<p>Oh, sorry, about the less than handful of students that we came across, they seemed just like average slightly preppy kids from what I could tell. Our tour guide was a product of a private high school and was from out of state (I believe that he was from Delaware). He seemed to like the school, but did not seem to LOVE it (not particularly enthusiastic, as my son is about his current school). He did answer our questions as thoroughly and honestly as he could. We were on a private tour for whatever reason.</p>
<p>Thanks! </p>
<p>Well, since I can’t get my son to have an opinion about any of this, it’s hard for me to work up the enthusiasm for the long drive upstate. It’s a little frustrating. But maybe once he starts making some visits, it will start to interest him a little more.</p>
<p>Your welcome. I am sure that we combined Elmira with other schools when we visited. I just don’t recall which schools we combined with that trip. I can tell you that we looked at Hobart, Hartwick, and Suny Oneonta at some point.</p>
<p>I don’ t have grades yet, so not sure what is a safety for my S. I think Pace if he applies early but not sure if we will get enough aid. His grades “should” be in the top 25 …</p>
<p>The verdict is in regarding S’s GPA for college apps this fall. He finished jr year with an overall 3.08 GPA which drops to 2.96 when calculated for UC/CSU. So UC’s are out (I believe they require a minimum 3.0), but does he still have a shot at any the CSUs? He would likely apply to Sonoma, San Jose State, Northridge, Cal Poly Pomona, Chico, Monterey Bay, and maybe Sac State. Thanks. Was hoping for a better outcome, but the data are the data.</p>
<p>BfloGal@85: Has he taken his SATs/ACTs yet? Of the CSUs you listed, Monterey Bay is least impacted if it is impacted at all. If he has his test scores back, you can run the CSU calculations to assess the various CSUs, at least based on the most recent year. Also, remember that if you live within a particular CSU’s service area, the bar is lower. But yes, I am sure he has a shot at a number of CSUs, just not SLO, SD, or LB and maybe a couple of other popular ones, depending upon how high or low his scores are.</p>
<p>CCsite, yep he took the SAT and scores are ok for him (would be dreadful for the typical overachieving student on CC but were ok for him). He is CSU eligible but would not make it into SLO or SD with his overall stats. Not sure what he will want to do but jr college is likely the option. Good that we have an excellent one in the area, but unfortunately it is overpopulated by students who could otherwise get into a good 4-yr school but whose parents want to save $$. On the other hand maybe that’s fortunate after all-- he will be in classes with motivated kids who could otherwise get into a good 4-yr school. I once worked with a guy who taught statistics at a comm college in SoCal and he once told me that over the 10 years or so he’d been teaching, the quality of students had been decreasing every year. Maybe that’s improved since then?</p>
<p>simpkin, I may be able to answer your questions about both Lycoming and Elmira. Elmira the town, that is, I don’t know about the college.</p>
<p>We visited Lycoming when my son was a rising Junior at a Spring or Summer open house.We liked the school and town and son would have applied except his interest in a major changed by fall of his senior year. They do an excellent open house. The impression I got was that the Professors really cared about the kids and were interested in helping them succeed. They had a nice lunch time get-together where students were invited to have lunch with a representative of their potential majors. The one for my son’s major gave him some excellent college exploration advice that had nothing to do with Lycoming. The campus is charming, compact and within easy walking distance of the town. A good friend of mine has a son who just graduated from there and he is now employed in his field. The dorms were the only negative but I think they said they were going to be renovated. </p>
<p>We lived just north of Elmira for four long winters. The area is very pretty with lots of wooded hills and lots of wineries not too far away in the Finger Lakes area. Corning is a cool town very close to Elmira with lots of restaurants, bars, coffeeshops and the Corning Glass Works, where they have tours. If the college interests you, it would be a nice drive between Williamsport and Elmira. </p>
<p>A college that is very similar to Lycoming is Hartwick College in Oneonta NY.</p>
<p>My D was admitted to Elmira, with very good merit $, with a gpa in the range of this thread. She was in the top 50% of her class, but from an unusual program with grade deflation. One of the top students from her class is going to Elmira (despite being admitted to Cornell) as he got a free ride and his family is lower income. I think Elmira’s Sat. am class is first semester only for first year students, not all year. Elmira seemed a bit “rah, rah this school is great” and gave D a bit of a hard sell. If you are interested in traditional campuses with school spirit, but less academically challenging (but not easy) this could be a decent fit. Online reviews indicate there is a fair bit of drinking there but that is true on many campuses. </p>
<p>D liked Siena a bit better and the students seemed about the same to her on paper. D was turned off by the purple feather (sign of the mascot I think) that was mailed to her and never really considered the school. She felt she was stalked after admission with constant emails and snail mail pieces, but if your student would like this attention and it would help her/him get emotionally invested then this could be a good thing. D chose not to visit and it was only ever a safety in her eyes as we were not sure what was a match/safety for her.</p>
<p>Thank you so much, kathiep and kinderny! This is really helpful information. Both of these schools sound good to me. I had been interested in Hartwick, but the College Navigator site has their overall graduation rate at only 57%. And 38% of kids transfer out. Elmira’s graduation rate is only 66%, which is not great either. Lycoming is 76%. </p>
<p>I registered for the open houses at Lycoming and Elmira since the open houses are a day apart, and the colleges are relatively close to each other. S has never set foot on a college campus, so at the very least, I hope this will get him more interested. I just received his report card, and his grades are the usual mix of excellent and terrible. He got a 99 on his US History regent, but barely passed chemistry. </p>
<p>Kinderny, I absolutely love that your D rejected Elmira for sending her a feather! My daughter also had some odd reasons for not liking certain colleges. Kids are funny.</p>
<p>Simpkin, I wonder whether the lower graduation rate at Hartwick is in part related to the fact that SUNY Oneonta is just across the street. Do some students look at SUNY Oneonta and decide to transfer across the street to pay a lower tuition after speaking students that attend Oneonta and/or visiting Oneonta for themselves?</p>
<p>I think the retention rate is something to take into consideration but it wasn’t a deal breaker for us. In fact, I had to look up my son’s college to see what it was (73%) since I had only looked at it when we were in the preliminary search. I think that colleges that are easier to get into may have lower retention rates due to the fact that many of those students are not the best students in the first place. State schools that often have lower admissions standards usually have a low retention rate also.</p>
<p>My son will go into his soph year and will definitely lose 3 friends at his private college to the public Us because of cost (one of them transferred after one semester for this reason). He told me that others transfer because they thought they’d like a smaller school but find that they would now prefer something larger. Only one student my son knows failed out of the school. Another student is going to a state school because she is going to try a new major that is not offered at the school, and she is also struggling at this school academically. My point is that one really needs to dig to find out why there is a low retention rate, and that information is sometimes hard to get. I was not comfortable with the retention rate at the school my son attends. I did try to get some answers and I felt that we were taking a chance. Now that my son is there, I see that there are a variety of reasons for a low retention rate, but a lot has to do with cost of this private school vs. cost of an instate public school for that student.</p>
<p>^^^Simpkin- Mine is “funnier” than most. ;)</p>
<p>“I think that colleges that are easier to get into may have lower retention rates due to the fact that many of those students are not the best students in the first place.”</p>
<p>I’m sure that has a lot to do with it. I’m looking for that magical college that takes the unmotivated B and C students and transforms them into academic superstars. Is that too much to ask? :)</p>
<p>I started focusing on graduation and retention rates because it’s one of the factors that is emphasized in the “Finding the College That’s Right For You” book. It seems to me that even if kids are transferring out for “good” reasons, cost or major etc. rather than hating the school, it’s got to be a bit demoralizing to have a third or more of your class disappear before graduation.</p>
<p>I do think that it is upsetting if your closest couple of friends transfer to another school. I can tell you that my son joined Greek life. I was not happy about it at first, but my opinion about Greek life has changed (depending upon school and which fraternity/sorority). I can tell you that at the school my son attends the average graduatioin rate for those involved in Greek life is much higher than for those who are not. Also, GPA is higher for those involved in Greek life. I don’t really know why, but these are facts and are listed as such on the school’s website.</p>
<p>You are absolutely right simpkin but a way to help your student counter that is to look for a college with an First Year Experience program (FYE) and/or an optional pre-orientation one. For my middle child, who is somewhat shy, the outdoor adventure pre-orientation program at Roanoke College gave him a core group of friends that he stayed friends with all through college and none of them dropped out. Studies have shown that the students that participate in those programs have a much higher retention rate. I’m not sure if they still have it. BTW, the admissions person for Pennsylvania at Hartwick is a recent Roanoke College alum. She and I both thought that the two colleges were very similar.</p>
<p>I remember when we went to our middle child’s college orientation and the dean in charge of student affairs told us that they found that students that were unhappy personally in their social lives were much more likely to do poorly academically and much more likely to transfer or drop out. Their goal, therefore, was to sort of force the kids to become involved in a multitude of college things so they could see the opportunities for socialization and it would be easy to jump in. I believe that was also a point mentioned in the Finding the College… book.</p>
<p>^^I think kathiep is right, at least in our situation. S2 was the B/C high sch. kid who went to big directional state u. and had an academic train wreck the first semester. But he really liked the school,loved the football games and all his friends there. He really wanted to stay at that sch. So he went back and did better second sem. and has done fine ever since making the honor roll three of the last four semesters. A lot of it has nothing to do with their major or their classes. They have to be happy with the “life” part of college.</p>
<p>3.32 GPA High School Junior.
I plan to go into music (piano performance major of some kind), and because of this and the mindset that I was going to enter a music conservatory, I decided that GPA didn’t really matter. (Conservatories don’t really look at GPA and are much more focused on the live audition.) However, my parents saw my freshmen year GPA (2.0 first semester! Ouch!) And quickly cracked the whip. However, I still didn’t work as hard as I could and now I’m at my current situation: 3.32 GPA, 1900 SAT (I expect this to rise quite a bit when I retake it) but have never taken any AP classes.
The reason for the lack of APs is that I was in a music program at the community college which put me through music theory, ear training, ensembles, repertoire classes, and then when I finished the program I continued on to take choir and music history. My parents decided that having APs one top of those college classes would be too much work, and my dad views APs skeptically. My GPA at the college is a 4.0, but I’m not sure how much that counts as they’re all music classes!
As for extra curricular achievements, I haven’t done much. I did child acting and ended up starring in commercials and three movies (two independent, one more mainstream but a box office flop), stuck with Tae Kwon Do for 9-10 years and got my third dan, but those are things of the past, and ever since my high school career, extra curricular activities have fallen behind to be replaced by catching up in piano technique, (I started late and while musically and in regards to repertoire I’ve caught up, my finger strength is quite an obstacle)
I’ll probably still end up applying to conservatories, but what universities with good music schools are possible? I don’t any but Thornton (at USC) and Indiana, both of which seem like stretches to me.</p>
<p>This is my first post on CC after lurking for a while but this thread seems like a great one to start with. My D is the classic “not working to her potential” kid. She sounds like several of the kiddos described here, in fact. She’s a major social butterfly (homecoming princess this year), rarely does homework, still gets A’s on her finals. The upshot is, she’s just finished Junior year with an uw GPA of 2.99 or 3.0 (depending on what her APUSH instructor does after he reads her 3-week-late essay. Sigh.) We just got her first set of SAT scores and she’s got a combined 1970. She will re-take in October.</p>
<p>So, uw GPA of 2.99, SAT of 1970, 8 honors and/or AP courses (mostly B’s), and multi-year participation and awards in speech and debate and mock trial competitions. Ultimately, she wants to go to law school–has been focused on this for two years. We’re in Washington state but would do either coast. She doesn’t have a shot at Univ of Wash and might at Washington State (but doesn’t like the school). Would love to keep tuition and room/board under $40,000. Ideas? Have I thrown out too much information? (I feel like I’m drowing in it!) Help?</p>