My daughter can’t make a decision as to where she will go to college this year because she says she hates her options. I see her options as not being her first too choices but nonetheless very good schools that offered lost of scholarship money. She won’t make a decision.
Well, if she doesn’t like her options she can stay home and work a minimum wage job full-time. My guess is that wold make one of the options seem more palatable to her. 
She should pick her best option. If she doesn’t like it she can look to transfer.
That is exactly what we told her. Find a job or start at one of these schools and transfer later. Instead of being a joyous occasion it has turned into a very stressful process.
What schools?
Sorry to hear she is making the experience a lot more miserable than it has to be, @Gigi168. 
Too late now, but if she takes a gap year to work, she should make sure her safeties next year are places she would actually want to attend. Know that if she transfers, all that scholarship money will disappear – transfer students rarely get merit.
This is why people should spend as much time researching and carefully getting to know their safety schools as they do their reach schools
Why did she apply to those schools instead of ones that she actually likes?
Her other options are:
- Start at a community college and transfer to a four year school later.
- Go to work, and apply to a new list of colleges that she actually likes during the next year.
What is really going on?
Is this a case where she’s so disappointed about not getting to go to one of her two top choices so she’s now saying that she hates the other schools? Did she hate these schools before finding out that her top schools were a “no go”?
What were her top two schools and what was the problem? Not accepted? Too expensive??
What are the remaining schools? Did she visit them? What were her thoughts then?
What is her major and career goal?
Indeed. It has been so stressful. We are at the point right now where we said that if she does not make a decision we will make it for her. Not ideal at all, actually far from it. We even started to discuss options for transferring after the first year. This whole thing makes me sad. She worked so hard, and we always stressed the message that if she works hard she will get into a good school. I believe she is more disappointed than anything else.
She did not get into her top choices. This is a student who took all honors, many AP courses, extracurriculars, and works hard. She had her heart set on California-UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC. None accepted her. She is going Into engineering. And your question is valid-did she not like the other schools she applied too besides the Cali schools? I asked her the same question. If you did not like those school why did you apply? And yes as parents we tried to guide, but she thought she knew best. So here we are.
We really do not want to go the community college route. I rather she start at a descent 4 year college and then transfer. I believe that she did apply to schools she liked but did not get in. she also decided to apply to schools where my husband and my self attended, and applied to two “safety schools”. I just believe that she is terribly disappointed in herself that she did not get into her top choices.
I think that unless she plans to attend a local cc, discussion of transferring should be off the table. Intparent is correct that she will be likely to loose her merit aid in the event she decides to leave the school offering it. It’s very hard for someone her age to face this but the fact is, these are her options: fully commit to one of the schools SHE applied to, attend cc and try to transfer to one of her preferred schools, or defer any higher education in favor of taking a full time job beginning this summer. This is what we call adulthood.
It sounds like she has made a decision – she doesn’t intend to accept any of her current choices. That means she has a few options. I’d sit down and review them with her to see which she might want to pursue.
She can accept one of the schools but ask permission to defer for a year so she can work. By fall she may decide that it is the school for her. But if she doesn’t, she can withdraw and apply to other schools. Don’t let her take credit classes or she’ll probably be ineligible for freshmen grants.
She could check the NACAC list this month to see if any schools she likes are still trying to fill seats. Financial aid may be limited, though.
She could a gap year and apply to a new list of schools. Check the financial forum for a list of guaranteed merit schools.
The first thing I’d ask her to do, though, is research the schools that did accept her and see what attracted her to them in the first place. I’d encourage her to make a quick list of pros and cons so if she does decide to decline them all, she has concrete reasons. Those will help her pick better next time. Good luck.
I agree. We did research though-A lot. But she is stubborn and wanted what she wanted. As I told my husband, this should be a valuable lesson. Another issue was that schools would,come recruit and their line is: oh we look at the “whole” student. She has really good grades, got 5’s on her AP classes, and engaged in many extracurricular activities at school that were quite demanding. And it still did not get her in to where she wanted to go. I told her that it’s only college. It’s not the rest of her life, she can transfer, grad school. Etc., and more importantly: it’s what you do with the education you receive and acquire.
Does she not like her other choices due to academics or something that is not really important like location.
That is exactly what we told her. She got good scholarships right now.
Have her take a gap year and work. She’ll need to carefully consider her list this time, starting with her safeties. If she wouldn’t be happy to attend them they shouldn’t be on the list.
Yep. We did say that. If you want to wait a year, you have to go find a job. Period.
If she is going into engineering, the important thing is that the program is ABET accredited. A merit scholarship to an accredited program is a coup, even if it is not at USC, UCLA, or Berkeley. I am sorry she cannot see that now. I suspect that if she is able to make a choice and start in the fall, she will learn to appreciate the good things about the school where she lands.