Amount of discussion/participation required in LACs vs larger colleges?

Parents Forum
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So having one kid at a small Lac (since graduated) and one at a Big Ten University… Honestly and this has been said before… I don’t see a huge difference at getting what they need. Both can approach professors at anytime. Both had learning services and all the help centers etc. You can get just as lost at a small college as a large one. Both had to do for themselves. Both had professors that knew their first names. Both had amazing opportunities that they had to make for themselves.

My daughter used to brag about rolling out of bed and being in class in 5 minutes. My son’s walk at big U was 10 minutes… Again not the huge differences you would think. But my daughter really didn’t want the large crowds of people. When she visited Michigan and Central campus and she went to a school of under 2,000 students she was surprised at how small it actually was. Both schools have lots of trees and squirrels :joy:.

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@blossom Thank you for this list of questions. I just saved it for reference this summer. So, one foot in front of the other, phone calls for crickets, phone calls for human dinner food, phone calls to college admissions. When I was a kid, I had forced 30 minute phone calls with my grandmother. These calls were like a college interview with a very judgmental interviewer. But oh the skills that were developed! Boy could I sell myself in job interviews. Phone communication is a lost art in the digital age. We’ll work on it for sure with the goal of disconnecting the land line and engaging personally. Reverse engineering? :wink:

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@Knowsstuff You have an interesting perspective with two kids in two different environments, but yes the grass grows in both ecosystems. Thank you for illuminating the similarities. The haze is starting to lift in the great size debate. Rooting on my kid to build skills. Still hoping to be able to develop and implement criteria to evaluate programs.

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Career Services folks are not judgmental. The best of them can kindly give a kid a kick in the pants when needed, but they are trained to view the kids through a very wide lens. Kid wants Peace Corps? Here’s how we’ll help you. Kid wants to find a grad program in OT when kid hasn’t taken any of the requirements? OK, let’s map out your path. Kid needs a job, any job, because the loans are going to come due and parents aren’t in a position to help? OK, here’s who is hiring and how we’ll get you there. Grades aren’t good enough for Bain or BCG? Here are 6 strategy consulting firms that have a more generous cut-off, why not think about an internship this summer instead of teaching sailing again?

Your son will do great, especially now when all these conversations are REALLY low risk. No college is going to reject him because he stammered on a phone call to a career counselor!!!

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Being an introvert, I’d suggest your son maybe get a job in the summer after senior year. I worked at a local grocery store and developed my “customer service” personality, which actually really helped me prepare to meet lots of new people in college. It is like a testing ground for small talk, and if one interaction doesn’t go great, no big deal, you might not ever see that customer again. I hope he finds friends with similar interests in his classes! One of my best friends who is very shy and soft-spoken goes to a very small LAC (~2k students) and I have seen them finally start growing socially and enjoying classes, but not completely changing their personality. It’s pretty surprising how some people evolve in college, so I’ll hold out hope for your DS!

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@blossom Well that’s good to know. Absolutely everything in the college (and high school) process feels like a judgement to my son. Worthiness is evaluated at every step of the way. I’ll try to communicate that seeking information will not effect his admission chances. With the increased emphasis on demonstrated emphasis, every webinar question and email response seems to be tucked away into his file.

Are there some colleges known to have exceptional career services? Are the PR rankings of any use?

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@SuperfrogFan Yes! Any kind of job is pro-social engagement. A grocery store requires lots of interaction with real live people. Whereas extroverts gain energy from these opportunities, introverts actually NEED them to learn the ways of the extrovert world.

I worked at a bakery in high school and was taught the “right” way to mop floors, how to hide in the closet to eat donuts, how to make change using a cash register, and the best way to manage a long line of customers. The little old couple who owned the bakery filled in gaps that my parents never could have addressed. I also had to arrive on time after biking up a gravel hill :wink:

Do you think your best friend would have grown any differently in a different environment? Or was the growing inherent to college itself or maturation?

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The best favor you can do for your son (and for yourself) is to immediately detach the “worthiness” aspect of this process from the outcome. Seriously. If you were my friend IRL I’d be recommending a good therapist (for either or both of you) ASAP.

If you are internalizing the “acceptance/rejection” nature of college admissions, only you have the power to stop it. You need to love the kid on the couch (or hiding in his room playing video games) and accept who you all are as a family in order to go in to this process with enough humor, detachment, equanimity, etc. to make it out the other end.

If your HS feels “judgey” to your son, than the way you, as a family, use language, help him become the best version of himself, etc. is critical.

I know kids in real life who trundle off to college and truly- it is sad to watch. What ought to be an exciting, door-opening experience becomes one more ticket to punch on life’s stressful and competitive hamster wheel. And instead of being a reset button to become the best of themselves, it’s just a continuation of a long, boring, anxiety producing marathon. Internships, fellowships, departmental awards, GPA, gotta study for the MCAT’s because if I can’t become a doctor what value is my life? I told one of them recently that I didn’t go to med school (duh), never wanted to go to med school (duh), never thought about med school (of course) and somehow I have had a career that I LOVE, a happy life, and even contribute to society when I can. I got back a look of disbelief- that it’s just not possible to have a successful adulthood without “fill in the blank” accolade.

Don’t let your son fall into this trap. None of this is about his “worthiness”. Kids who don’t get into their first choice college get into their second or third or 12th and somehow it all works out. Kids who don’t get into the top CS program in the country go to the 10th or 30th CS program in the country- or fall in love with urban planning or sustainability freshman year and never look back.

My first kid had a very thick skin, was pretty non-competitive except with himself, and we really didn’t have to worry about how soul-sucking the process can be. Plus he was lazy and charming which is kind of a dream combination. My next kid was much more prone to internalize “stuff”, and we had to work hard to normalize home life junior and senior year of HS. That meant finding time for baking, playing with the toddler next door, raking leaves, doing chores, volunteering (not for college, just because there are people who didn’t win the genetic lottery and it’s important to try and take care of them) and probably most important- spending time with fragile, elderly family members.

Hugs to you. Don’t let the school system (A is better than B is better than C) mess with your head.

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@blossom Oh dear, I did not mean to imply that I had bought into the system or that our family is making any judgments on worthiness. I don’t care which school he goes to, if he takes a GAP year, or if he wants to go find a job. If he tanks AP Calc BC while finding passion in lizards etc, he is still loved. I love every bit of this quirky kid and try my best to honor who he is and what he needs. His challenges are what makes him beautiful.

My comment about worthiness means that he’s aware of when he’s being evaluated and is sensitive about it. The culture at his high school is toxic in many ways: achievement is prioritized, kids are tracked from 3rd grade, kids talk about what levels they take, and if they were in school right now, everyone would be comparing notes on “where are you going to college.” It’s a race to nowhere in a sea of priviledge. External pressure can be hard on sensitive kids. Sounds like you know this firsthand.

We have worked very hard as a family to meet our kids where they are and NOT associate worthiness with achievement. So, I’m sorry that my comment was interpreted otherwise. If we were IRL friends, I would be most grateful for the honest dialogue we could have. I am super grateful for your ideas here on this board. Sometimes a quick, and in my case, multi-tasked and somewhat distracted comment while making my kids lunch, does not come across as intended, and for that, I apologize.

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I think they would have grown differently if they had gone to school with me or another acquaintance, or a big school in general. It was necessary for us to separate and live our own lives to branch out. Tbh I think we both ended up in the right environment for ourselves. For them, the small community made things less scary to tackle, and the professors must know your name. They participate in class now and have a good group of friends from lab work and dorm life. For me, TCU is big enough to offer athletic events and other valuable ways to spend my time, and the classes are either 12-15 or 30-40 people, so I am still able to have the professor know me as long as I make an effort. There is one class where I am the only person with a camera on, and although it can be scary, I realized - I don’t know anyone here, so what do I care what they think behind their black screens? If nodding and unmuting to pose and answer questions helps me to understand the material better, getting more value out of the classes, why the heck not?

College is liberating in that you can be whoever you choose to be. It’s a blank slate and everyone else is in the same stage of life and very understanding :smiley:

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Supplements. Lots and lots of supplements :frowning:

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132

One of the most important parts of the college search is finding a good safety school. You said that you are in the Midwest. What state exactly? For may high stat students, either the state flagship or another state school is a good safety. The group may be helpful in evaluating them as safeties.

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@Eeyore123 IL… not sure UIUC would be considered a safety! Other state flagships maybe?

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Having a summer job dealing with the public is an excellent suggestion. My S was pretty shy in HS. Getting that first job at a busy movie theater, dealing with people really gave him confidence. He was stressed out heading into it but it got better every day. He actually wrote about that in one of his essays.

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UIUC: Not a safety for engineering or CS, but probably highly likely for math and/or some other LAS majors. Your HS GC should be helpful in terms of categorizing UIUC majors.

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Agree that applying to a large number of schools can be very stressful and time consuming, based on the number of supplemental essays that are requested. Keeping a spreadsheet of which ones overlap with others in terms of topic AND word-count can be very helpful. And of course, some colleges don’t require any at all, while others require 2 or 3.

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@MMRose Great suggestion to compare the supplemental essay topics/word counts. A little overlap could ease the writing burden, carefully edited of course. Some schools have 4 supplemental essays?! With the increase in applications, it’s hard to envision AOs reading thousands upon thousands of essays. The little list of zero supplement schools is pure gold!

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Some UIUC students get put in DGS (Division of General Studies) if they are admitted to the campus but not their desired majors. DGS has a list of majors showing the level of competitiveness each one has in declaring, which probably correlates to competitiveness in frosh admission:

https://dgs.illinois.edu/declaring-your-major

Many of the science majors like math, statistics, and physics are listed under “Majors that Guarantee Admission for Students Who Meet Specific Criteria”, which means that they are more difficult to get into than “Majors that Guarantee Admission with a Minimum 2.0 Major GPA” but probably less difficult to get into than “Majors that Require an Application and Do Not Guarantee Admission”. The latter includes all Grainger College of Engineering majors (which includes computer science, but does not include chemical and biomolecular engineering), as well as all combinations of computer science and something else (CS+X and (math or statistics)/CS).

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139

I have just skimmed this thread.

Consider the University of Alabama at Huntsville Honors College/Program

May get a full tuition scholarship.

Your son should be very comfortable at this STEM school.

P.S. I second the recommendation of Case Western Reserve made below.

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@Search2022 Yes, the amount of overlapping supplemental writing can be a major influence on how much effort is required. It’s often much easier to rework an existing essay than to start fresh – especially for someone who’s not big on introspection!

One tip: Case Western Reserve has a good engineering program and did not require any supplemental essays for this application cycle (even though collegevine or a similar site said they did). They do track demonstrated interest, however, so if they make it on to your list, it’s good to keep that in mind! It’s a good mid-sized school that might be of interest to you.

Also, a lot of sites have compiled a list of supplemental essay prompts for a large number of colleges – you may find those helpful if you aren’t already using one.

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