<p>This is a simplification of the dynamic but you get the picture</p>
<p>Me: Apply wherever you want to (after research and refining of the list)</p>
<p>historygirls: we don't want to go out of the west/southwest</p>
<p>Me: Cool</p>
<p>Dad: Why leave our home state? You can get whatever you want here? </p>
<p>He would never go to the extreme and put up a stink about them going to an oos school. He wants them to make their own decisions. I am just curious if other families have a similar divergence of thoughts re-college selection.</p>
<p>:-) you bring up an interesting point about where the parents POV comes from.</p>
<p>We both went away to school about 4 hours; him north, me south
He has a closer relationship w/ his parents than I do
I only came home on breaks
He came home whenever he felt like it which was rare but he was glad to have the option.</p>
<p>My dad was exactly like that. In retrospect, it was a good thing, I ended up going to an in-state school because of cost, and ended up getting somewhat homesick so it was really nice to be able to come home every once in a while. I really don't think 18 year olds should be living across the country from home their first year in college....i mean, its just a HUGE transition. i know a ton of kids who were really, really homesick for a while, and even just being in a similar environment from home (aka not going from CA to NYC) can be comforting. </p>
<p>As far as an in-state school goes, i think that is far less important than distance, as long as finances aren't going to be a problem. I know my dad kept telling me to stay in-state because he knew that we wouldn't be able to afford private, or get good financial aid. if this is the case, then telling them to try to stay in state is being realistic...i applied to private schools anyways, and was hugely disappointed when i couldn't afford to go there. </p>
<p>ok so i went on a tangent there for a while, but basically...i'd definitely tell your kids that its fine to apply where they want, but if your husband has a legitimate reason for wanting them to stay in-state, you should definitely have his discuss his concerns with them.</p>
<p>My D absolutely didn't want to go to school instate as we live in one of the two major college towns and the other is less than an hour away. So we spent a lot of time discussing the economics (COA, FA and merit aid) of private vs. in state vs. OOS tuition. What it came down to was that she would apply to OOS publics, but only to ones where there was a good chance that merit scholarships would bring down the costs to about in state level. The in state schools stayed on the table until the OOS options came through with the scholarship money.</p>
<p>OTOH, it should depend on the student. D went away across country and loved it and still does. Could never see herself in any of the schools in our area. Now, she is overseas doing Study Abroad! Talk about a distance. Has she ever been homesick? Just a bit once or twice, and a phone call took care of it. Fit is important, as well. For D, her fit was away from home, and it worked for her. Her friends almost all went to schools within a 4 hour drive, and some were homesick, some were not. Her friend who went cross country was not. There are no generalizations. For some kids it is wonderful, for others, not. I am so happy that she went away to college. She willaalways remember those years fondly, including her freshman year.</p>
<p>Most kids seem happier closer to home. It seems half the Seattle kids who start OOS end up coming back in a year or two. I really think many kids are less adventurous today and really tied to their friends. I blame cell phones and texting.</p>
<p>Most kids go to school within a couple of hours drive of home. I suspect that this is, however, a smaller proportion of students who did this when many of us were young.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I went to college in an adjacent state that was a 2 1/2 hour drive from home. It was big culture shock. I went from a small Upstate NY town to Cambridge, Mass. I'd never used a subway before. I was very used to small town friendliness, and Cambridge was very different. I had to adapt to many new things. One doesn't have to go thousands of miles from home to have an adventurous college experience.</p>
<p>H judges a school by its football conference and the competitiveness of its sports teams--basketball being important as well as football. I have had trouble convincing him that any school whose team he hasn't watched on ESPN might be worth considering. S2 pretty much shares his value system, so that is our defining search criteria--schools ranked in order of preference by the profile of their athletic teams. Since S2 has very ordinary GPA/SAT, my job is to find schools that he might be able to get accepted to that fit aforesaid criteria.</p>
<p>barrons, that was an interesting comment on kids being more closely tied to hs friends than before and less adventurous. My two are each other's best friend so it will be interesting to see if they end up separating for college. They don't lack adventurous spirit though. They both much more comfortable on a high elements ropes course than a dance floor. I wonder if that will extend to leaving our home state for college.</p>
<p>I am glad the thread has kind of gotten off-track bit I am still curious how many of you experienced a variance in the comfort-level of parents when it came to distance & your kids going off to school.</p>
<p>LOL cross posted w/ theAnalyst. My H found new respect for both the far away schools after the football team at one won the ESPN award for most game changing play in the NCAA, and the other made the front page of SI after they won the NAIA title for the fifth time in 6 years</p>
<p>My husband and his family want in-state. I went OOS for college so I thought it might help DD grow up if she does not have easy accesss to home. However, I was miserable, got depressed about the weather. DD's preference is in-state. Lately, I been thinking a lot about "carbon footprint" of flying back/forth, so I'm warming up to school in-state.</p>
<p>I think the culture/philosophy/preference of going to college in your home state varies widely from state to state as well as school to school. It is much more common in Texas and California than in many other states, and more common in public schools than private.</p>
<p>At the private school in Missouri where DS#1 graduated from, more than 90% of his classmates went out-of-state for their college education. And that figure includes the 3 or 4 who transferred after freshman year to a school in Missouri.</p>
<p>As much as we miss DS#1 (who is 1000+miles away from home) we are very proud of his independence and happy that he has broaden his horizons by going to school with people from all over the world.</p>
<p>My parents knew nothing and didn't have so much as a finger in my college selection. I was (am) hyper-conscious of the financial issue, so I did all that research on my own as well. Most of the schools I applied to ended up being in-state, with a handful of schools <1000 miles away (and nothing in between!).</p>
<p>It wasn't until after I had been in college for two years, in state, that my mother expressed to me that she was glad I was close enough to come home every once in a while (I go to school in NorCal, they live in SoCal). </p>
<p>My mom and dad both finished high school and dabbled in college, and they both only barely got through the former. The "growing up" thing is incidental, and we've moved so much (I calculated 21 different houses since I was born; no, it wasn't military or fugitive related) that we function on a different plane than most families.</p>
<p>My boyfriend's younger sister is a junior, and there are a lot of family issues determining her need to stay both in state and fairly local (within a day's drive). There's no fight here, though, because she's just as keen on staying close as they are on having her there.</p>
<p>H and I both attended instate and told our kids that they were free to choose from any instate public they liked or anywhere else that they could get a scholarship to make the cost about the same. That is what we can afford.</p>
<p>S1 got a scholarship that he literally could have used to go to sch. anywhere in the country but chose to use it at big state u. 2.5 hours from home. He's been very happy there and rarely comes home. Some of his best friends from home are there too, so why come home??? LOL, never a minute of homesickness, maybe because he knew he could come any time he wanted to (just never has wanted to).</p>
<p>S1 said he saw no point in going somewhere far away just to be going when he really liked our instate sch.</p>
<p>S2 will be attending an instate public 4 hours from home next year. He doesn't have the grades to qualify for scholarships so oos was not an option.
After visiting the sch., he is very excited about attending there. It's completely on the other side of our state and with a 4 hour drive,might as well be oos (there are lots of out of state schools much closer to us,lol)</p>
<p>Our high sch. is a large (3000 kids) suburban public. The vast majority stay instate for college. Of the top 10 academic students in S1's class only one went oos and she had an athletic scolarship.</p>
<p>I am pleased that my kids wanted to go to school where they did/do.</p>
<p>I am originally from Mass, so I fully understand the appeal of being in Boston...not to mention that even though it is OOS for us, we have several relatives within an hours drive.</p>
<p>I do know a lot of parents in our area that place a limit on how far their kids can go away , and also those who will only let their kids apply to state schools.
I guess it is just a comfort level. I must admit that I hate the idea of my D going to LA, which is inevitable for her major and career goals.
My husband thinks that going to a warm climate is a draw when it comes to where to apply.
I have a couple of friends whose kids thought the same and are bored and unchallenged in their Fla schools. I guess the beach yr round isn't as fun as it seemd to be when they commited.</p>
<p>In our family, we let the children choose where they wanted to go, no restrictions. Our D chose a private LAC in state, but left for a job 3000 miles away after graduation. Our S chose an Ivy, but now has made it back in state after 6 years in the east coast.</p>
<p>Both were admitted into our state's flagship U.</p>
<p>No one can predict the future, so having a huge argument about staying close or OOS is really pointless.</p>