<p>DO NOT give your opinion. Helping in the manner Northstarmom suggests is a great idea … but do not get sucked into telling her which you think she should choose. It needs to be her choice. If it doesn’t work out, it will be much easier for her to deal with it & figure out what to do next if she doesn’t have someone to blame.</p>
<p>I’m with Northstarmom, Very Happy, Kelsmom & others who advised standing back. Whew, I wouldn’t want to be the reason my DD is at her school when she is in the middle of midterms or some other momentary crisis!!!</p>
<p>My advice would be to tell her that HER attitude will be the biggest factor in how much she loves college & no matter where you go there will be off days and you only know the downsides of the choice you made.</p>
<p>Hang in there. DD took until April 29 to make a decision between her final two. We gave her a t-shirt from each and said we’d wait to see what she was wearing to school the next day. And now, as a sophomore she thinks she made a great choice 98% of the time.</p>
<p>I greatly appreciate all the input. I’ve decided make a chart listing all the categories mentioned here (thanks for some great ideas!) and comparing the schools–everything from required courses to nearby shopping, and I’ll keep it to “just the facts, ma’am” and hold my opinions to myself. D has ADHD (yes, disability services is another category to compare), and I know her mind is jumping all over the place, so I think this approach will help her focus and think systematically. But charts aside, this is not an easy decision; it’s very hard to compare the schools. At one, she got into the Honors program and liked the vibe; another (the school with the worst location) has the more prestigious program in her intended major (musical theater); another is more selective and prestigious generally and is the one that her guidance counselor thinks is perfect for her personality, but she’s not sure the theater program is quite right. Thank goodness this is my second and last child–I couldn’t deal with all this again!</p>
<p>"I greatly appreciate all the input. I’ve decided make a chart listing all the categories mentioned here (thanks for some great ideas!) and comparing the schools–everything from required courses to nearby shopping, and I’ll keep it to “just the facts, ma’am” "</p>
<p>I think your idea is great, and I suggest that you sit with your D while she makes the list. You could help her think of things to put on it, but not take responsibility for making the list yourself. That way, she’ll be able to do it all by herself when she has to make other decisions.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I’m ADD. :)</p>
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<p>You need to let your DAUGHTER make this chart. YOU (the parents) should not be doing this, in my opinion. What is a positive to YOU might be a negative to your daughter. What is a negative to YOU might be a positive to your daughter. SHE is going to college…NOT YOU. Let her be responsible for making this decision. You can suggest she MAKE such a chart…but in my opinion…the rest is up to her.</p>
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<p>I have a son who is way ADD…once his meds wear off, it would take hours to get him to focus enough to make the chart. The chart doesn’t list the positives and negatives - just categories. The parent can put “# of students” on the chart - it is up to the child to decide if a 1000 person student body is a plus or a minus. And if a categoy is important to the parent but not the child, then it can just be crossed off. In fact, that would be a great use of the chart - the parent makes a chart with 25 items on it and the child says, “but Mom, these 5 things are the only important things to me…” Bingo, that narrows it down!</p>
<p>You got it missypie! I’d have to stand over her to make the chart happen, and we’d be at each other’s throats in no time. In any case, D is out of the country on a school trip till next week, will no doubt need a day to recover from too little sleep and too much fun, then has an admitted students day to attend out of state that will suck up 2 more days, so we really don’t have a lot of time available–that’s why I’m doing the chart for her. I don’t want the decision making process to go on till the very last minute. (And there’s nothing like a little project to keep me from wondering what’s going on with her rather lightly chaperoned singing group in a country where the drinking age is 16!) I plan to just hand it to her and walk far, far away.</p>
<p>“I don’t want the decision making process to go on till the very last minute.”</p>
<p>Why not? That’s what I did with my college decisions, and that’s what both sons did. In all cases, we made up our own minds, and using up all of the available time reassured us that we’d taken the time to make a good decision.</p>
<p>Just because you’d probably like to see your D’s decision over and done with doesn’t mean that it’s best for you to do lots of the thinking and organizing for her even though she may do and say things that tempt you to help her much more than she really needs you to.</p>
<p>Truth is, while it’s an important decision, unless something like financial ruin would threaten if she made the wrong choice (and presumably, you’ve taken such options off the table), any selection she makes probably will be a good option for her. If that ends up not being true, she can always transfer.</p>
<p>I would do it only under condition if D ask you to choose instead of doing it herself. And I make sure that you are doing it only because she requested so and you would not be held responsible for negative results of this decision.</p>
<p>“I don’t want the decision making process to go on till the very last minute.”</p>
<p>“Why not? That’s what I did with my college decisions, and that’s what both sons did. In all cases, we made up our own minds, and using up all of the available time reassured us that we’d taken the time to make a good decision.”</p>
<p>Different paths for different for different personalities. In my D’s case, once all the needed factual info is in hand, and once she’s made her visits and connected with other students on Facebook or school blogs, etc., delaying the decision would only raise her anxiety level as she rehashed the same things over and over, until she achieved a crescendo of panic on April 30, at which point she would no longer be thinking clearly. We just went through this with D’s deciding between two summer job offers, which involved a mere 8 week commitment as opposed to 4 years! She was in an agony of indecision, but once I insisted she choose, she was at peace and never looked back.</p>
<p>I would never even mention the word “transfer” to her in this context. I think it’s important to commit fully to a school, without having an “out” in the back of one’s mind. It could negatively affect the whole freshman experience. Of course if her choice turns out to have been a mistake, transferring is always an option (her brother did it), but I think it should be off the table as a consideration at this point. I’ll also point out that it’s not easy to transfer; unless a student keeps up stellar grades, he or she may not have any chance at attending a previously discarded school, and even then it’s a crapshoot.</p>