“Just do Honors. If you go to a UC or CSU you are going to struggle getting classes. I’ve seen this with all my friends.”
-My daughter, fresh off her first year at Boise State.
This is months later, so I don’t know that you will see this, but here goes:
My daughter goes to Boise State. She is in the Honors College. She is a marketing/international business major. She was accepted into much more “competitive” schools. She looked at Nevada-Reno too as they accepted her on the WUE. Her high school friends went to UC Davis, UCLA, San Diego State, Chico, and UNR. Her final choice came down to UC Davis or Boise State. In high school she was top-ten in her class and took multiple AP classes. She is all about her academics.
Her big issue was “settling for an average state school surrounded by the same slackers as high school. I don’t want to go to the Sac State of Idaho.” I suppose that sounds familiar. When she said this, all high and mighty and dismissively, it kinda pissed me off - I went to Sac State. But I was a slacker back in the day, so I saw her point. She worked her butt off all through k-12. Still, I’ll never forget the disdain in her voice.
Her thoughts on her first year: She is happy she applied to the Honors College because she gets priority registration (after the first semester). She loves the city, the snow, the geese, the river and the fact that Boise is clean and people say please and thank you. She had a tough time adjusting to the lack of diversity because she came from a very diverse high school. Her roommates were all white, and were not used to things like Asian noodles or Boba tea - there is a lack of Boba tea in Boise. She says people aren’t outwardly racist, but just unaware. They weren’t used to being around people from other backgrounds. She says that being in the Honors College helped, but that there were still many slackers, and that some of the best students she met weren’t even in the Honors College. She loved her dorm, Sawtooth Hall, and it’s proximity to central campus. They divide the Honors kids into “houses” and her house is Kestrel - all the houses are named after native Idahoan birds. Boise State is big on Raptor Biology. Houses work together and compete.
While not a football fan, she LOVES the fact that her school has name recognition and has a reputation as a smaller school that will beat you if you overlook them. She proudly wears her Bronco gear around our northern California metropolitan area. She also likes that there are many other Californians, but also Alaskans, Washingtonians, Utahians, Oregonians too.
With the WUE scholarship, her full cost of attendance is nearly the same state schools in California, and about 5-6k cheaper than the UCs. We would have paid full tuition in California at the state schools and UCs. Based upon what you posted, it sounds as if you should qualify for the Gem Scholarship, which would basically be “in-state” tuition for Idaho residents. With all her AP classes and tests she was able to skip ton of what Boise State calls foundational courses.
“I’m not interested in going to a UC or CSU- I want to get out of California, the rent is too expensive around the campuses, and the liberal extremism would literally drive me crazy.”
Ha! This literally sounds like my daughter. We toured UC Santa Cruz after she was accepted, and she said no within moments. My daughter is politically centrist and wanted out of California for similar reasons…housing, cost of living, myopic group think. With that said, she sees a lot of conservative negatives up in Idaho. However, Boise the city is pretty “blue” politically. But it isn’t Davis…and definitely not Santa Cruz. She meets both liberal and conservative people at her college. You know, a rounded experience where people can exchange and debate opposing ideas…college.
Academics: Some classes challenge her, some do not as much. As I am typing this she is dancing because she survived business calculus. Survived. There were tears. But college will be like that no matter where you go. It is supposed to be that way so you grow from the struggle.
Her friends at Davis grind on the quarter system. When my daughter visited them, she saw bikes, study groups, tea and coffee shops, etc… I told her “you know you turned this down.” And while she stuck to her guns and fully stated that she’s a Bronco, I knew she kind of missed the ingrained academic culture at Davis…but she found those people at Boise State. The difference is, at Davis, that WAS the culture - you don’t need to find it. In Boise, she had to find it. She had to sift through a lot of “basic” people who were there to party and screw around at college. There was some attrition after the first semester too - people bailed out. Boise lets a lot of people in - the school President, to her credit, has made making college attainable for poor rural Idahoans a priority. However, my kid also attended a public high school full of low-income families, and she knows that ultimately, you get out what you put in academically.
Things she looks forward to most: seeing friends again, taking classes, getting more involved because she knows how things work.
If you are still interested (if you ever even see this post) you should reach out to the school. The admissions officers (Olivia Sandquist was hers) were very friendly and always got back to us. They do visits to California (they recruit heavily here) and host weekends up there.
Ultimately, the choice is yours. There are a lot of great suggestions already in this thread. I love Northern Arizona University, but Flagstaff is just too far away. We wanted to be within a day’s drive. I liked UNR a lot too, but my daughter wanted to be further away, and considers the Reno area to be too much like home (her mom’s family is all Northern Nevadan). I would have been proud to have an Aggie daughter had she chosen UCD. But I am also happy to took a big chance and went far away.
I honestly hope you find a great place to fit in and thrive. Don’t be afraid to take the leap and go out of state…you can always transfer back to California.
If you have any other questions, fire away. I’ll get my kid to answer them - she’s stuck here with us during Covid 19 lockdown. And she needs to get a job…the slacker.