@OFF2COLLEGE2 OMG Roger Williams is breathtaking. I just love the water. They all seem to find their place!
Ah OK @OFF2COLLEGE2 I understand! I just wanted to make sure we werenāt missing out on anythingā¦our planning for this is very last minute so I wouldnāt be surprised if I had missed something! Hope it is helpful and yes we will report back.
@PhillyinMD The schools my son is looking at are similar to yours, except for Towson. Can you share what you and your kid liked about it?
@OFF2COLLEGE2 What a great summary! Iām in the Maryland suburbs of DC. My son is a year away from all these decisions - class of ā20. He wants pre-med, so a program with good health sciences is important. We will also be chasing merit OOS and looking in-state. Weāre looking East Coast and mid-west, eventually. A lot is riding on his next retake of the SATs this summer. He had a rough sophomore year with a GPA of 2.9. He now has a 3.9 for junior year but cumulative GPA is only a 3.1 and heās had no APs yet.
Heās visited Elon, Furman, Clemson and Wake in the South, GWU, UMCP, UDelaware and Catholic U in our region and we will look at some of the PA, NY, and OH, IL schools as well ā if he is keeping up with everything else!
At this point, he has delusions of Wake & Georgetown, but really does like Elon. I believe Elon is the best fit, but heāll need to give up the reach dreams first. His school has good placement at Elon, so right now I would say Elon is the best fit, especially if tuition does not move and he is competitive for merit there.
@1stTimeThruMom , Georgetown was the dream reach for my son too (he didnāt get in). Heads upā¦it is one of the only schools in the country that requires ALL test scores to be sent in. Also, they strongly recommend 3 Subject tests. My son didnāt do well on these and it just confirmed to us that he wasnāt at the GT level, academically.
We considered Loyola of MD and he got a good merit aid package there. Also considered Holy Cross it seemed to have a Georgetown kind of look and feel, but smaller. DS didnāt apply but he should have. It would have been a reach as well though academically. He also got good merit from St. Joseph U in Philly (we like Jesuit schoolsā¦which all mentioned in my message are).
1 Like
@TS0104 Great input, thanks! We definitely seem to like similar schools! We plan to look at the Catholic three you just mentioned, though one of the things I really like about Elon is that it is not a religious school.
Wow, I did not realize that this weekend would be so busy for Elon, thank you @OFF2COLLEGE2 for that info. I just informed my D of that as she will be at Elon for accepted studentās weekend and the at Furman to give that a 2nd look as well. Hopefully, she will return with a decision! She really likes both, and both have their pros/cons.
One really good thing about accepted students weekend is that the kids go off by themselves with current students. They have very candid discussions, and it should give your student a solid feel for what is ahead.
My daughter is on the cusp of committing to Elon. She toured last summer and loved it, then we were there ~ a month ago for their Fellows weekend. She loves the vibe of it, the business fellows program (to which she was accepted) is fantastic, and weāve heard nothing but good things from people we know who have kids there. Like many schools, there are plenty of things to get involved with, so anybody should be able to āfind their nicheā. She has a good head on her shoulders, and is focused on a combination of academics, fit and value more so than reputation / name brand. She was accepted to Lehigh, Bucknell, Richmond, Gettysburg, and William & Mary in addition to Elon. If you get caught up in reputation / rankings, in theory Elon would fall short of those other options, but she has always had it right at the top of her list because of that academics / fit / value combo.
From my perspective, after the Fellows Weekend visit (which was my first) I was extremely impressed. What I kept coming back to was that the entire place just seems really well run. Thereās a strategy to everything they are doing (including intentionally pricing themselves materially below many private schools it the Northeast). Hard to put a finger on, but the way Iāve described it to people is that if it were a stock, Iād be buying it.
Yes, it is extremely well run. It as if they studied the best practices at hundreds of colleges, and then incorporated those into Elon.
@RoyHobbs Congratulations to your daughter! I have not yet heard of anyone turning down highly ranked top #45 / #60 schools for Elon. Bucknell and Lehigh have incredible schools of business with fantastic outplacement, lifelong alumni networks, and of course William & Mary has a national reputation. Before she commits, it might be worthwhile to look over the various schools student reviews at Niche, particularly the āterribleā ratings comments. Sure, some are kids have an axe to grind, but often thereās a kernel of truth to just either be aware of or to dig into a little deeper. Again, congrats to your daughter!
Well, from personal experience I can tell you that it is far better to be in the top 5% at Elon (as most of the fellows are) than in the top quarter or third at Lehigh or Richmond, employment-wise. Seems like every Wall St. Bank and many consulting firms want to hire the top 5% anywhere. I think if you go up to a very top tier school, maybe top 20, then employers will go down past the very top of the class, but otherwise, they donāt. My kid has been in elite summer jobs and programs surrounded by kids from T20 schools. While they may be a bit surprised at first that she is from Elon, she has had no problem keeping up.
Interesting thoughts @RoyHobbs . You are right, everything at Elon seems quite intentional and strategicā¦I think we are more clear about Elonās philosophy and core values, if you will, than any other school we have looked into. I like your theory @roycroftmom , thatās very possible! (kind of related, I heard once on a podcast that someone did this with a TV showā¦put a bunch of money into research, stats, data etc, used a totally scientific approach to try to engineer a popular TV show, and it worked. Of course I canāt remember the name of the show now)
Also, regarding employment, at Elonās session today they said that they are #1 in NC for job placementā¦beating out Wake, Duke, etc. Thatās pretty impressive. https://www.elon.edu/e-net/Article/163155
Iām not surprised. They are very prepped for the job search process.
So as promised, here is my review of the Elon Rising Phoenix weekend. The weather was absolutely horrible! Thunder storms down pours, lightning and a tornado touched down in Raleigh to the east of us. They kept us in the new athletic center I thought waay too long and were a bit long winded with the speeches. A lot of the tours were cancelled due to the weather and it really made a mess of their schedulingā¦ Oh did I mention that my daughter is now a PHOENIX?? She LOVED it. She met so many people guys and girls that she bonded with right away. During the day even trapped in the new athletic center( which is absolutely amazing btw) she still had an unbelievable time. The current students were great with their input and experiences and all of the faculty involved in the different programs were amazing. The first night she got the opportunity to meet up with friends of ours whose son is in a fraternity. They were having their family weekend the same weekend as rising phoenixs weekend so we got to experience a popular hand out there called the Fat Frogg. All of the kids were great, and a bunch of sorority girls and also non sorority girls were there as well. They gave my daughter a very honest evaluation of Elon. Everyone is great, Yes there is a big girl to guy ratio here that favors the guys,but we donāt care, there is always a party if you want it, but if you donāt that ok too. Most importantly the work hard play hard aspect. Donāt come here thinking your gonna party and skate through. All of those students are goneā¦
Second day we got to go back and the weather was even worse than the first day. We happily walked through the warm rain to the dining hall which was very good. She hung with her group and added to it as us parents hung out on the other side of the dining hall sharing experiences and other choices that their kids were either contemplating about or had left in the rear view mirror since they already committed. I could not believe how many students I ran into who were trying to decide between Furman and Elon. Half way through the second day my daughter looked at us and asked if we would mind if we cancelled here visit to go look at Muhlenberg next week. We knew right there that she was gonna be a Phoenix. We made the deposit, headed to the bookstore and geared up.
As we headed to the airport the clouds started to clear and the sun came out as if to say, āyou passed the testā¦ WELCOMEā This was a long process for her and she never had a strong feeling about any college. She had visited Elon 3 times before and always liked it. This weekend solidified her decision, during one of the worst weather periods we have every been through for a college visit( and believe me we have had some pretty rainy visit days)
Good luck to all, I would be very curious to hear what your sons and daughters thought.
Hereās our review! Agree about getting a bit tired of sitting in the Schar center but it was understandable. Yes, the rain put a little damper on things but I thought it was well managed (with the shuttles and stuff).
We didnāt chat much with prospective students, unfortunatelyā¦thatās not DSās style, and I could only do so much! I was sad that the student only ice cream social was cancelledā¦of course DS was relievedā¦I really wanted him to have to chat with some kids on his own. So Iām glad to hear your review of the students. I think weāre just going to go with what weāve read and heard here, and also from every other person around here that weāve heard of (which isnāt many, from OHā¦seems to be more popular with NE kids), anyway the same comment is always āxxx LOVED itāā¦one if these kids is a heavy partier, the others, are not.
My S had a similar response to the eventā¦as in as the closing was ending, he just says āI want to go here.ā I look over kind of shocked that heās decided already, and jokingly ask him if he wants to go to the table to make his deposit and he says āSure!ā (We didnāt, that freaked me out a little, plus I want him to put more time into considering LLCs). But everything was great. I was impressed with everything really, from the passion and clear vision of the staff to the experiences of the students. I think that engaged learning and small class sizes, and the strong advising, are good fits for my son.
So after buying some gear to take a picture in (since due to the rain, no pictures by an Elon sign or fountain were happening), I did convince him go to to a dining hall (he never wants to do this, I think he doesnāt like the idea of eating with his parent in the college dining hall). Wow it was SO NICE! And as a little aside, as we were eating, a student dropped her entire cup of hot water by the coffee machine, and I joked to S āwe can see how they react in a crisisā and he says that a student at a nearby table got up right away and helped her (it wasnāt a real crisis, she wasnāt burnt it was just a big spill). So yay for Elon kids. Oh and the dorm we saw was really nice, East I think? high ceilings, large rooms, nice bathrooms with private stalls for showers.
So yes, another Phoenix here! It feels great to close the book on the search and move on to preparing for/getting excited for the next chapter.
PS We had loose plans to try to visit Furman a day before Elon, but we ended up writing it off and did not visit. Furman was a school that came on DSās college search late in the process, and he applied to add it as a match option, but never visited and in the end, we decided not to go check it out.
@TS0104 @OFF2COLLEGE2 Thanks for your reports and congrats to your kids!
Just thought I would resurrect this thread! I know we have a couple of 2023 Phoenix in here! Curious how the others turned out!
As for us, we are still feeling great about Elon! I booked my move in and family weekend hotels long ago, so thatās covered, and weāre inching our way through shopping, but mostly, DS is just enjoying summer.
Did your students do interviews at Elon during the search/visit process? Do they do interviews? If so, are they recommended?