I don’t think my wife and I will have a problem with S16’s decision when it comes next year. My in laws, however, seem a little taken aback that he’s considering Ole Miss. He’s a prototypical bright slacker, with D’s on the transcript but an overall decent GPA and stellar test scores. That may turn out to be his best option.
I think the concept of fit is a good way to break the tie among options of similar quality. “Fit,” meaning how comfortable and happy I feel at the thought of attending a particular school based on what I see of it, should not hold too much sway because it is pretty unreliable. After all, your child’s assessment of fit is, by necessity, usually formed before he has actually lived on the campus for more than a weekend and before he has taken classes there. Secondly, the student’s understanding of what he wants in a college is at best immature. It’s almost like asking a 3 year old, “Which do you like better: cavier or escargot?” The average youngster would have had no experience with either. Neither can an 18 year old kid be 100% sure what he wants in a college when has he never attended one.
One of the criteria D used to eliminate schools from her top 5 list ended up being completely off base with regard to how important it was going to be in her life. Another criterion seemed reasonable enough, but even though her school of choice met the requirement at the time of her decision, two years later it no longer fit due to some administrative changes. So again, that sort of decision-making was unhelpful. It’s a good thing her schools were in the same band of quality, because it would have been awful to turn down a far better school only to find out that what she liked better in the lower-ranked school wasn’t important after all, or wasn’t even accurate.
A little late to this discussion, but I don’t really see the issue. Amherst, Northwestern and Michigan State are three very different schools. They are also all very good schools. If the costs are manageable for each, and there are no extenuating factors (like the child needing to be near a family member with terminal cancer or whatever), what more is there to discuss? A student who is capable of being admitted to all three of these schools is more than capable of succeeding at any of them.
Look, I get that people visualize where their kids will be when they leave the nest–often, this picture has been developing in their minds for years. And it’s natural to think “my kid is the best so I want him/her to be at the ‘best’ college he/she can get into.” But in the end it’s not about us. It’s about them. If parents want to have a happy long-term relationship with their adult children, they’d be wise to realize that sooner rather than later.
countingdown,
i feel like you. when faced with a choice of SCS (CMU), Caltech, MIT, and UF (for free), would i encourage UF?
What makes you so sure that the parent has an even better idea than the kid? Really, parents are often as clueless as the 18 year olds IME.
(I say this from the incredibly biased place of growing up around adults who overwhlemingly did not go to college but their kids did. And, since most people in this country still go to local, public colleges- most parents don’t have experience with a variety of universities either.)
Btw, I’m quite a bit older than 3 I still think both caviar and escargot are disgusting. blech
The “thank you for telling us you’re not coming” email from Northwestern just hit my inbox. I also see that Notre Dame and Stanford aren’t going to their wait lists this year. Time to find the Morrissey station on Spotify.
@greeninohio, when I have felt floored and flummoxed in this process, I keep thinking of a year from now, when all of these doubts we parents are experiencing will be gone and we will feel confident our kids are in the right place. It will happen!
Well, romani, parents are hopefully not overly swayed by better climbing walls, cool relaxation pods in the library, which fast food restaurants are near campus, or whether there’s a dorm that takes care of seeing eye puppies or not. Having attended many an information session so far, I have yet to hear a single student ask a question about the campus career center. But you’d better believe the parents do!
"we’d want to hear a really good, compelling reason
Surely the time to hear this is when making up the application list, no?"
Well, sure, which I said umpteen posts ago!
The kids in the info sessions I attended asked better questions than the parents. “How many endowed positions?” “Student-teacher ration in X college?” “Where do I go if I am feeling overwhelmed?” etc.
I’m OK with giving kids credit for knowing more than we think. 
^^ That’s how I saw it too @sally305. The three top choices were all so different with their good points and bad points. It’s not like the range was so out of whack. It is totally reasonable for @greeninohio to be disappointed that her son’s choice did not align with her own vicarious choice, but I still say she can be proud (and she is) of his choice. The disappointment may stem from the child choosing something other than what the parent envisioned.
@romanigypsyeyes - parents who are limited to the ancient eight and change are also clueless when it comes to other colleges and universities. I would say this past college application season was a big eye opener for my siblings who have only dealt with Ivies, MIT, Stanford and UVa. They really couldn’t conceive of schools beyond that - they wanted to but they couldn’t. It was kind of funny to watch.
The only time my daughter was actually engaged in a college visit is when she went on one without me or her dad while she was traveling with another family. It was too late to sign up for an organized tour/info session, so she gathered information all by herself from the admissions office, career center, and the department that has her probable major. In just a few short months, she has been transformed from a kid who has not been intellectually engaged in high school into one who is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to “learn about everything” in college. She didn’t choose the school we would have chosen for her, but she is owning her choice and ready to make the most of it.
@helimom74. I agree. The most frequent parent question I heard was, “Is there a laundry service?” As if THAT would be a deal breaker in selecting a college???
Amen. Give the kids the reins. They are moving and must move beyond our sphere of doing for them.
This was hard for me to accept, but wiser parents clued me in. I am thankful.
Well, parents ask really dumb questions too, but hopefully not CC parents! Surely our 50+ years of life give us some wisdom and perspective that our children lack, no matter how smart they are.
Yep! The hard part, though, is accepting our kids may very well hear our wisdom and then do something we may not be thrilled over. We have to let them go through it. (I repeat this to myself many times a day, sometimes!)
I want to be clear I’m not saying kids can’t or don’t have insight. But I also think it’s ok to “kick the tires” in the decision-making.
There was a particular LAC I soooooo wanted S to like. I thought it was up his alley completely. We visited, he was “eh.” I actually sent him back again with his grandfather to give it another shot. He said - no, it’s just not for me. I had to respect that. I didn’t want him to apply to NU because I wanted him to find his own path and not follow in mom/dad footsteps and he insisted and he was 100% right and it turned out better thsn we all could have dreamed. I am not an autocrat or dictator and my kids did the majors, activities, etc they wanted to without a peep from us. In this hypothetical, I might “let” my kid go to MSU but reserve the right to give him good-natured grief over it if I thought the reason was superficial.
My H came from a family where his mother drove the bus in terms of where to apply to college-public schools were not her thing, even though she went to one herself. Her father was a physician, she was educated herself, and I think she did like the idea of her kids going to fancy private schools. Ivy League was the thing. Oldest kid went to HYP school, H was accepted to two Ivy League schools but went to a different private ( one of the HYP schools was ruled out because H just didn’t want to go to school with his brother). He has said more than once that he could have done just as well in life at a place like Penn State and also probably would have had more fun! It is not unusual for a parent to have a twinge of disappointment when the kid doesn’t pick the most elite school. When we went through husband’s dad’s things when he died in his 80’s , one of the things he had saved was the acceptance letter from the HYP school that H had declined. H has no long term resentment of his mother (who was a wonderful woman) being so involved in his college search but I think it did color our thinking in trying to take a more balanced approach to college with our own children, including not immediately dismissing some schools simply because they were not “elite” enough.
And I do agree that parents can be as clueless as their kids about all of this and most parents do usually have their own agenda. Everybody does , really.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Referencing some threads on here, if 50+ years of wisdom tells you to force your pre-teen into activities they don’t care about for a “chance” at a school with a less than 10% admit rate already and the kid pushes back- I’m siding with the pre-teen’s “wisdom” ;).
I learned a great deal in this process, and I will be able to apply much of it to 2018 son’s college search. Warts and all, I am thankful.