My Daughter was all ready to go to South Carolina, then got cold feet, but can’t tell us why. She had a great visit there last week, was all set to commit, then woke up in the middle of the night and told me she doesn’t want to go there. I think she may be worried about the southern culture (no offense to anyone, but we are from the north and are Jewish). Can anyone speak about the Florida State and Arizona?
First you have to determine if it’s the distance that is worrying her. If so, then none of those would work.
Is she the anxious type, but then settles down? Or might she actually have an anxiety attack/depression if she was too far away?
As for being Jewish, do each of those schools have an active Hillel? How many members?
Every school she applied to is far away. She wants to be in a warmer climate, and have the adventure of being far away. She is anxious about the transition, and goes to a therapist. She has always been very socially successful in our small town, and I think worries about being a northerner at SC, although we know plenty of kids in our area who go there. I am wondering if Florida State has the same southern feel.
She has no interest at all in Hillel. She is gloating to younger sibling that she will not have to go to temple for the holidays any more! I think its more of a culture thing.
Florida State is part of an uncomfortable reminder of southern history. Once upon a time, Florida State and nearby Florida A&M were racially segregated universities. They are not now, but Florida State is still more white than Florida’s population, while Florida A&M is still mostly black. They have a joint engineering division that is an arbitrage situation (Florida A&M is less expensive and offers better scholarships, but most engineering enrollment comes from Florida State for some reason).
I attended a different Southern state school many years ago and it was open and friendly to OOS students from North and I expect more so these days. We visited U of AZ and live in AZ now and love it but I can’t really speak to the school first hand.
As someone who lives in Tallahassee and taught at FSU for 4 years, I can’t say what it’s like to be a student there (unless you took my course!). FSU, like UF and SC and other major colleges, has a preppy core culture, a lot focused on athletics, etc. But it’s a diverse student body – socially, culturally. It’s a college that when I was there a lot of students transferred into after community college. As a dean explained to me those students often did better than the ones who came in as freshmen, because they had had to work harder to get to FSU. So you have a student body from varied backgrounds, with many focused on the learning rather than the social and playing side of college. (This is true of many state universities, of course.)
FSU has a very strong arts program, including theater and film. Other facilities are excellent.
We liked living in in Tallahassee in part b/c we could and did get down to the coast, to wildlife refuges, to tooling along the canopied highways.
My DD from the norheast also wanted a warmer climate amongst other things. University of South Carolina was her second choice school at the end of the process.
Is it possible she is having cold feet about going far from home?
I had this thought as well. It’s hard to tell. She is famously self sufficient and private. I did persuade her to go to a therapist for her anxiety. It’s hard to tell if the anxiety is muddling the decision, or the decision is causing the anxiety.
The problem is, all of the schools she applied to are at least an 8 hour drive, so she can’t choose a closer one.
A big majority of the students at FSU are from South Florida. South Florida is definitely not the “south”. The top four counties in Florida that send students to FSU are Leon (where FSU is located) , Broward (Ft. Lauderdale), Palm Beach (West Palm) and Miami-Dade. Tallahassee is located in the panhandle but is nothing like the rest of the area. It’s progressive and liberal, always goes blue. This is the only place in North Florida I would live. There are white, Asian, black, Hispanic, middle eastern students - you name it I’ve seen them. (Live in Tallahassee and have/had children that attend FSU.). Being Jewish and from the North will cause no difficulties at all for your daughter.
As for the weather, yes it is definitely warmer than up north but it is not the tropical Florida weather that many people envision. It does on occasion get below freezing in the winter.
(I don’t know where ucbalumnus gets his/her info but about 26% of the student body at FSU is black, whereas the state population is about 16%. Yes FAMU, the other university in Tallahassee is mostly all black but then it’s an HCBU so that is kind of expected. FSU is no more of “an uncomfortable reminder of southern history” than anywhere else.)
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Florida+state&s=all&id=134097#enrolmt says that Florida State is 64% white, 8% black, and 19% Latino.
The uncomfortable reminder is that Florida A&M (like other HBCUs) exists because black students were not allowed to attend Florida State’s predecessor at the time.
Are they big flagships that actually represent the racial make up of their states?
There are all sorts of uncomfortable reminders. An acquaintance at Berkeley got his office bombed back before we called that sort of thing terrorism. 30 years ago, I guess let it go, or nurse a prejudice. (let it go). similar thing here…
Visit. See. Decide.
DD is a CA girl, who loves U of A. Laid back, friendly, welcoming. Her sorority actively celebrates every Jewish and Christian religious holiday. What major is your daughter looking for? I have some posts on classes, if u search my posts.
About 10% of FSU undergraduates are Jewish. As others have said, most of the students come from central and south Florida, which aren’t really viewed as “southern”.
http://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/florida-state-university
Er…not correct. About 8% is black, another 3% is “two or more races”, while about 19% is Hispanic. It has a fairly diverse population, based on race and social economics (24% of the students are awarded Pell Grants). while UCB is right that the school is more "white’ (64%) than the state (55%), that’s not unexpected, based on FSU’s academic rigor.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=FL&ct=1&ic=1&id=134097
While UofSC will feel more “southern” than FSU, almost 50% of the incoming freshman at UofSC will be OOS. Only about 2% of the undergraduates are Jewish, but it does have a Hillel.
Thank you everyone, especially physicsfreak and Maystarmom for the information on the the colleges.
D is planning to study exercise science/ kinesiology depending on what major is available at whichever U she ends up at.
Hillel at the University of Arizona: http://arizona.hillel.org/home/aboutus/FAQ.aspx
Is your DD thinking of a PhD in PT eventually? I’d have her look at the classes in her intended major.
Lots of kids from SE FL attend FSU. As stated, they are not very southern.
I haven’t been to Columbia for too many years to comment. I know they have a full PT program. THumper would be a good source of info, as she has been there in last 10 years.
My mistake, I pulled the stats from here:
http://www.ir.fsu.edu/Factbooks/2015-16/Students.pdf
but didn’t read it thoroughly - black students make up 26% of the minority students, most of them being hispanic.
I’m not sure what difference it makes though. Does UF have a higher percentage of black students? Both schools pull from the same population. Is the underepresentation only an FSU concern or is it a higher education concern overall? And I still don’t understand how being in the same town as an HCBU makes FSU an “uncomfortable reminder”. That would be an issue for any university located near an HCBU anywhere in the US. At the same time that FSU was a white only school it was also women only. UF (I believe) was the men’s college. Does that make UF an unfortunate reminder of the inequality of the sexes?
None of that matters to the OP though. I wish your daughter good luck with her choice! I have over five years experience as an FSU parent and only have good things to say about the school and the area. There are a lot of very educated people in this town what with the colleges (there’s a highly ranked community college here also) and the state government. Every day I see license plates from all over the U.S. I can’t speak to South Carolina but I have some experience at Arizona and it seemed like a very tolerant, welcoming environment also. I don’t know which is worse in the summer though - the 100 degrees with almost 100% humidity in Tallahassee or the 115 degree “dry” heat in Tucson!
A number of Jewish kids from Atlanta go to South Carolina.
My daughter is currently looking at the some of the same schools your daughter is looking at. She is a rising senior so she still has plenty of time to decide. We are Jewish as well and we live in Atlanta. I am very familiar with all these schools including Arizona. as I myself attended ASU.
We are not religious and we like diversity. Many already pointed out many of the facts for all the schools. FSU has the largest Jewish population of the three and South Carolina has the least.
If being around other Jewish students is important to her either from a cultural point of view or a religious point of view, I would say FSU would be the best fit due the fact that she will not have to go out of her way to meet similar students, It has somewhat of a Southern feel to it, but I would not say it is your typical “southern school” The majority of the kids are from Florida with some OOS from Georgia and the NE.
Arizona has a large Jewish student body as well with lots of kids from all all over including California, the Midwest, and some from the NE. It is a much different feel to the other two in every way, Not necessarily negative. Just more of a West Coast school.
We are lucky enough to have lived in FLorida when my kids were born and we did the Florida Pre Paid Plan. I mentioned in my first paragraph that my daughter is looking at some of these schools as well. We are “making” her apply to FSU and UF because of this incredible benefit. The bad news for us is that she has ZERO interest in going to any of the Florida schools. However, she wants to look at South Carolina. She is interested in some schools in the Midwest. Just finished touring OSU, Miami, Indiana, and Mizzou .I have a feeling that by the end of this process, FSU, UF, South Carolina, and Mizzou would be the ones because financials could be the deciding factor.
Keep in mind that Tallahassee is not a very easy place to get into as far airlines, but it does offer the cheapest OOS tuition by a lot… Something to keep in mind