<ol>
<li><p>Girl left a Boston college to be nearer to family. She married a co-worker of her brother, and still lives near family</p></li>
<li><p>Young man didn’t get accepted to his dream school, where FA an alum. Honors program elsewhere, with some $$$. They showed him love, and he likes the people in his honor classes. Still, he has applied to transfer</p></li>
</ol>
<p>questbest: I think that it would be naive to think that there is not one person who “did not like Penn State”…If you would like to convince yourself that your daughter’s decision is a “perfect” one, more power to you…
but as one parent to another, please do not keep those “rose-colored” glasses on when your daughter enters;
she will need you to empathize, sympathize and commiserate with her when., as mom2collegekids says,<br>
“No school is perfect. Every school is going to have some people that you won’t like or a few profs that are boring or whatever. Every school is going to have a rule, a requirement, a policy, a fee, or something that you’re not going to like.” </p>
<p>It is very healthy to go into ANY school with this attitude…</p>
<p>I have two children: my first went into this process thinking she was going to find “perfection”…my husband and I strongly discouraged this as soon as we saw it’s head rearing…</p>
<p>Second child: had the discussion before we even set foot on the first campus…</p>
<p>MyLB, I have a friend who left Auburn because of the Southern racist attitudes he found there. He was ready to transfer after his first semester but stuck out the first year because he didn’t want to be a quitter. He’s much happier at Virginia Tech. Here in West Virginia, most of the colleges have a high dropout rate, mostly for cultural reasons. We have the lowest percentage in the nation of residents with a college degree and higher education is not valued. Families fear “losing” their children if they go to college, so they don’t encourage it, especially if they can’t be commuters. Ironically, we have the highest amount of four-year colleges per capita in the nation but they are former “teacher’s colleges” with small student bodies and are often the only real employer in a rural area, which makes them political sacred cows.</p>
<p>This fall one recruited athlete from our community did not even last three weeks at the school to which she committed. She chose the school primarily because it was the biggest D1 school that made her an offer, and it probably was a poor fit – but three weeks?!</p>
<p>Another reason some kids leave a school is that instead of continuing on a pre-med path, the student decides to go into nursing, and the school he/she is attending does not have a nursing program.</p>
<p>This is a wonderful thread. </p>
<p>When does a student decide a change is needed? Is it the kid or the school that needs changing (or both!)? Often freshman year can be the most disheartening. Give up then, or push ahead? </p>
<p>The school seemed like it was “everything I wanted”…until he didn’t get along with the cliche of students down the hall and discovered kids are really into drinking. My DS2 would consider transferring if he didn’t work so hard to get accepted in the first place.</p>
<p>So how do you find the “right fit”? Not by looking through Ruggs and Fiske and PR.</p>
<p>I put as much stock in SR as Payscale. There is no way to verify who is posting and anything they claim to be or say. Look at the NSSE survey to see how many are happy and would choose or recommend the school they attend. At PSU it would be around 90%.</p>
<p>Lima: maybe we could compile a list of “things that are at every school that could create bumps in the road”…like…At every school you will find:</p>
<p>1) people who drink/party/act stupid more than you might like…this is one that I have repeated over and over again…</p>
<p>2)professors who you can’t understand why they are in their profession…now this one may not be for EVERYWHERE (Harvard people don’t attack me) but if you go into it with this prospective, you won’t be shocked when you come across a really lousy one…</p>
<p>3) rules that you hate/can’t understand/can’t deal with/ really make you angry…</p>
<p>Others can add…gotta go…</p>
<p>It is very difficult to reason with high school seniors about the realities of college life.</p>
<p>It is really something they have to experience themselves, and sometimes they will decide that their first college is not for them and move on.</p>
<p>It is so true that no school is perfect and there will always be bumps in the road but isn’t that true of life too? The problem I think can be that with technology today and kids updating their facebook status hourly, some kids get the impression that everyone else is so happy at their college. So when it’s not perfect at their own school they think they need to make a change. In truth, everyone has good days and bad - it’s the overall picture that counts. Hopefully they give it the time to see that. I know when I was in college, I couldn’t say I really loved it until April of my freshman year. It took that long to settle in and figure it all out. But that being said there were also plenty of days when I was frustrated and stressed out. When I look back I don’t remember those days I just remember the good ones. Again, that’s life isn’t it?</p>
<p>Yeah, I think a big reason for disappointments is just expectations. For some kids, given the nature of 12 YEARS of striving for that college goal, the expectations for life on campus can be really unmeetable. </p>
<p>No matter what, college will be good and bad, and so if a kid can find a school which offers the widest variety of things they are interested in, it’s better, imho. But, you know, even given that, like most adults, these college students will excercise the “right” to change thier minds. I think it’s a pretty healthy thing. It’s the first time in thier life it actually is “up to them” to a reasonable degree. (pun intended.)</p>
<p>Rodney–I’m a little wary of those “there’s X everywhere” statements, as they tend to flatten the particulars. The question might be–how much, or little, X is there? Is X pervasive? Is it taken seriously? Are there different approaches to X? Etc. For different X’s, different answers might be sought. </p>
<p>As an example, sure, there’s drinking/partying at all schools, but (as been discussed to death on these boards, and I dn’t want to derail this thread on the subject), the amount and pervasiveness of drinking culture varies from school to school. Telling a student it’s the same everywhere is doing him/her a disservice. Many students (including my own) have transfered and found a different atmosphere.</p>
<p>Same with unhelpful/unresponsive/uninformed profs. The academic culture of all schools might not be the same. And the oppressiveness of rules might not be the same (neither of my kids ever experienced anything as draconian as some of the ways students at the campus I work at are treated, and we wouldn’t have stood for it.)</p>
<p>I applaud students who make a mature, insight-ful, researched evaluation of their college situation, and if it moves them to transfer or leave college, that’s not a bad thing. OTOH, of course, if decisions are made from a trivial position, then that’s not a good thing.</p>
<p>I think the poster who mentioned that the public version of “why I left X” may not often be the real reason, especially if it’s money. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, the kids I know who transferred tended to do so for a better “fit”–not always academic, but often wanting to move from an urban to a rural environment or being pressured to go to one college by parents or circumstances. </p>
<p>Examples: 1) Smith College to Reed College (twin sister was at Lewis and Clark and generations of the mom’s family went to Smith–lots of pressure to attend); 2) Connecticut College to Tufts–CC too small (felt it was like high school)–also wanted to be closer to home (Boston suburb). 3) Lafayette College to Brown–this boy always wanted to go to Brown. He was wait listed and then told to apply again for spring admission. He applied as suggested and got in to Brown. Took a semester off (parents went through a nasty divorce) and then went to Brown. 4) Tufts to Mt. Holoyoke–says she wanted a much smaller school and more contact with profs. However, her boyfriend was at Hampshire and her mother suspects that’s the real reason. She’s still with the boyfriend (they’re juniors).</p>
<p>“OTOH, of course, if decisions are made from a trivial position, then that’s not a good thing.”</p>
<p>This is true and also not true. Because what may seem trivial to me may be of incredible importance to you. Also, I suppose, in the era of the helicopter parent, some kids do a lot of maturing out of trivialized prioritizing during college instead of high school these days. jmo.</p>
<p>Well, yeah. Bad choice of words. I think rather than “trivial” I should have said “unresearched or unsupported generalization.” For instance, one prof they didn’t like, turned into a generalized “all professors here suck” or something like that.</p>
<p>I totally agree. But, you know, I guess my point is really that we send them off and hope they are mature enough to face the daily ups and downs of college life without putting too much emphasis on any one disappointment or achievement. But, in a lot of ways, some of them just have to go somewhere else. I think growing up is taking a lot more time these days. I can’t decide whether this is ‘good’ or bad. It just seems to be true.</p>
<p>Yeah, i think you are right.</p>
<p>I have said this before here on CC. I think we (parents, teachers, society) tend to really build up the college experience. Especially now that admission is so competitive for many schools, we look at college as the ultimate “time of your life”. The reality is sometimes quite different. I think kids are shocked when they get to college and maybe it isn’t that great. Maybe their intro classes are awful, kids are more concerned about grades than learning or drinking is an issue. The weather isn’t that great, they hate their roommates, etc.
My kid really didn’t like his freshman year at the Ivy school he attends. In fact (this was the topic of another long thread several years ago), he actually “left” in March 2nd semester. I got him turned around and he finished the semester, did transfer applications and re-grouped. He felt that the intellectual level he expected to find was not there. The Greek scene was MUCH bigger than represented, and he had chosen not to participate. His professors were mostly terrible. He had some good transfer choices, including UChicago, where he felt he would get a superior education. Ultimately, he remained at his school, talked his way into some advanced seminars for soph year and changed things for himself. Now, as a senior, he says he thinks the school has served him well in many ways and he doesn’t regret staying. Yu just never know…</p>
<p>Telling a student it’s the same everywhere is doing him/her a disservice. Many students (including my own) have transfered and found a different atmosphere.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is saying that…My point (and maybe Rodney’s point) is that a student needs to keep negatives in perspective - since there will be negatives everywhere. </p>
<p>It’s like choosing a spouse…there are faults that are “deal-breakers,” but since no spouse is perfect, we have to be willing to live with some faults (that aren’t “deal-breakers”)</p>
<p>Certainly, if a college has a fault that is a “deal breaker,” then transfer. But, if the fault is a general one that can be found on virtually every campus (kids drink, I hate my math prof, the school wants to charge me a fee for XXX), then a kid needs to have a “reality check.”</p>
<p>Well, too, once a student transfers, it is like the second or third boyfriend, they no longer believe in the “perfect” school, and they may be willing to give it a little bit of a different chance. I think some kids just can’t get over the heartbreak of finding out that thier perfect school isn’t. I agree, too, with MOWC, we need to help manage our kid’s expectations and assist them in finding peace with this inevitable fact.</p>
<p>And, sometimes a kid needs to leave that school, or even school itself, for a while, just to figure out what they really want. There’s not a lot of time for that before they turn 18, anymore.</p>
<p>I’m sorry but can someone explain what a “Southern Racist Attitude” is? I’ve read this term twice in the thread already and I’d like to hear more about this. Let’s not be shy, we are mostly adults here. I’m white and live near Chicago and have seen racism. What makes Southern Racism? Entlighten us please?</p>