<p>I am wondering if my daughter will ever fall in love with a campus. We have visited several campus...large and small. I fell in love with my college on the tour. My daughter seems more practical than me. She is really focused on dorms and majors. She is also worried about getting a job right out of college. She is worried about us spending all that money and her not finding work. Love her for being a realist but wish she could find the joy of going to college too.
Am I alone in this?</p>
<p>Some kids are very much a “bloom where planted” type. When I was looking at schools, I never really fell in love with any particular school, and I probably could have been successful at whichever school I went too. But once I started school, I grew attached to it, and I was glad I went there. It can be difficult to really get to know a school from one visit, but as long as it has what your daughter is interested in (majors or programs she would like to pursue, networking or internship opportunities for career development, etc), your daughter may very well fall in love with her school while she is attending it. Or she may never really LOVE her school, but instead find a group of friends she loves or a professor or mentor who really changes her mindset. There are many ways to find joy in going to college, and she may not find that from the campus itself but from the people or programs that she hasn’t had a chance to experience yet.</p>
<p>Consider yourself lucky she has not fallen in love with a campus…what if she doesn’t get in? Or doesn’t get enough financial aid? Or it isn’t strong in her major? And remember, love doesn’t have to be “love at first sight”. My D was accepted to all 8 colleges where she applied last year, including 3 reaches. When she went back for accepted student days, to her surprise she found that the one she would have ranked #3 of those reaches was her favorite. When she spent more time with the students there and got a taste of classes and campus activities over a 24 hour period, she was sure it was the right fit for her. Now she is excited about going this fall – but this wasn’t a school that got her heart racing the first time she visited campus. </p>
<p>You should be glad your D is practical! Way, way too many students (and parents) aren’t during the college search. I predict she will find “her match” and be happy, but it is nothing to worry about if she waits until she had made her selection to really give her heart to the school.</p>
<p>My son picked his college more with his head than his heart. It sounds like your daughter is doing the same.</p>
<p>He’s in his fourth year of a five year program, has great friends, enjoys his major and is looking forward to life after college as well. I don’t know that he’d ever say he loves his college but the whole experience has been a success and we cannot ask for more than that.</p>
<p>Better to have an application list with several colleges that she likes (including the safeties), than for her to fall in love with one college that will result in a heartbreaking meltdown if she is not admitted or given enough financial aid to attend.</p>
<p>Visits might give a lot of superficial impressions, but won’t necessarily tell the student some of the really important things like academic offerings and affordability.</p>
<p>Our son is about to graduate from college, and for him, college was never the “joyous” experience it was for me. It took me a couple of years to admit it, but it truly is a different world now and today’s students aren’t afforded the luxury of being carefree like I was. Because of technology, they’re less social than we were; because of the economy, they’re more focused and practical. Because of the job market, they work as hard as they can to stay on top of academics and internships. I think college just wasn’t the “time of his life” like it was for me. Doesn’t make it wrong, just different.</p>
<p>Yes, my daughter fell in love with a college. She knew she wanted a big, urban campus with a ton of stuff going on. It helped that the school offered exactly what she wanted academically, too. IMHO, she did a really good job of keeping an open mind throughout the application/acceptance process, even after she got into Dream U. She waited 2 weeks after getting in to accept her spot there. But to be fair, she’s the kind of kid who would have been happy at most any school.</p>
<p>My grad didn’t get into her dream school so she ended up settling for her reach school. I don’t think the first year is going to be a love story. She will be in a room with 3 girls and from the profile review they seem to be very opposite from her. Having said that, she’s being a trooper about it and has made new friends on FB.</p>
<p>I fell in love with my school before I ever saw it. I don’t think it would have made much difference what it looked like or how the visit went, I knew I wanted to go there. I don’t think not falling in love with a college necessarily means “settling,” though-- I think there is something in between there where you just have a practical, happy kid who is probably going to enjoy college more than somebody who goes in with unrealistically high expectations-- like most of the rest of us. It sounds like she will be happy wherever she goes. That is a good thing.</p>
<p>In hindsight, I wish I’d settled. And I mean really settled, I wish I’d gone to the school that at the time I really desperately did not want to go to. For practical reasons, that was where I should have gone, but I was too emotional to see that.</p>
<p>Both of our kids liked EVERY college to which they applied.</p>
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<p>That is a pretty powerful statement, Emaheevul07. OP, be careful what you wish for… your D is on the right track now to look at this objectively vs. emotionally.</p>
<p>There is a big gap between fall in love and just settle. Your child should like all the schools they apply to and feel they would have a positive experience at any of them. Also, over the course of the process, feelings evolve and change, as the kids mature and learn more. The college they may like today could be the one they love in May.</p>
<p>My older son visited four colleges junior year, said they were all fine, and didn’t want to visit any more colleges. So we didn’t, he applied to colleges that were strong academically and good in computer science. He didn’t get into what he thought was his first choice, so I dragged him to visit the colleges he did get into. I think we both fell in love with the college he chose at that visit (Carnegie Mellon.)</p>
<p>Younger son made a real effort not to fall in love with a college, but he really liked every college he applied to. It made the decision in April really difficult, but he did figure it out eventually! (With hours to spare even!)</p>
<p>I clearly remember the lightning-bolt-moment (in 1977, no less!) when I first set foot on my college campus. D never had that experience. She liked all the schools to which she applied (some more than others, but all had more in common than not), but she didn’t fall in love with any of them. This was a relief when the $ offers came in, because she chose the highest one. Boy, were we happy to hear her say during her first semester that she loved it there and couldn’t imagine being anywhere else!</p>
<p>For DS this past year, I was always stressing how important it was to NOT fall in love with any one school in particular during the application process. Fortunately, DS doesn’t run much on emotions alone, so even though he ended up with a favorite, he knew he’d be just as fine at a number of the other schools on the list. Once we narrowed it down to the final four and did the round of accepted student days, he DID fall in love with one of them and hence his final choice ended up being very easy for him. (As an aside, it was not the school he had been favoring all year.)</p>
<p>A comment I’ve heard is that by November of their freshmen year most kids are at their “favorite” school.</p>
<p>Tell her now is not the time to worry, she has a few years. She can make herself more employable by finding internships and research experiences summers.</p>
<p>Picking a school that is good across the board is academics is wise because students often change majors. I wouldn’t be too fixated on one department. Of course there are some types that know right away they want CS for instance. The dorms either seems like that could be way down the list.</p>
<p>Mine chose hers sight unseen. She wasn’t vocal about the school before she got in. It was hoped for but unexpected.</p>
<p>Mathmom, seems it was for the best he didn’t get in the first choice, yes? You can hardly do better than CM for CS.</p>
<p>Both of mine got over visit-induced infatuations to attend colleges that were better suited to their needs and preferences.</p>
<p>My son’s “crush” was the University of Delaware, which impressed him greatly when he visited it, but he chose the University of Maryland instead after being accepted to both universities because Maryland had a better program in his major. (Yes, he knew what he planned to major in and never deviated from that plan. This seems common among computer science majors.)</p>
<p>My daughter’s “crush” was Columbia, but after giving it some thought, she didn’t even apply because she didn’t like its Core Curriculum. She ended up at Cornell, which has a conventional curriculum. </p>
<p>Such practical young people. I don’t know where they got their common sense. Surely not from me, although I definitely approve.</p>
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<p>Me too, except that it was 1971. But that school waitlisted me. I went somewhere else, and it turned out fine.</p>
<p>My S applied to a state school that I considered a safety (and it was both for acceptance and affordability). He ended up getting into a much higher ranked reach school–if you go strictly by rankings and was even offered a merit scholarship. He also had a very nice full tuition scholarship to an out of state private that is about the same level as the safety and a half-tuition to a different state school about the same level as the safety (safety gave honors but no scholarship). Lo and behold, he chose the safety and is LOVING it and doing fabulously well. I don’t think he would have been as happy at the reach, but I sure did wish at the time he had chosen the other state school. It was his choice, though, and it turned out great!</p>
<p>Brown, true, but I’m sure he’d have been happy at MIT too and it would have been an easier drive for us. That said there are things about CMU, and in particular having a stand alone school for computer science that turned out to be big pluses. The campus culture (or at least his piece of it) was an extraordinarily good fit.</p>