<p>^Sorry, I see indeed that Goucher stopped offering the DC semester - perhaps to recenter on their study abroad offerings? Kind of a head scratcher considering their location (meaning “regional sphere of influence”) - do they have any alternative?</p>
<p>Why are we assuming that an 18-year-old knows exactly what she wants and are trying to select colleges based on that? With the exception of a blip in time senior year when I wanted to be a doctor, for along time I wanted to get involved in law. I wanted to major in political science, become a prosecuting attorney and then work my way into the judiciary. That all changed when I flipped through the college catalog one time and decided the poli sci classes looked boring. I’m sure every parent here could recount a few stories from their own college student or their friends that sounds similar, and having worked in student affairs for a few years, I know lots of kids who changed their career plans - some as late as senior year.</p>
<p>Sure, there are a few kids who know what they want to do at 17, and they pursue that and stick with it. I think they’re in the minority, and I think far more often college kids learn about other things in college and do those instead. And occasionally they can’t get what they want and so they switch tracks later.</p>
<p>I’m also baffled at this notion that if OP’s daughter goes to University of Wyoming she’ll have no chance at the foreign service because it’s not a target school for that. Although DC might be within Goucher’s “sphere of influence,” it’s hardly a target school for international relations. I’m not criticizing Goucher - on the contrary, I think it’s an excellent school - but I fundamentally disagree with the notion that she couldn’t get to where she wants from Wyo. Sure, it may not be as easy if she could walk out of Princeton or Georgetown, but such is life - some of us are born with money and connections and some of us aren’t. Besides, Wyoming counts among its alumni a former U.S. vice president (Dick Cheney), the former U.S. ambassador to Ireland (Michael John Sullivan), a former NSA director (Samuel C. Phillips), a couple of federal judges, a prominent economist, and a whole rack of people involved with the Wyoming state government. Many of these people leveraged into future careers by getting graduate degrees from places recognized for their fields, and I agree that anyone who wants a long-term career in the foreign services should definitely be thinking towards grad school.</p>
<p>I’m not saying it’s a better place to be than Rhodes or Goucher (it’s not), but it’s not like her life will be over or she’ll be completely barred from her fields of interest because she went to Wyo.</p>
<p>For people who are wondering about the Foreign Service career and how to get in, here’s a blog with some entries on How to Become a Foreign Service Officer. It’s pretty informative.</p>
<p><a href=“DIPLOMATIC MOM: My journey as a Foreign Service Officer, wife and mom: How to become a Foreign Service Officer: Part I”>http://diplomaticmom.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-become-foreign-service-officer.html</a></p>
<p>I found the Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship for college juniors and seniors who are interested in foreign service careers. Looking at the 2013 fellows (<a href=“http://woodrow.org/fellowships/pickering/info/2013-pickering-fellows/”>http://woodrow.org/fellowships/pickering/info/2013-pickering-fellows/</a>), there is a range of undergraduate schools. Would Wyoming really be out of place on this list?</p>
<p>juliett, I posted a link on page 8 about the program at Wyoming. It looks like a good program and a great value but unfortunately the daughter will have nothing to do with it. </p>
<p>From the State Dept website, here’s the official list of the personal qualities they look for in the oral exam. (I’m quoting in full–as a US government publication, it’s in the public domain, not copyrighted.)</p>
<p>What qualities do we seek in FSO candidates? The successful candidate will demonstrate the following dimensions that reflect the skills, abilities, and personal qualities deemed essential to the work of the Foreign Service:</p>
<p>• Composure. To stay calm, poised, and effective in stressful or difficult situations; to think on one’s feet, adjusting quickly to changing situations; to maintain self-control.</p>
<p>• Cultural Adaptability. To work and communicate effectively and harmoniously with persons of other cultures, value systems, political beliefs, and economic circumstances; to recognize and respect differences in new and different cultural environments.</p>
<p>• Experience and Motivation. To demonstrate knowledge, skills or other attributes gained from previous experience of relevance to the Foreign Service; to articulate appropriate motivation for joining the Foreign Service. </p>
<p>• Information Integration and Analysis. To absorb and retain complex information drawn from a variety of sources; to draw reasoned conclusions from analysis and synthesis of available information; to evaluate the importance, reliability, and usefulness of information; to remember details of a meeting or event without the benefit of notes. </p>
<p>• Initiative and Leadership. To recognize and assume responsibility for work that needs to be done; to persist in the completion of a task; to influence significantly a group’s activity, direction, or opinion; to motivate others to participate in the activity one is leading. </p>
<p>• Judgment. To discern what is appropriate, practical, and realistic in a given situation; to weigh relative merits of competing demands. </p>
<p>• Objectivity and Integrity. To be fair and honest; to avoid deceit, favoritism, and discrimination; to present issues frankly and fully, without injecting subjective bias; to work without letting personal bias prejudice actions. </p>
<p>• Oral Communication. To speak fluently in a concise, grammatically correct, organized, precise, and persuasive manner; to convey nuances of meaning accurately; to use appropriate styles of communication to fit the audience and purpose.</p>
<p>• Planning and Organizing. To prioritize and order tasks effectively, to employ a systematic approach to achieving objectives, to make appropriate use of limited resources.</p>
<p>• Quantitative Analysis. To identify, compile, analyze, and draw correct conclusions from pertinent data; to recognize patterns or trends in numerical data; to perform simple mathematical operations.</p>
<p>• Resourcefulness. To formulate creative alternatives or solutions to resolve problems, to show flexibility in response to unanticipated circumstances.</p>
<p>• Working With Others. To interact in a constructive, cooperative, and harmonious manner; to work effectively as a team player; to establish positive relationships and gain the confidence of others; to use humor as appropriate.</p>
<p>• Written Communication. To write concise, well organized</p>
<p>I officially narrowed the choices down to University of Wyoming, Rhodes, Goucher, Portland State, and Western Washington. I took all the other schools off the table. D is not happy. Hopefully, she can come to terms with her choices in the next few days.</p>
<p>Is a gap year also off the table?</p>
<p>No matter what, good luck to you and your daughter.</p>
<p>Her best choices seem to be Wyoming, Rhodes or gap year ( or maybe community college?). It sounds like you were pretty clear from the beginning that you did not want to pay more than about $30,000. It is unfortunate when guidance counselors or teachers or coaches encourage kids to get their hopes up for really expensive schools like Barnard or GWU that were not likely to be affordable for your family. And yes, good luck to you and you daughter.</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with Goucher, either. I can’t help but wonder what took so long to get this ultimatum on the table… this set of choices seemed obvious from the first post. She would have had more time to truly come to terms and analyze her choices… now she is down to the wire and may make a choice more out of panic than rational thought.</p>
<p>Grossjh – you mentioned upthread that your daughter spent almost a year in India with AFS? What was her living situation there? My daughter spent 2 months in New Delhi working with a UN agency to help refugees. She was definitely impacted by the abject poverty she saw around her. She learned from talking to an employee at the clinic where she worked that his full days’ pay was the same as the amount of money she was paying her rickshaw driver to take her home from work. It made her really appreciate the life advantages she took for granted.</p>
<p>My daughter also spent time overseas when she was younger with a high school foreign exchange – in Russia. I think her reaction was the same, though she certainly did not see comparable levels of poverty. Nonetheless, Russian teenagers do not grow expecting that their parents will finance them to attend whatever university they choose – they more typically attend a local public university, probably very much the equivalent of Portland State or Western Washington. </p>
<p>I think your daughter has a good array of choices that many young people would feel very grateful to have. </p>
<p>Inparent, the OP explained his parenting style upthread – he likes to give plenty of time for discussion. I don’t agree with that approach … but maybe he was hoping that his daughter would come around to making the more rational financial decision on her own. That is why when my daughter did not receive enough aid money from NYU, I still paid for her to attend an admitted students event there (the plane tickets had been purchased before we had the financial aid packet) – and encouraged her to appeal the award, but otherwise stayed out of it. I figured that she’d feel a lot better if she felt that she was the one making the decision to turn down NYU’s offer – though of course I also equipped her with the knowledge of the maximum dollar amount she could expect from mom. </p>
<p>OP’s daughter has known for month what the issues are. I think that any kid smart enough to have been accepted to Barnard would have seen the writing on the wall long before the final edict from Dad came down. (Dad is willing to pay $30, Barnard costs $62K … that’s not rocket science. The d. doesn’t sound either spoiled or stupid… so I can see why a parent might hope that a resilient kid would have let go of the pie-in-the-sky dream much sooner in the process. </p>
<p>Gap year is still on the table if she doesn’t feel comfortable with the options available. I did probably let the process go on too long, but we were still waiting on appeals. D knew all along where the budget stood. She keeps trying to persuade us to pay $10K more per year and allow her to take out additional loans to cover the difference. I realized that if I didn’t cut off debate she would go down to the wire fighting tooth and nail for Barnard or GW and not ever seriously consider the realistic options. Now she has three nights to sleep on it. This is not fun.</p>
<p>Stand your ground, especially since you have a younger child to consider. </p>
<p>Good for you, grossjh. Let is know what she decides. I think a few days of unpleasantness is better than years (and possibly years) of it caused by unaffordable loan payments. Good luck.</p>
<p>Have you visited Portland State? If your D likes LACs she may not like the urban campus here…Portland is a great city but PSU is vastly different from the others…</p>
<p>We have not visited Portland State. My daughter would like to go to a LAC in an urban area, so PSU fits the urban part.</p>
<p>Oy, she hasn’t visited Portland State and yet it’s one of the schools still on the table? </p>
<p>Seriously, I totally empathize with the situation here, but for other families following this thread, it is IMPERATIVE that your children find some safeties they can live with and VISIT them to be sure! My son ended up LOVING his super-safety (the one offering him full-tuition); we didn’t visit until relatively late in the process, but he never would have considered it a realistic option if he hadn’t set foot on campus and seen what they had to offer him in person. He would have found himself in a similarly untenable situation to that of OP’s daughter of choosing from our (pricey) state flagship (our official safety) and a SLAC that was of comparable price but wasn’t a good fit at all. (He had been wait-listed or offered terrible FA at his “match” schools.)</p>
<p>Maybe you and your daughter will find a better option when NACAC releases its list of schools that still have space for next fall. Sometimes they still have merit money available for top students. This was a route I was considering for my son if he was left with two ~$30,000 options he wasn’t happy with. Check out last year’s list so you have some idea of what may be available and good luck!</p>
<p><a href=“Tuition Discount Alert: 50 Great Colleges Desperately Seeking Students”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2013/05/14/tuition-discount-alert-50-great-colleges-desperately-seeking-students/</a></p>
<p>Good idea, Lucie, to take a look at the NACAC list if daughter still can’t get excited about any of her options. The list will be released on May 6th. In 2012, there were 375 schools on the list (30% public, 70% private).</p>
<p>We are in the unenviable position of having to choose between 5 schools none of which my daughter would have chosen to apply to without my insistence that she needed some financial safety schools on her list. She has visited Rhodes, Goucher and U of Wyo. The NACAC list is an interesting possibility. Obviously, will need to put a deposit down by 5/1/14 and then peruse the list for interesting possibilities. It’s unlikely that she will find something she likes better than Goucher or Rhodes on that list. She’s not worried about the money side of things. I think prestige is her overriding concern.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, if her overriding concern is prestige, none on her final list are really prestigious. Of the remaining 5, Rhodes seems to be the most prestigious and on the rise. It is ranked 54 and Goucher is ranked 110. Rhodes is in the middle of Memphis , while Goucher is on the outskirts of Baltimore, in Towson. Last year, there were about 210 schools on the NACAC list. There will probably not be too many “prestigious” schools on the list coming out next week . </p>
<p>What would she potentially do with a gap year? Are there any schools that she’s identified that she would want to apply to if she applied again next year? Ones that she is excited about but that would be cheaper than Barnard or GWU?</p>