<p>How is the school year going at SMU so far?</p>
<p>Well, I’m not a current student, but my son is. His younger brother has SMU as his current first choice for college. Been there many, many times between the two of them. Since nobody else responded, I thought I’d throw in my two cents.</p>
<p>My son is a freshman. Vocal performance major. A bachelor of music degree is very demanding in terms of time and credit hours needed to graduate. Because of this, at SMU there are waivers from the core curriculum for only two or three majors, I believe --engineering, music, and I think one other major. </p>
<p>My son is taking 18 hours on the advice of his advisor, but it’s a bit too much, mainly because music majors take lots of classes that fill up their week but that aren’t worth a lot of credit hours. For instance, my son is taking 11 classes for his 18 hours – two honors classes, regular math, and 8 music classes. He’s in the classroom for a 1-credit hour class as long as people are in class for a 3-credit hour class. That’s why, for him, 18 hours feels like an awful lot of work. He has very, very little unscheduled time during the week, including into the nights. For most majors, 18 credit hours translates to 6 or 8 classes, not 11.</p>
<p>I say all that because it definitely colors what he has to say about his semester so far.</p>
<p>He LOVES SMU! He is very, very happy with his choice.</p>
<p>He loves his dorm, the food (the food is amazing!), the location, his teachers, and his classes. Attends the lecture series, guest performances that come to campus, and performances from all divisions of the Meadows School of the Arts as much as he can. He is ecstatic about all there is to do at SMU. He likes every single, individual component of being an SMU student. The ONLY thing he hasn’t liked so far is that drinking is a bigger past-time for more students than he had hoped. He still has plenty of people to hang out with that don’t drink. But there are apparently LOTS who do, including on weeknights.</p>
<p>He is the type that loves engaging classes, and true to form, he thinks his honors classes and professors are amazing. Can’t say enough good about them. His two honors classes are challenging, but he’s so far able to pull off A’s, which is important to him. Lots and lots of reading in both. A considerable amount of writing. He also likes his regular math class and teacher a lot. It’s not too easy for him, but it’s easy enough that he’s actually enjoying what is typically his least favorite subject. He is in awe of his teachers at the Meadows School, not to mention his peers in all divisions there (orchestra, dance, vocal, theater, etc). The talent at Meadows is inspiring.</p>
<p>But, so far, he has been a little more stressed than he anticipated. He’s just always too busy and over-scheduled – because of the 18 hours with 11 classes.</p>
<p>It’s just about time to register for next semseter’s classes. He will be signing up for fewer classes which will free up 5 extra hours of unscheduled time during the school week. He thinks it will be a perfect balance. If not, he’ll fine tune again next fall.</p>
<p>I hear lots of good news from SMU every week! Hope this helps.</p>
<p>SimpleLife thanks for your post. My son is a senior who has applied to SMU engineering; however, I am a little concerned about the remarks you posted concerning drinking. In which dorm is your son living? Is this drinking taking place in the dorm, or are students drinking off campus? Is there generally a “party atmosphere” on campus? Has your son made friends easily? I have noticed some talk on this site about SMU’s “rep” for being a haven for “snobby, rich kids.” Have you or your son found this to be the case? We have only visited once, so it was difficult to judge for ourselves. My son’s background is very average middle-class and will only be able to attend SMU because of the generous NMF scholarship they offer. I am concerned about him making friends and fitting in if he attends. I would appreciate any further information you are willing to share.</p>
<p>Hi bringbackpluto.
I kind of regretted my drinking comment shortly after posting. I worried that out of all the positive things I said about his SMU experience, people would focus right in on that one blurb about drinking and think poorly of the school. It is the one, and only one, complaint my son has had about SMU. But he’s not distraught about it. Let me try to put it in perspective by answering some of your questions.</p>
<p>I’d rather not say right here which dorm he’s living in. He loves his dorm, and the drinking he’s complaining about is NOT happening in the dorms, or at least not in his dorm – that he knows or tells me about anyway.</p>
<p>His complaint is more general than that. It’s simply that with all the fun things to do on campus and in the surrounding community, he wishes that so many kids weren’t interested in one thing and one thing only – going to parties and drinking. He’d rather be doing something else with a bunch of friends. It seems to him (so far anyway) that many of the groups of kids he knows unwind by useless, unhealthy partying. He would like to be more tuned in to groups that decide to do other things together. There probably are plenty of groups who do other things – he just hasn’t found them yet, because he’s new.</p>
<p>I don’t know if there’s a general “party atmosphere” on campus. Not when I’ve been there. The kids I’ve been around seem like great kids with good heads on their shoulders. But my son says there is a group-mentality that drinking is fun. And I tend to think that’s true, not only because I trust his perspective, but also because the administration is aware of a prevailing attitude like that in the recent past and is taking all sorts of steps to eradicate it. It’s very clear – from the AlcoholEdu that you and your son will have to take online in the summer, to the topics covered in orientation, to the letters from SMU I receive here at home – that SMU is taking this very seriously and wants to eliminate the problems of the past. I think their work will be obvious to you too – you can’t miss it.</p>
<p>My son HAS made friends easily. There are plenty of people who do not drink and who like good, clean fun. He hangs out with them. It’s just that, so far, those individuals don’t coalesce into groups that have plans for the evening or the weekends. He makes his own plans – goes by himself or with a few friends. There are LOTS of good kids at SMU. My son hasn’t had to look hard. They’re all around.</p>
<p>I don’t know what to say about the “snobby, rich kids.” We heard that a whole lot at your phase of the process too, and it bothered us. My son likewise can attend only because of scholarships. Whenever I’m on campus, including during the college search process, I see all kinds of kids that seem just like the kids who went to public high school with my son. That’s how it looks to me and that’s how it looked to both of us during his college search. We DID see a handful of what appeared to be “rich, snobby” kids each time we were on campus, but the majority seemed like middle- to upper-middle-class. And NOT snobby; nice.</p>
<p>I will say, in all honesty, that once my son began living on campus, he did become more aware of the money thing. Lots of kids have cars I’ll never afford in my lifetime. Some have cars that cost as much as my house! These kids go out to dinner at restaurants and wear expensive clothes. There are, apparently, lots of kids with lots of money. During one of his orientation seminars they all divided into groups of 12 or 15 kids. There were two kids in his group (including him) that went to a typical public high school. The rest were all from private schools or boarding schools! He was surprised (and a little worried – needlessly, it turns out). We don’t have any way of knowing whether that was representative of the student body. Though my son has noticed lots of rich kids since coming to campus, he does not perceive them, in general, to be snobby or entitled. They’re very nice kids. He’s definitely aware of the money thing now that he’s there, but he does not feel out of place. It hasn’t been a problem at all.</p>
<p>Anyway, if your son goes to SMU, he will likely notice these same things. But, imo, so what? It’s an amazing school! My son and I are so, so happy with it! It’s currently his younger brother’s first choice too. The education is great; the perks are great; the teachers and administration are great; all that money-in-the-air that we heard about is what allows my son to attend AND it’s why there are so many fantastic opportunities on campus, as well as great dorms, delicious food, beautiful scenery, excellent health facilities, etc. So, my son is taking it all in stride. It’s a wonderful place to be. And the faculty and administration we’ve met are just as down-to-earth, and personable and professional, and interesting and engaged, and friendly as you could ever hope for! My son is very, very happy with his choice.</p>
<p>All the best! I hope I’ve helped.</p>
<p>SimpleLife, thanks so much for the generous post. After reading it, I am a little less concerned. It sounds like our sons would be interested in finding the same types of kids. Is your younger son applying this year? We will be returning to SMU for a second visit soon, so hopefully that will help with some of my concerns as well. My son attends a large public high school in Texas located very far from Dallas where there are very few “rich” kids, and I do not want him to feel like a fish out of water. He really loved SMU when we visited, and it seems like it would be a good fit. The staff has been very responsive to all our questions, etc. Thank you again for all the information. Best Wishes.</p>
<p>Hi again.
My other son is still a junior. He’ll be starting college in 2011. Good luck to your son and to you in this intense college-search process!</p>
<p>simple life do you have any idea of what might have instigated your sons chances of being admitted into SMU?</p>
<p>Son is a HS senior, we were very very interested in SMU, but it was tied with Trinity U for us, we could only choose 1. Our GC advised us against SMU and many CC posters said the same thing about SMU being a rich kid school!</p>
<p>However, after reading up and asking tons of questions about TU, we are not convinced that TU is a better fit for our internationally educated, unable to visit, urban son!</p>
<p>I believe there are “College *******” books on both SMU and Trinity. You can order them from Amazon. Those books may give you a better idea of the atmosphere on both campuses. For what it’s worth, my son and I both picked up on what we perceived to be a “frat” and “spoiled rich kid” atmosphere at SMU. When we visited, my sons were amazed by the concentration of expensive sports cars they saw on campus. And we live in a relatively affluent area. We didn’t get the same feeling from the Trinity campus, but we didn’t spend as much time there.</p>
<p>boykins96, in all honesty, my admitted son’s stats were quite high – GPA, class rank, and test scores. Plus, he’s a music major and it turns out he was sought after in terms of talent as he went around the country auditioning. I sure don’t want to sound boastful – he has his weaknesses too, but it turns he was in a better position than we realized prior to starting the college search process. I don’t know how or why we missed that beforehand, but it was sure a nice surprise in the end! I’d also like to add that, other than the whole “rich thing,” SMU really is a very good fit for my son. It’s a school that seems to fit his needs and desires pretty perfectly, and (to me anyway) he seems to fit what they’re looking for pretty perfectly. They’re a really good match for each other.
I have heard and read that SMU’s acceptance rate isn’t bad … that they accept plenty of students whose stats are not as high as my son’s, and that “anybody who has money can get in.” I have no way of knowing if that’s the case. I sure hope not! I think that attitude might be sour grapes, because my son’s honors courses are challenging and I’m pretty sure he feels well-matched to his peers, academically-speaking. I’m very impressed by the course offerings, the core curriculum, and what I hear of son’s profs.
Let me know if I can answer any other questions!</p>
<p>pixeljig, I sure wish I could help with your TU/SMU dilemma! I’ve never officially visited TU. I’ll be visiting very soon with my next son. I do know a handful of people whose kids go there (TU) and LOVE it! The kids love it, and the parents of the kids love it. It is apparently known for its challenging academics, personalized attention, great curriculum, and small school environment. I can’t wait to check it out. I HAVE driven around the campus while visiting San Antonio on other business. It looks nice, but I’m in no position to comment on anything yet.</p>
<p>I CAN tell you that, for us, the rich-thing at SMU has not been a problem at all. We’d probably be considered upper-middle in terms of income, but because of a few really bad circumstances several years ago, we probably live like solid-middle class. We’re comfortable in our own skin, so we don’t feel a need to compete in terms of property or clothing or cars, etc. I suppose there are people who feel the need to compete in those areas, and they may not feel comfortable at SMU. I’m not sure if that’s true. All in all, we love SMU and don’t feel out of place at all, even though we’re aware that we seem to have a lot less money than a lot of people there.</p>
<p>Both schools are in very nice urban environments … lots to do in each city. SMU is linked pretty directly to a great public transportation system, and a lot of venues and city attractions are quite close to the school. TU is not as close to the city and San Antonio venues, as I recall, and I’ve heard their public transportation system is not very good. I have no way of knowing if that’s true yet.</p>
<p>Good luck! I don’t envy you, being unable to visit to check it all out!</p>
<p>The word that was deleted in my post (not by me) was *******. </p>
<p>btw-- there is a Trinity forum. If you haven’t already posted there, you might want to do so.</p>
<p>Ha! Nevermind. I guess that word is verboten. Just look on Amazon for a series of small books that address particular colleges.</p>
<p>Cpq…I see you have posted here before. Do you have a child presently attending SMU or were you at one time considering it? If you decided against it, why did you do so? Also, to any current SMU parents or those who may have been considering SMU, did any of you also consider/were accepted, etc. to Rice? How would you compare the two? My son (high SAT/ACTscores, g.p.a. and class ranking) is considering both. Shortly, we will be making a second visit to SMU and interviewing at Rice as well. I welcome any constructive input or opinions regarding both school. Thanks:)</p>
<p>bringbackpluto, my son was accepted to Rice as well. We visited Rice several times. Of course, he loved it there too. What’s not to like? All things being equal, he probably still would have chosen SMU over Rice, simply because he felt it was a better fit for him. But the decision was made for him/us because we went into the college search with this well-understood “policy:” he would apply only to schools where he really felt a great fit, and after acceptances and scholarships weighed in, he would choose the school with the lowest, or close to the lowest, Cost of Attendance. Rice offered him very nice merit scholarships – but SMU offered even better scholarships.</p>
<p>You asked how the schools compare (Rice and SMU) …</p>
<p>Our perspective may differ from others. And our perceptions could actually be wrong. But here are a few impressions we were left with after our visits. (Results may vary!)</p>
<p>Rice gave us the impression they’re much more academically challenging and more academically oriented. There’s no doubt that Rice is harder to get into than SMU. It’s far more selective. And it feels that way when you’re on campus too (to us).</p>
<p>Rice has a strong emphasis on this kind of group unity thing, we gathered – where the kids live in certain “houses” (dorms) and their social lives, friends, and cohesiveness are kind of derived from their living situations. SMU does have some dorms for certain specialties – fine arts, honors, I think engineering (not sure) – but from what my son has seen, and from how those special dorms are “advertised” at SMU, they’re merely places to live – your social life and group cohesiveness aren’t based on where you live. We also thought the dorms at SMU were nicer – but other people might think otherwise. (We only saw two different dorms at Rice.)</p>
<p>Rice appeared to us to be more of a work hard/party hard kind of school. They’re kind of known for their partying, we were told, as well as for their very rigorous academics. They seem to feel a real need to “let loose” after all their hard work. SMU is much more relaxed academically, though my son finds the honors classes stimulating and challenging enough so far.</p>
<p>Rice is gorgeous! A beautiful little campus with beautiful buildings. SMU is gorgeous as well. We thought SMU looked more “homey”-- more “comfortable” to us than Rice.</p>
<p>The food at SMU is fantastic! There’s only one real dining hall at SMU, and it serves a large variety of very good food. (There are other places to eat, too – but one main dining hall.) We only got to try one dining hall at Rice (if I’m remembering right, the dining halls are in each of the “houses.”) The food was average to slightly above average.</p>
<p>SMU has several great sports teams, as you probably already know. SMU has a few good sports teams, too. But so far, football isn’t one of them.</p>
<p>SMU is in a much prettier, much more well-visited part of its city, in our opinion. Rice is gorgeous, and some of the area immediately surrounding it is very pretty, but the city just north of it appeared dead and like it was not a very nice area – to us. (Don’t want to offend any Houston readers!) My son liked the cultural opportunities in both cities. We’ll never really know, but we perceived that the Meadows School (SMU) has closer ties to Dallas’ cultural circles than Rice does to Houston’s.</p>
<p>Rice was very professional and well-run on our visits, but it rarely felt personable (except at the Shepherd School of Music where it was a tad friendlier). I’ve heard it DOES feel personable once you’re a student there. SMU was also professionally run on our visits, but it always felt personable – like that southern charm kind of feeling. And, it seemed to us (still does), that SMU intends for “fun” to be part of the equation, not just work. </p>
<p>There’s an over-arching sense of competition at Rice (in our opinions). Not so at SMU.</p>
<p>Important to my son: The Meadows School of the Arts at SMU is an integral, lively part of the whole SMU campus. The Shepherd School of Music at Rice seemed to us to be a wonderful, very professional, very elite music school that kind of ran PARALLEL to the very wonderful, very professional, very elite academic side of Rice – like they were two separate schools, maybe, instead of a blended campus where kids take part in the arts AND in the academic offerings.</p>
<p>Both schools clearly have a lot of money. As far as how students dress and the cars they drive, SMU struck us as having the “richer” student body of the two. More preppy. That was a negative for us, but now it doesn’t really seem to matter.</p>
<p>Rice is a big engineering/pre-med school. SMU has the Lyle School of Engineering, which is really growing gang-busters, but all-in-all SMU is more of a liberal arts school, not an engineering and science school. (The engineering program at SMU is really attractive to my other son, though!)</p>
<p>We heard from several Rice students that some of the professors at Rice are amazing standouts in their fields, but that they aren’t necessarily good teachers. We heard some complaints about heavy accents or an inability to get complicated subjects across in a simple manner, because the profs were such geniuses. At SMU, so far (like WE have a world of experience! – NOT!) the profs are very, very good teachers. No problems with accents or TA’s or genius mentalities getting in the way of teaching. We also heard that there were more TA-taught undergrad classes at Rice than at SMU. (I’m hesitant to say this stuff – because it might not be true! But that’s what we were told.)</p>
<p>SMU just felt more relaxed to both of us. You know how that is … it’s a personal thing. Everybody feels a different fit. Several music students we met in the college audition process thought Oberlin was a dump, for instance, whereas my son fell in love with it and would be there today if they had offered him full tuition. Everybody finds comfort in different environments. My son would be honored to be at Rice today, and I’m sure we’d both have extremely positive things to say about it if that’s where he ended up. But as it is, we always felt that SMU was the better fit for this son, in terms of comfort and sense of belonging.</p>
<p>Whoops! I MEANT, “RICE has several very good sports teams … SMU has several good teams as well …”</p>
<p>bringback: My son was offered a full scholarship to SMU, and really good scholarships to Rice and UT. He is attending UT in their Plan II honors program. The decision between Rice and UT was agonizing. I favored Rice, but it wasn’t my decision. </p>
<p>My son choose UT because of its computer science and film departments. Rice was too close to home for him (we live an hour away). I’m not sure all of the factors that he considered when deciding against SMU, but I think it was mostly because UT’s computer science and film departments were more highly ranked and because of the influence of the Greek scene at SMU.
Certainly, there are frats at UT, but the percentage of students participating is fairly low. There’s also quite a party culture at UT, but he is in the honors dorm and has had no difficulty in finding students whose social life doesn’t revolve around alcohol.</p>
<p>Hi cpq!!! I remember “talking” to you several times over the past year or so … when our son’s were both considering SMU and Rice! I think your son was considered for the Hunt Scholarship, right? Did he get it? I knew he got full tuition. I was wondering where he ended up – so it’s UT, Plan II, huh? I’d love to PM you eventually and hear more about that. My next son in line is considering UT, Plan II. (First son didn’t want UT – too big for him.) I am very, very interested in your son’s experience. Eventually, I’ll send you a PM and check out what you have had to say on the UT Austin forum. We’re visiting UT, and the Plan II info session, in two weeks.</p>
<p>Yes, I remember you, too. I’m glad your son is doing so well and is so happy with SMU. My son was awarded the Presidential scholarship at SMU which is a full ride. It was hard for him to turn down.<br>
I recall that your son was quite sought after and received some great scholarships offers.<br>
My son is very happy at UT. I’ll be glad to fill you in when you are ready for more info.
I was very worried that it would be too big for him, but Plan II and the honors quad have more of a smaller school feel. If my son were not in the honors dorms, I’m afraid his experience wouldn’t be quite as positive.</p>