Anecdotal, but my CA kid who had never experienced a winter is attending UMich and loves it. The week of the Polar Vortex, last January, the basketball game was sold out. And sent me a pick of one person skiing to class.
Some students don’t want the heat and humidity of the Southeast, some don’t want the hot dry desert weather of the Southwest, some don’t want the clouds and rain of the Northwest, yada, yada, yada. That’s why they make different flavors of ice cream, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, rocky road, etc.
@Riversider if you or your kid don’t like winter, then don’t apply to colleges where there is winter weather. Just don’t.
But don’t make it all sound doom and gloom because you know…it’s not.
As a friend in Atlanta put it to me when it snowed there and paralyzed the Atlanta metro area for days…”you know…your little town in CT has more snow removal equipment than the whole state of Georgia”.
Places that have winter know how to handle…winter. And the people there also know how to handle winter weather. If your prospective college student isn’t interested in winter…or you as a parent can’t stand the thought…then there are plenty of colleges in this country that seldom see snow, or below freezing weather. Apply and attend there.
There are tens of thousands of students attending colleges where winter is a thing…and they love it.
And the opposite of the above poster…my New England kid attended college in a part of CA where it doesn’t snow…and couldn’t wait to get home at winter break to see the snow.
Just depends on the kid. I told my D to add the weather for her target colleges to her phone and we’d check it during the winter. She doesn’t like cold weather and once she knew she had great warm to moderate weather options , they rose to the top over colder locales,. But this was her decision – not me pushing. I did say a couple of times, “It’s just 4 winters, not the rest of your life.”
If you think your kid has a propensity for SAD, that’d be one reason to take it more seriously.
I think some kids want the cold if they’ve never had it.
I too can throw in anecdotes right and left but it’s a futile exercise. It’s one of the issues every college applicant and parent should carefully consider before finalizing their choices.
Easy access to major airports is another one, some may like to be in secluded little towns with no airports but others may prefer more connectivity.
Some people actually like snow. I would say Seattle is more of a problem for depression than many very snowy locations. Western Mass is much more gray than Ann Arbor Michigan. And Boulder, we really do wear shorts in the winter, a lot, and its been 70 degrees on January 1 in Boulder by the afternoon. My kids never had winter coats until they moved east. No one in Colorado wears heavy clothes as the snow just sublimes and its so dry. Middle of the night is very cold here, though, for certain, but dry cold. Very sunny and we have lots of road bikers that ride in the winter here, only in the high elevations do we have snow that sticks, and 5000 feet is “low elevation” where snow does not stick around, for Colorado.
Massachusetts and Boston have seriously bad winters, and even winter hurricanes. Savanah School of Design regularly evacuates all the way to Atlanta Georgia, so I see
some issues for Florida, South Carolina and Savannah Georgia Schools in the fall. Even Georgia Tech shut down for one hurricane two years ago now. Florida State I am sure will be evacuated for hurricanes this season too, Tallahassee narrowly missed getting destroyed a few years back.
Many colleges would require a flight plus a long ride from the airport. This makes getting home and back expensive, time consuming and complicated specially if you throw in bad weather, flight delays, connections etc.
If you want to avoid it, look at schools in towns with easily accessible major airport. Not only it makes it difficult for student to visit home but also makes it difficult for parents to visit in case of emergency or family weekends or whatever reason.
In areas where you can ski, you can’t jump into an outdoor pool, lake, pond, river, ocean on a whim, nor can you wear shorts, T-shirt and flip flops outdoors all year round. No place is perfect.
I’m confused. Are we doing PSA’s here? I’m pretty sure most of kids and parents accessing CC do their due diligence in where to attend college.
Difficult to access and snowy Dartmouth and Cornell aren’t hurting for applicants.
For another PSA, Ann Arbor has a bus from the Detroit airport to campus and back about 10 +/- times per day. The ride is about 35-40 minutes. Free water and WiFi. And a bathroom too. ?
Just took it last Friday. Very comfortable and relaxing.
I came to this thread thinking it’d be about Dorian and attending college of Charleston or FAU, and preparations for that on college campuses or whether climate change/severe weather has become a criterion for choosing a college…
Year-round wearer of t-shirts, shorts and flip flops here. About 20-30 minutes to the beach, 3-4 hours to Squaw Valley, great academics and Stanford’s outdoor pools are to die for. I’d highly recommend an application to Stanford. ?
@sushiritto or how about Santa Clara which is right down the road…same characteristics in terms of weather accessibility…but adding there is a free bus to the San Jose Airport which is all of 10 minutes away…and the train station is right across the road from the main college entrance.?
My SCU kid never went where there was snow in CA…she came home for that! We didn’t worry one bit about weather…but this kid wanted to go to college where it didn’t snow.
My husband is a Montrealer, but has lived in NJ for twenty years. He STILL drives to work no matter the snowstorm, then fumes that we do not know how to clean roads here.
I have one child who chose to go south bc she loves the heat, and a child who is now applying to only northern schools bc she hates heat/ loves snow. How nice to be 18 and having a chance to choose your weather!
DS#2 announced that he wanted to go to college where he could ski in the morning and go to the beach in the afternoon. I told him that was the Claremont colleges and if he kept his grades and tests scores up they were worth considering. We visited and he liked CMC, but didn’t like California, so he left that application unfinished. Oh… guess where he now lives (and has for several years). You got it… California.
@jym626 (tongue in cheek), I want my kids in college going to classes. If he’s sking in the morning and beach in the afternoon that doesn’t leave a lot of time actually going to classes… Lol ?
My kid only applied to schools located in temperate regions. It’s not as if there is a lack of great schools in mild weathered places. Weather and traveling convenience were factors. I lived in many different places and can adjust to any place, but I prefer living in a region where I can hike or play golf every day of year.
@Knowsstuff - actually not tongue in cheek, Pomona hosts an annual “ski-beach day” in the spring, where they go to the beach and the slopes in one day (ski in the morning, beach in the afternoon!) It has been a tradition for a long time! Thats what caught my eye!!
