to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. Nearly 15,000 in-state students were enrolled at Auburn that semester, more than 1,500 more than enrolled at the University of Alabama.

Alabama was second with just over 13,000 students, followed by the University of Alabama at Birmingham with 11,000. Auburn, Alabama and UAB were the only four-year schools in Alabama with more than 10,000 in-state residents.

But another school has them all beat in another category. When looking at the most popular choice within each county, Troy University pulled ahead.

More Alabama counties - 15 and a half to be exact - sent a plurality of students to Troy University than any other school in the state.

Jacksonville State in east Alabama was the top choice in the secondmost counties.

Troy dominated the Wiregrass, a region in southeast Alabama near the Florida and Georgia state lines. Troy is in Pike County, firmly in the middle of the region.

When you look at the most popular choice within each county, it’s clear that students tend to stay close to home. The University of Alabama owned its home county of Tuscaloosa, plus five surrounding counties. The same is true for Auburn and its home county of Lee, plus another two nearby.

According to the commission, Auburn also saw the most students coming from a cluster of northeast Alabama counties that includes Madison, the home of Huntsville. But this may be a record-keeping issue.

The University of Alabama in Huntsville alone listed thousands of students’ home counties as ‘unknown.' UAH had more than 3,000 unknown county entries. Every other four-year public college in the state combined had fewer than 1,000 unknowns.

In previous years, UAH beat out Auburn and held a steady lead in enrollment in those North Alabama counties.

Iron Bowl of enrollment

Meanwhile, significantly more counties sent more students to Auburn than Alabama in the fall of 2018. Forty-four of Alabama’s 67 counties, or around 66 percent, were more Tiger than Tide that semester.

That follows a growing trend over recent years, as the University of Alabama has moved toward heavy recruitment of out-of-state students.

Alabama had an undergraduate enrollment of around 33,000 last fall. More than 60 percent came from out-of-state. Just 40 percent of Auburn’s 24,000 undergraduate students came from somewhere other than Alabama.

UA got more than 1,000 students from six different states, including 1,100 from California and 1,600 from Illinois.