When my kids started high school I was a naive parent who believed the hype that there were tons of scholarships out there and that college admissions would be relatively simple so long as the kids got decent grades. Thank goodness I found CC when I did! The twins are now juniors and we’ve had a lot of discussion about affordability, what they’re looking for in a school, the (un)likelihood of significant merit aid, etc. We’ve come to the conclusion that, barring an unexpected windfall or substantial external scholarships, the twins will stay in state. My problem now is that our in-state options are really lackluster and we are all frustrated.
We are in New Hampshire. One of the “in-state” schools has in the past few years transformed itself into an online school for continuing ed. I don’t consider that a real option for us with traditional-age students who want to attend an actual brick-and-mortar school. That leaves 3 options.
UNH does not appeal to either DD or DS. DS is on the spectrum and does not want to be at a large school with big classes and what he calls “a lot of chaos”. DD will likely major in a humanities discipline and was unimpressed with the arts scene on campus and how STEM-oriented all of the admissions tours and materials were. Her feeling was that arts and humanities are an afterthought there. Both of them felt overwhelmed by the number of people crammed onto a relatively small campus. We had them visit twice, once on a prospective student day and another time on a “regular” day, and both times they came home unhappy and with no desire to attend. UNH’s urban campus has the small class sizes they want but does not have dorms, so that’s out for us as well.
Keene State and Plymouth State are smaller and seemed more promising but upon closer look seem far from ideal for DD. DS liked Plymouth and I think he would do well there; the campus had good community and the major he knows he wants is well-regarded locally, so we feel good about Plymouth for him. DD didn’t care for Plymouth because it is pretty isolated, the town is quite small, and she won’t have a car so getting to the arts and music scene she likes would be impossible in winter (DS could care less about that and sees the small town and campus as a plus, luckily). She is lukewarm on Keene State. DD is very bright, gifted with languages (will probably either major or minor in one), has great EC’s and is captain of her sport. Her grades don’t reflect all of this due to a very long, complicated path to an ADHD diagnosis last year. However, her grades in honors classes are always higher than in standard, and I think it’s because she does best when she is surrounded by motivated peers. This makes me somewhat concerned for Keene, which seems to be rolling admissions and not at all selective.
Problem #2 is that DD is now having a showdown with her guidance counselor because she has only the 1 school on her list. Well, when the state only has 3 real campuses, your parents aren’t wealthy and you don’t have the stats for crazy-high merit aid, what else do they expect her to do? I’m honestly relieved that both kids accepted staying in state when their friends are applying all over the country and to local big-name schools like Dartmouth, Williams and Middlebury that we know we can’t afford even if they could get in. But it’s hard to keep my DD focused on the only real, if not ideal, option when she’s getting different advice from the counselor. We’ve looked into the 2 years at CC + 2 years elsewhere option, but it seems to be a risk to me, especially when she doesn’t want to attend the schools that would guarantee acceptance of all the credits (the NH in-state schools). Of course, her guidance counselor is against that as well, but I suspect for different reasons.
Still, applying to a single school that we have concerns about doesn’t seem great. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Or have advice on how we should proceed with a short timeline and not great options? Should we pick up and move? (only half kidding)…