<p>Well, it's gotten a tad brisk and wet over here in Jersey. I'm sure that will pass! Last week was gorgeous, and I spent the weekend kayaking down in S. Jersey.</p>
<p>Congrats, btw with Barnard. Despite our recent, um, downturn, those are great schools.</p>
<p>Please don't burden your daughter with a long down coat--only fifty year olds from Minnesota don such apparel! A stylish short North Face down jacket will fit into the student style, and be plenty warm when supplemented with a cute hat, scarf, and mitten set. And for boots, the colorful print wellie rubber boots were popular this winter for slushy days in the NE.</p>
<p>Hey! My daughter wears such apparel! </p>
<p>When you grow up in CA sometimes you don't care what you look like when it's 18 degrees outside....</p>
<p>D likes having a warm seat, if you get my drift.</p>
<p>Gotta disagree with fauve on one point--my very stylish D has both short and long North Face--and looks great in either in Chicago. </p>
<p>But I agree on the other fashion/practicality tip--my D also looks good in her print rubber boots in the slush.</p>
<p>We are on to azaleas and magnolias. Spring is definitely springing here in NY.</p>
<p>My d. would never go for a down coat -- she layers, preferring a more stylish winter coat. So my advice is simply: let the kid do the buying, and if you are unsure, wait. With my son, the coat he wanted when he came home winter break was very different than the coat we thought he would want -- I think we Californians lean toward ski attire, and, at least at the colleges my kid's chose, the standard was more toward full or mid-length dress coats. I have found myself that the most essential piece of clothing for warmth is the scarf.</p>
<p>I think part of the problem is that students tend to be indoors a lot, and when outdoors are often walking briskly toward wherever they will be indoors. The buildings tend to be kept very warm --so there is a lot of moving in/out from cold to warm and warm to cold ... plus it rains more often than it snows ... and so coats are coming on and off, and excess bulk in a coat might be inconvenient. My d's winter coat would fold nicely over the back of a chair. </p>
<p>Anyway, warm outerware can be purchased as needed online or from local stores.</p>
<p>We didn't buy the down coat until sophomore year. She just finally decided she was sick of being cold:). It was North Face fleeces and shells until then.</p>
<p>And they have great rubber boots at Target.com.</p>
<p>But we are having a surreptitious instantiation of a classic CC thread - what to buy, pack, send to college:).</p>
<p>surreptitious instantiation. Man, I never even HEARD of that word. That just made my day. And yesterday I learned ANOTHER word (amanuensis) . Isn't it great that 50+ year olds in down coats can still learn new words? </p>
<p>Garland, am sending you a PM. I don't want to take away from down coats and instantiations here.</p>
<p>OK.</p>
<p>I made that phrase up.</p>
<p>Instantiation is a word used in the software world to mean a time when a specific instance of a general phenomenon occurs.</p>
<p>My apologies iif I offended anyone. It has been known to happen. </p>
<p>I learned a lot of big words over the years. It was because I didn't have friends as a kid and read a lot of books instead and my father was an English professor. Sometimes it's fun to take them out to play. But maybe if you have a picture of me as a lonely little girl poring over the maximum books allowed from the library every week you can have a more sympathetic picture of me because, I admit, maybe it looks like showing off sometimes.</p>
<p>And maybe it is.</p>
<p>Again, my apologies.</p>
<p>Alumother, no need to apologize, I for one like learning new words.</p>
<p>Ahem....I'm reading all 150 posts trying to get some info here...more about this west coast kids socialing on the east thing. And wondering where west coast kids on in the quasi south ( Duke) might fit in. My D chose Duke over Berkely ( although she never really considered Berkeley...she was just leading us on). This is just a bump, really...</p>
<p>Well when I went East, 35 years ago, the main issue was the degree to which groups of kids that I had considered homogenous, thought they were heterogeneous. In other words, in California we maybe broke into African-American, Latino, Asian, Caucasian, and then Southern vs. Northern California. And were always willing to move on fairly quickly from initial racial or social categories. On the East Coast, they broke it out into Philadelphia, New York, etc. And the Caucasians distinguished between Jewish, non-Jewish, Italian, Polish etc. Took longer to break down the groupings. Threw me for a loop.</p>
<p>Things are much better, IMO, now. However, the social fluidity we tend to take for granted in California is still not so prevalent.</p>
<p>My daughter has had no problem with this - but she's one of those people who will not be denied. </p>
<p>I think the best way to get answers for these kinds of questions is to ask the kids in the various college boards. If you post on the Duke board - Californian on her way to Raleigh-Durham, you will probably get answers much better than I at least can give you.</p>
<p>That makes sense...thanks.</p>