My daughter is currently a freshman nursing major at UMass Amherst. She enjoys the idea of being a nurse, but does not like the large size and relatively isolated location of UMass-as such, she has started the transfer process. However, she is running into issues based on the schools that have her major.
My husband and I have decided we do not want her to go anywhere that is more than about two hours away; we would prefer to have her close. However, this clashes with the other things that she wants in a college-an urban campus, with access to great hospitals and plenty to do around campus. Currently, Northeastern University is at the top of her list.
However, she can not find other schools with nursing programs that fit her criteria. As such, she's begun to look into schools that have different programs-for example, Providence College; she is considering majoring in education there. While she would love to work with children (she's hoping to be a pediatric nurse, if she gets into Northeastern), she is concerned that she would not make enough money. What are some good majors for her?
It sounds like her major is right, just not the school, and that you are trying to fit a round peg in a square hole for the sake of her not going too far away. Is there a medical reason or something similar that prevents her from being a bit farther from home? If not, I’d let her go where she wants so long as it’s affordable.
I would rather her not be that far away from home, because flights add up and I don’t want to be responsible for getting her home for breaks.
The long term costs of forcing her to pursue a sub optimal major that gets her nowhere near her career goals are far higher than the cost of a few flights a year.
She can always go back to school later, when she’s grown and on her own, but for now I would prefer to have her close to home.
There is a lot of difference between 2 hours and having to fly back and forth to college. My daughter is at Northeastern and takes a 4 hour amtrak to get home to NJ (and honestly doesn’t even come home often due to being on co-op, taking summer classes etc. where she does not get time off)
Two hours by car, or two hours by plane? The cost of a three hour car drive is not significantly more than the cost of t two hour car drive, so cost does not seem to be the real issue here.
Is this the same daughter that you forced to go to UMass even though she didn’t want to go there? Isn’t it about time you let her make her own choices?
Perhaps you can just tell your daughter that if she attends a further away school she will either have to stay at the school for breaks or find her own way home. I was often able to find rides home from my distant school to save money. Or maybe she just won’t come home that frequently.
It seems that once again you are limiting her options even though a few weeks ago you seemed supportive. Are you limiting your son in the same way?
Physical therapy, occupational therapy, physician assistant as career choices? Not sure what the underlying majors are for these though.
My son wants to go to UMass, so we’re not going to have issues there! And if she gets into Northeastern’s nursing program (she has a 3.9, so I’m very hopeful) we won’t have a problem here. I just do not want to be responsible for either paying for break housing (which is very expensive) or plan tickets home.
How about the University of Southern Maine? They have a good nursing program and Portland is a small but great city.
How about opening it up a little bit to schools that are within 4 hours by car but have a train or bus station nearby so she can get herself home? For instance, there is a MegaBus that goes from Boston to Burlington VT–and while I wouldn’t want to drive there to get my daughter every few weeks, she could take that bus for less than a tank of gas and then I could pick her up in Boston which isn’t too bad for me. I’m not suggesting Burlington, but just to open it up a little so she can stay in nursing. She sounds like a very bright kid. Maybe she’d like to become a pediatric nurse practitioner or something like that-- still a nurse, but kinda like a doctor, and makes good $$.
MegaBus and Bolt Bus are both very reasonable. She could look at schools along their routes.
That is actually her plan-she wants to be a pediatric nurse for a few years, and then go back to school after paying off her loans to become a pediatric nurse practitioner. When we ran into this issue, she began considering going into education and then going back to school for a second degree in a few years.
She’s also really a people person, and big into helping others, so she wouldn’t be interested in business or accounting or anything like that
There usually aren’t that many breaks where dorms are closed. A longer than 2 hour drive is not that big a deal. And certainly every 3-4 hour drive isn’t better done by plane. Is it even a given that she would stay in dorms all 4 years? This business of having to pay for break housing is silly. You’d pay for a summer rental rather than drive 4 hours to bring her home? Or buy a train ticket or megabus? The point is that having her 4 hours away, especially if bus or train routes are available, is not a major inconvenience or expense.
Really as a non-northeasterner I also have to point out that if my parents had put a 2 hour limit on me I think I would have had 3 schools to choose from–and I didn’t grow up in a articulately remote area. Some geographic limits can be OK especially if finances are a factor. But 2 hours is really arbitrary.
Back in the Stone Age, I went to college across the country from where my immediate family lived. Because I was cheerful, friendly, and cleaned up after myself, and because I surrounded myself with people who were also cheerful, friendly, and good at cleaning up after themselves, neither I nor my friends ever lacked for an invitation to the home of someone’s friend/relative for the various school breaks. I went home only for the winter break and for the summer.
If your daughter is reasonably civilized, there is no reason to expect that she won’t be able to scare up invitations for any breaks that you that you can’t afford to get her home for.
Stop over thinking this. Encourage her to keep looking for a good nursing program to transfer into. It will be better for her to do that now than to try to go back to college for nursing after finishing a degree in another field.
I’m sure that she would be able to find an invitation to someone’s house, but I would miss her and not want her gone for that long. Currently, she can come home for weekends and I’ll at least get to see her.
There also is ride sharing. There used to be bulletin boards on campus where students with cars would post info about their trips home looking for someone to take with them for gas money. Now this is online. Four to six hours would be doable. I actually went back and read the OPs posts twice about how encouraging her daughter into a second choice major would be preferred to her daughter actually having to get on a bus, train, plane or someone else’s car. In MN tons of kids go in carpools from the Twin Cities to Madison (four hours), Grinnell (5 hours), Creighton (6 hours), University of North Dakota (4.5 hours). Parents aren’t going to get them for each visit home as these are adult students we are talking about.
Edited to add that an education major might need her own car for student teaching – so a nursing major 4 to 6 hours away might involve less transportation expenses than a nearby education major.
Good grief! She wants to be a nurse, don’t force her to change that to fit a limited geography radius! That said, Simmons in Boston has a very good nursing program.