<p>My parents don’t want me to go to an all girls school, which excludes two of my top choices so far.</p>
<p>Strawberry did they say why?</p>
<p>Because I wouldn’t be experiencing the “real world.” (Although no college experience is even the “real world.”)</p>
<p>What a great thread! My DS is nearly done with sophomore year and our “rules” list has started to form on its own as we start college visits. I am curious if any parents felt they needed different lists for different children? Or, did you consciously include rules that applied more to one than another? My DD20 won 't be making this choice soon and is a very different child. </p>
<p>Strawberry, I agree it’s missing some aspects of real world. But you sure can hone skills such as critical thinking and expand personal empowerment when the usual gender roles and reactions are not there. And boys are never far off.</p>
<p>Strawberry, are either of the schools you’re looking at part of consortium of colleges? My D has two all-women’s schools on her list and both allow classes at other co-ed schools with which they have agreements. One even allows an exchange with an all-male school. As one student put it, there are plenty of boys on campus, they just have to GO HOME at night! </p>
<p>Cheeringsection, my suggestions and lines in the sand have been very different for my two, who are twins. Partly it’s related to obvious things like grades and ECs, and where I think they might have a snowball’s chance of being admitted. But it also has to do with maturity levels and personalities. We’ve joked that they’re not really two minutes apart, they’re about three years apart: D is S’s “little sister” in so many senses of the word.<br>
We’re revising our expectations though as she’s been maturing in leaps and bounds lately. Her list is starting to look a lot like his, albeit with the addition of a couple of women’s colleges. For her, I think a women’s college would be awesome, for exactly the reasons mentioned upstream.</p>
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S1 had better stats and was more focused, so I was willing to let him take the lead a little bit more. S2 is more of an athlete with low-average stats, but he wasn’t interested in any schools that offered his sport (too small). I don’t think his choice is the best one for him but it is reasonably priced and he’ll graduate with a reasonable debt load. </p>
<p>Lookingforward and Seamom: I totally agree with both of you. It’s my parents who don’t. The two women’s colleges that I’m looking at are Smith and Bryn Mawr, so both are in a consortium. I even have two friends who go (or are going) to Smith and love it there.</p>
<p>So here is a question for the rest of you: on restrictions, regarding the financial aid offers.</p>
<p>If one of your kids is definitely going in a STEM career and the other definitely not, would you advise the same amount of debt for each kid? My gut feeling is that the non-STEM student should be shooting for a school with very minimal to no debt. Should I make that a restriction, or simply go through the math of a repayment schedule and let the non-STEM student decide?</p>
<p>Regarding the original post, my parents were not as knowledgeable about specific colleges as most on this forum. Their restrictions in college choices generally related to odd beliefs about particular locations, which usually stemmed from historical events many decades ago. For example, I was restricted from applying to Rice because “they are racist.” Based on other comments made, I expect that the the belief was all locations in deep south states are racist, rather than just Rice. I was restricted from applying to Berkeley because of a belief that employers are reluctant to hire Berkeley grads due to a protesting history. Overt the years, I learned that it was a waste of time to attempt to refute such beliefs. While I didn’t agree with the restrictions, I consider myself fortunate to have had few restrictions among my top choices. Some of my high achieving friends in HS faced far more severe limitations. For example, one was required to start at community college (to reduce costs), then transfer to the nearest state school . Another was required to only choose among colleges in our area of the state. </p>
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<p>If you intend to use different debt or cost limits based on major, you may want to re-evaluate your assumptions based on the categories of majors. What if the STEM major is biology, and the non-STEM major is economics, for example?</p>
<p>Also, students may change majors. If a student starts college in whatever major you have a higher debt limit for, and actually needs that much debt, but then changes major to one for which you have a lower debt limit for, would you force him/her to transfer to a lower debt school (which may be difficult in some cases, due to fewer scholarships and less financial aid available for transfers at many schools)?</p>
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<p>It wasn’t because of Rice’s original charter limiting it to admitting only white students? That restriction was removed in the 1960s.</p>
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Quite a few southern colleges first admitted black students in the 60s (University of Mississippi, University of Alabama, Tulane, etc.) I suspect that the greater degree of segregation in southern states in the 60s and general greater degree of historical racism in southern states contributed to the feelings, but I’d be very surprised if they knew that much detail about Rice’s charter or their historical admittance of black students. Instead I’d expect they knew Rice exists and knew it was in Texas, but didn’t know much else about the school. I’d expect most parents of college age children to not know any more detail about Rice than this (a large portion probably know less).</p>
<p>My parents were less involved in the process than most on this forum. They did not suggest any names of colleges and made few comments about my selections, aside from the restrictions discussed earlier and occasionally mentioning something about the college that stuck with them from an article or conversation, such as “Brown is the Ivy League for airheads,” </p>
<p>^^
What seems so weird to me about the “Rice is racist” stance is that it was one of the most diverse campuses we’ve visited. Plus its residential system encourages the creation of bonds between students in all sorts of groups—no separate housing for athletes, no greek system, no honors dorm, pretty much random assignment to residential college. (I think there may be a sorting hat involved at some point, but they wouldn’t admit to it. 
) That was one of the things I loved about that school.</p>
<p>Picapole, I don’t really think it matters what major it is-- go for as little debt as possible. No major is a guarantee against unemployment, and it’s impossible to predict what economic circumstances will prevail in ten, twenty years. Both H and I have degrees which should be fairly “unemployment-proof”. They are not. </p>
<p>My restriction was the opposite of some of yours, in that it was more a requirement than a restriction: I had to apply to the maximum number of schools possible on the CA (I ended up applying to one more). My father’s reason was that I was a weird applicant at the top schools (mediocre GPA but high SAT and strong ECs) so by shotgunning the applications we hoped we could get something. Beyond that, I didn’t apply to either of my parents’ undergraduate alma maters (though I applied to the university where they went to B-School as an effective safety). </p>
<p>The only thing that my father tried to push on me was a school I ended up really liking… and then was rejected from. Oh well. (To be fair to him, he wanted me to apply there ED instead of my absolute top choice SCEA, so… he may have had a point.)</p>
<p>Cogburn, nice post, so true about how being indirect can work. </p>
<p>Only restrictions I had was that he pursued a marketable skill. Students that think of this as choosing a major are looking at it backward. You are choosing a career, then credentialing yourself for that choice. </p>
<p>Think of it this way. You are a bank. A HS grad comes in to borrow money for a business. When you ask for a plan they say they are thinking of something in field x, or field y, but not sure. Maybe art. </p>
<p>No bank gives out money like that, yet millions of parents do. </p>
<p>My kids were nowhere near ready to choose a career at 17, 18 or even 20. But the marketable skills they developed involved thinking, analysis and writing- and empowerment. D1 had one of those majors people like to poke fun at, as never qualifying one for anything. But she’s getting solid interest from tech companies, for work that will require understanding tech detail, as well as thinking and people skills. She took one unrelated lab sci in college, did poorly, maybe one low level math class, to fill a requirement. How is this translation possible? Maybe it’s what she did on campus in addition to classes.</p>
<p>When we looked at colleges, we DID ask ourselves where she could be empowered, as an individual.</p>