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<p>That boggles my mind. S sat in on a class at virtually every school we visited. The only school where he had a problem finding a suitable class to attend was Princeton, and that was because we were there on Friday afternoon.</p>
<p>I’d say the idea that a student wants to sit in on a class coming as a surprise is a major indication that a school is not good.</p>
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<p>I could not agree more. But we have raised a generation of entitled kids, who think that the world owes them The Perfect College Experience, and who go off to college with these rose colored glasses through which everything will be perfect. Then they get there and, guess what? It’s not perfect. Some of the classes are hard, and require them to <gasp> really STUDY. Their roommate is somewhat of a jerk. They’re with a group of strangers, some of whom are also jerks, and it’s hard to make friends. And for the first time in their lives, they’re faced with some of the cold, hard realities of being an adult.</gasp></p>
<p>And so, because they’re entitled to this great experience and they’re not getting it, and they’re not willing to put in the hard work (academic and otherwise) to forge a positive experience, they want to quit.</p>
<p>Certainly this is not the reason for all transfers, but from reading the threads here on CC, it seems to me to explain a lot about a lot of them.</p>
<p>ojnamik, I have not found a single school we have visited (and we are in the 20s now over multiple kids) that have not accommodated the request to sit in on a class (a few times my kids have gone to 2 classes when we have a whole day on campus). Sometimes the school asks us to look at the schedule online and pick something, sometimes they arrange it. But we have never been told no. Certainly many schools offer only the tour and info session as things to sign up for on their website, but most are very agreeable to allowing you to do more if you call or email. One reason my kids like to sit in on classes is a chance to chat with other students before/after the class; they are not as "scripted’ as the tour guides, and that is a good thing. </p>
<p>If a school acted like they couldn’t understand why my kid would want to sit in on a class, I would point out that academics are the primary reason my kids are going to college… if the school can’t bother to let my kid get a sample of that aspect, why would they consider attending there?</p>
<p>Agree that when the school pulls the plug on programs/classes in a key area of academic interest, that is a big problem.</p>
<p>Hi- I’m not Irish. What is a mulligan school ? Never saw this term anywhere else .</p>
<p>[Urban</a> Dictionary: mulligan](<a href=“http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mulligan]Urban”>Urban Dictionary: mulligan)</p>
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<p>You know, fundamentally, I don’t think today’s kids are any different from yesterday’s kids.</p>
<p>I don’t know about yesterday’s kids. I do know something about the kids who entered college in the early 60s (before the craziness started), at least at one school. Of the freshman class I started with at a selective-but-not-top-rank eastern LAC in 1964, I do not remember a single one transferring after first semester freshman year - or any other time, for that matter, save one who decided he wanted to major in a subject area in which the school did not offer advanced courses.</p>
<p>@emeraldkitty: As someone who transferred after his freshman year, I can say that all the research in the world as a high school senior is no substitute for actually attending a college. I sat in on a class, toured the campus and the surrounding area multiple times, and spoke with students who attended, but I got there and realized, well, it wasn’t for me. Sometimes you think you want to be in a city and then realize it’s not for you, or think you want an isolated, rural environment and then realize that you can’t be happy there. Or you realize you want to study a subject in which your current school isn’t very strong. As a high school senior, you can only guess whether you’ll be happy in a particular environment. Once you actually live in it, you might find that your guess is way off.</p>
<p>I’m not saying I support anyone’s knee-jerk reaction to leave when they find that it’s difficult to make friends. But if a person can identify specific deficiencies in his or her experience that wouldn’t be present at a different school, I don’t see what’s wrong with transferring. It worked out very well for me. I’ve never regretted my decision. In fact, I have a few high school friends who transferred and have made a lot of transfer friends at my current school, and it’s worked out for all of them, too.</p>
<p>@Annasdad: I found your post very condescending. Transferring is not “quitting” and in many cases involves switching to a school with a heavier workload. You’re painting with awfully broad strokes.</p>
<p>My D chose her school for a very particular selective program. I do not believe she would have chosen this school (due to ts urban location) if she had planned on studying something else. It was one of those programs that you had to start as a freshman, you can’t transfer into it unless you start all over again as a freshman. Half way through her first semester, she knew that she was not going to pursue this as a career…she was doing well academically but knew deep down she didn’t want to pursue this but she was afraid to admit it to herself and to us that she didn’t like it. Her complained she didn’t like the city, that she didn’t like this and that but at the end of the day it was really about the all-consuming nature of her selected major.</p>
<p>She changed her major and is going to stay at the school. But there were several weeks where she did submit transfer applications and wasn’t sure what she wanted…it was too soon to really have an established friend network or to have really evaluated all her options. Going to school in an urban environment was not what she had originally envisioned but they did such a great job at the accepted students day, it was hard to pass up.</p>
<p>So, kids at 17 have been living pretty much in a bubble…in a HS environment where their path is pretty much laid out for them. When they are encounter the real world, not everyone adjusts easily and they may not even know what really is wrong…my D claimed she didn’t like the city (although now adjusted, she loves it). Others may retreat and not put themselves out there…some are just overwhelmed…and there are alot of missed expectations. It is more work than they ever imagined, it is all fun and parties.</p>
<p>These thoughts are making me more appreciative that my kids were able to take a year off before college.
I know the thought of it is really scary both to students & parents ( & it was to me as well), but for kids who have been pretty much marching along the pathway from K-12, without time to stop & reflect what they are doing there, a break can more than make up for the time " off".</p>
<p>I think it helped that I didn’t care about the name of the college they eventually attended, I didn’t care about what others thought of them taking time off, although I did dearly hope that they would continue to college. I mostly cared that they made a choice they could live with & trust their ability to decide.</p>
<p>I’ve seen kids transfer for a variety of reasons:</p>
<p>1)Several accepted offers to play athletics at a school and then found out they didn’t like the school so much nor were they interested in having the full-time ‘job’ that is college athletics</p>
<p>2) Several couldn’t get into the local university they wanted to go to but were able to get in OOS flagships that were appealing. Once they got their grades up they transferred back in state.</p>
<p>3) One went to our state flagship when all of her friends went to the other state university. She also has the ‘roommate from hell’ scenario. She transferred to the other state university January freshman year (I’ve often wondered if the state flagship was her parent’s alma mater and they pushed her into going there - she wasn’t happy from day one).</p>
<p>4) Several kids were pulled back in state by their parents when their grades weren’t high enough to justify private school or OOS tuition.</p>
<p>And some simply don’t know what they want but are forced to select a college and once they get there they find it’s not a great fit. I don’t think transferring means anything in particular. Every circumstance, every motivation is different. As I often remind my son, life’s not a linear path. There’s always lots of twists and turns, so learn to go with the flow.</p>
<p>I do know something about the kids who entered college in the early 60s (before the craziness started), at least at one school. Of the freshman class I started with at a selective-but-not-top-rank eastern LAC in 1964, I do not remember a single one transferring after first semester freshman year </p>
<p>Well, lets look at that for a moment, shall we?
1] In the 60’s a FAR , FAR smaller % of US HS graduates went on to college. Most were probably the “smartest” kids in their class. Most were men. Less competition = more certainty where a student would be accepted= more likely that the student would feel “comfortable” there. </p>
<p>2] Most who did go on to college applied to only a few nearby colleges, and for the vast majority of students, those were colleges that they were already familiar with. More familiarity = more certainty. </p>
<p>3] In those days, 4 year colleges with on campus housing were much more “hands on” and directly involved in students life outside of the classroom. Dorms had adult TA’s living down the hall, rules of behavior were established and more enforced, and colleges felt an obligation to act as substitute parents. Parents were called if there were problems. It was less “sink or swim on your own kid” then. Legislation passed in the last 10 years [ regarding privacy issues related to health notifications] has had the unintended effect of forcing colleges to push away parents entirely from involvement with their college students and has resulted in excluding parents from hearing about how their children are doing, unless specific waivers are initiated by and approved by the student. </p>
<p>4] College was actually affordable then, especially with low cost student loans. A student was probably not faced with the prospect of suddenly not being able to pay for college if something were to happen . A part time student could afford to work his way through college, and a full time student was probably not putting mom and dad’s retirement hopes in jeopardy by going to college.</p>
<p>The type of student who went to college in the 60’s , and the experiences those students encountered, is not relevant forty years later.</p>
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So do I, but early 70s. In this case the young woman left Swarthmore because it was too small. She spent a year at Harvard and decided it was too impersonal and went back to Swarthmore with a new appreciation for it.</p>
<p>My mother in the 1950s left Bryn Mawr (after one semester) for Radcliffe, and then in the course of following my Dad around also ended up attending Northwestern before finally getting a degree from American.</p>
<p>My son has at least one friend who discovered that small and rural was just too isolating.</p>
<p>I spend a lot of time on the Transfer Students forum because my D1 ended up transferring. I think there are lots of valid reasons for transferring, ranging from finances to social scene to academics. The only thing that really bothers me is when they START posting about transferring in the late spring or summer, BEFORE they even start at their school. This happens most often when they have not gotten into their ‘dream’ school and they are already strategizing about how to ‘transfer up’ as a soph.</p>
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<p>Mine didn’t. Our freshman year RA (I don’t think that was the title, I don’t remember) was a sophomore.</p>
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<p>Maybe where you went. Not at mine! Especially in the fraternity houses, where there was a keg on tap 24/7, in spite of no-alcohol-except-at-chaperoned-parties rules.</p>
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<p>There are limits to what you can learn from research. Sometimes, the reasons why students want to transfer are things they couldn’t have anticipated. Or even if they did anticipate them, they didn’t accurately anticipate their own reaction to them (that big school could turn out to be overwhelming and lonely, or the small school could be an uncomfortable fishbowl with too few academic and extracurricular opportunities).</p>
<p>The things I like and dislike about my job are not things I could have anticipated. (Among other things, my prospective supervisor quit during the three weeks between my interview and when I started.) It can be the same with college.</p>
<p>I guess in my own life I have seen that reversing a decision was a luxury I couldn’t afford and that time spent trying to go backwards was time that I could have been spending making my choice more livable or at least broadening the opportunity for future choices.</p>
<p>I would imagine that the vast majority of kids that transfer view it as a way to move forward in their lives,not backwards.</p>
<p>Im sure they do- as I have said, I have my own way of looking at things.
I still see reversing decisions as a luxury many don’t have however.</p>
<p>It just occurred to me that my S could have decided to transfer when he discovered his major was being phased out (he would graduate but there would be only one class under him, so fewer kids, fewer electives, etc.) </p>
<p>Except after a year of indecision, the powers that be decided to REINSTATE his major. How annoying would that have been…to have transferred out unnecessarily. :/</p>