I am the parent of a first-year college student, one year out from the whirlwind of applications, visits, and decision-making. I thought it might be helpful to share a perspective from the other side.
For background, my child was one of the applicants I have seen described here as “average excellent.” In other words, excellent—but not in an unusual way or unique area.
My child was a National Merit Finalist with a 4.0 unweighted GPA and 15 AP courses, was a year-round club/starting high school varsity athlete, and was a committed community volunteer and intern.
In the end, my kid was accepted to:
-three top 75 universities (two with prestigious scholarships) and a top regional university
-two well-regarded LACs with top academic scholarships and an offer to play a varsity D3 sport at one of them, and
- three large public R1 universities we considered “safety” schools, including one offering a full-tuition National Merit scholarship
She decided not to attend a top 75 school. She decided not to take the offer to continue her sport. She decided not to take the full-tuition offer, either.
Instead, she is attending Oregon State in the Honors College — the very first university that accepted her and the last one we visited. The analysis of what was important to her (and us) really evolved throughout the process and I shared the factors we considered in this post from last year:
So … how is it going?
Academically, she received so many credits for her AP courses that she actually has junior class standing. This has been a huge advantage in registering for classes.
She enjoys her classes and was happy to bypass most intro level courses. Her schedule is almost all honors courses (including interesting honors colloquia/seminars on professors’ passion projects) or honors sections of courses required for her major. She is on track to complete a double major, get a minor in sustainability, and probably also complete enough credits to qualify for the CPA exam within 4 years.
Because of the registration advantage granted to honors students and students with higher class standing, she’s been able to get almost all of the classes, times, and professors she wanted. All but one of her courses have been small, with ample opportunity to get to know the professor. She feels she is learning a lot and that it is more practical than high school. So far, her grades are excellent.
Socially, she is thriving, too. She opted to join a sorority and has already been elected to a director position there. Somewhat contrary to the stereotype, her sorority requires each member to participate actively in a campus club or sport or to have a job, to maintain a specified GPA, and to contribute a specified number of individual volunteer hours to the community outside of the sorority’s official philanthropic efforts.
She goes to the gym daily and has also joined two academic clubs/organizations, learned a new sport, joined a dance group, and attended multiple sporting events (even participated in the half-time entertainment for a basketball game), among other activities. And she polished up her resume and just started looking for a campus job.
Bottom line, she really likes the beautiful campus and the energy at a R1/Pac-12 university — particularly a university that continued to grow enrollment throughout the pandemic. OSU feels to her like a positive, busy place where things are happening and there is a lot of opportunity to participate in any area of interest. It was also important to her to attend a school where she did not feel intimidated or that the environment was too intense or competitive to allow her to explore all her interests. In addition, coming from an economically, racially, and culturally diverse high school, it was also important to her to attend a larger, more diverse institution than she found the LACs to be.
And, of critical importance to her, she is meeting people she really likes and finding a balance that enables her to devote ample time to her relationships as well as her studies.
Not to say it has all been smooth sailing. It was an adjustment not to define herself by the sport she played so many years. There have been challenges with illness and transportation, managing to get to the right dining halls when they are open, and getting various instances of bureaucratic red tape resolved. It probably wouldn’t be the right situation for a student less organized or less able to self-advocate or push themselves out of their comfort zone.
On the other hand, we discovered that being within driving distance was more helpful than we had predicted when dealing with illness, malfunctioning technology, etc. A student with a different temperament may have taken all that in stride even 3000 miles from home.
I offer up our experience because so often it seems that high-achieving students are presented a college admissions dichotomy: either choose to go to the highest-ranked/most highly regarded school that accepts you, or chase merit and go to the school that offers the lowest cost of attendance. Our experience revealed that there are a whole host of schools in between and that the “Goldilocks” choice might be neither the highest ranked nor the least expensive.
Good luck and best wishes to all those in the midst of the process.
harsh.