<p>There was one prestigious LAC my husband and I both didn't like when we visited. We kept our mouths shut and it turned out our son had the exact same reaction. No application there!</p>
<p>Discouraged D from MIT. Thought she would not like it in the end eventhough she is Math/Science type with the appropriate scores. She is too broad based for the place in my opinion.</p>
<p>No CalTech or MIT or Yale. All these colleges send her applications because of her 800 in Math Scores. I told her these colleges are just fishing for applications.</p>
<p>Unfortunately we visited some schools sophomore and early in junior year that turned out to be out of DS's reach. We knew his PSAT and PLAN scores weren't that great, but held out hope that they would improve. While they did improve slightly, we had to be honest with him.</p>
<p>"My husband is a UCLA alum who said there was no chance that our children would be allowed to consider USC. I thought it was funny."</p>
<p>Husband and I are grads of another Pac10 university. We always felt the same way - "University of Spoiled Children". I think I resented how tan and perky their cheerleaders looked at basketball games when we had been slogging through the snow and muck for 4 months.
One D did look at USC but decided not to aply, so we didn't have to follow through.
I do know someone who is such a rabid Texas A&M fan that he refused to pay for his daughter to attend UT. She worked her own way through (took several years) and then moved to the west coast. Doesn't come home much.</p>
<p>dragonmom, we're in the opposite boat. ds1 doesn't want to look at A&M, but I'd like him to apply -- when the time comes -- as a safety. He won't get in to UT via top 10%, and he'd love to go there.</p>
<p>I tried to get my S to add a couple of schools to his list: no dice. He's very independent and very stubborn!</p>
<p>I didn't want her to apply to Reed because of its reputation for general weirdness (the scroungers for example) coupled rampant substance abuse. It's not called Weed College for nothing. Fortunately, she never expressed any interest in it.</p>
<p>She did to my dismay, however, express some interest in Harvey Mudd, which is a fine school, but I just can't abide its absurd name. I'm a big believer in place names. I won't live on a street or in a town that has a goofy name, and Mudd College certainly qualifies. In the end she ran out of energy and never finished her Harvey Mudd app.</p>
<p>One of my sisters-in-law went to a famous LAC, and had her life kind of messed up there -- lots of drugs and bizarre behavior of which my wife (a younger sister) did not approve. She told each of our kids that she knew it was irrational, but she really would have trouble with it if they went there. My daughter looked at it -- lots of friends there -- but said ugh no thanks. Her brother never thought of looking there, although his best friend now goes there.</p>
<p>I think if pushed my wife would have relented. It WAS irrational. My best law school friend went there, too, and he is the diametric opposite of my sister-in-law. The college really had nothing to do with her life.</p>
<p>Another troubled sister-in-law went to a different, less well-known LAC. My wife would have had a problem with it, too, but it never even hit the kids' radar screens.</p>
<p>Years ago, after doing some research I announced to my parents (this was 11th grade) that I planned to apply to Stanford and UCSC. My father said, "That's nice," and left the room. My mother said, "Your father thinks that there's nothing you could get at Stanford or Santa Cruz that you couldn't also get at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton that we're willing to pay for." End of discussion. (NB: My younger sisters went to Stanford and Arizona. My parents changed their minds.)</p>
<p>My son was dead set on applying to a southern LAC because his best friend was looking there. I strongly discourage it as he would be the token Jew if he went there. I said he could apply and visit, but it wasn't a school we were interested in him attending.</p>
<p>Both kids refused to attend our local state college, but we made them apply as a back up. It wasn't the school for either child, but one never knows how admissions will turn out, so they both applied, were accepted, and did not attend!</p>
<p>My son had his dream college chosen sophomore year of high school. So my husband had 2 full years of actively discouraging him and pushing for a bigger, more prestigious university -- ANY bigger more prestigious university. In the end, son applied to his dream school, was accepted in Oct. of his senior year and never even considered any other school. Needless to say, he is very very very happy there, doing extremely well academically and socially and could not have chosen a better college. In fact, we don't expect him to return home again after this first summer. Guess father didn't really know best...</p>
<p>Although now my husband is working on choosing a college for our younger son...</p>
<p>I didn't exactly discourage her about any particular school, but I did make sure she realized that the weather could be COLD and SNOWY much of the year at some of the schools she was considering. She wound up in southeastern VA with probably the best weather of all, for other reasons of course, but with the storms in the Midwest and Great Lakes areas this year, I'm glad I don't have to wonder how she's coping..</p>
<p>I did discourage, but strictly based on personal fit as she has expressed her own preferences & has shown those over the years. ie., if I knew a particular college or campus had Negatives in that department (& she did not have that knowledge) I shared that with her & provided input. (More like, "Just understand that college X is as non-urban as they come." etc.) I did not say she could not apply to a particular college, even one of them that was a financial reach. In general, her list corresponded with my counsel, while being longer than it should have been, frankly (longer than I suggested).</p>
<p>I did discourage my D from applying to a school. It was one of the very few that offered a major that she was interested in. After doing a lot of research and finding how difficult it would be to get a job in that field, she decided it was not the right path for her. The school academics didn't seem like they would challenge her at all. I thought she would be bored and would ultimately want to transfer out.</p>
<p>I feel good for discouraging my son from applying to a particular school. I feel for the right reason. My son always wanted to make it to college on his own and spare his mom and me the expense of college. Or at least as much as possible. I discouraged him from applying to a particular school because I knew he was applying only because it would have been a very inexpensive school that he was guaranteed of getting in and receiving a large amount of merit money and such. i convinced him to apply to what he really wanted and we'll worry about the money after he is accepted. It all worked out in the end. He was accepted to numerous schools and most of them would have been very cheap or free to attend with the merit, scholarships, grants, etc... that were available. So, he's happy with the choices and that's what matters. </p>
<p>I definitely feel that a more expensive or prestigious school isn't necessarily a BETTER school. I.e. Just because it's Harvard, yale, Brown, Princeton, etc... doesn't make it a better school. It COULD be a better school depending on the degree you are looking for, but not just because it's an expensive ivy league. Same goes with inexpensive schools. While the cheapest college and degree is better than none at all, it's important that the school accomplish what the student's goals are. Education, challenges, social environment, and all the other attributes that make a school desirable to that particular student.</p>
<p>I did actively discourage an application to the University of Michigan. Their OOS tuition is outrageous, and there is very little merit money to be had.
It went more the other way, though -- she took a bunch of LACs off her list, like St. Olaf, Lawrence, Augustana, Illinois Wesleyan -- and I kept pushing for apps. Never happened.</p>
<p>No, I didn't discourage him, but there was one school that I did not hound him about getting the application in on time. For some of the other schools, I did remind him to finish the apps.</p>
<p>I only discouraged him from listening to his mom and me too much.</p>
<p>I said I wouldn't pay for NYU or Tulane. I think both are excellent universities and good fits for many kids. My son would have been out of control at either one and I wasn't about to pay for him to live in New York City.
I would not have paid for a fundamentalist Christian school, but that was never an issue.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to schools she wanted, but I did choose the school at the end because by then she's had it with the process. She was very relieved that we made the decision for her. My husband and I did differ in our opinion, but did agree at the end. A year later, she couldn't be happier. On the other hand, I think she could have been happy at other schools too.</p>