How to advise your high school kid when they pick a school because friends might go there?

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Looking for input, advice, feedback from parents who have been down this road before.

We are shopping for colleges w/our HS junior (D24). We know what we can afford to pay per year and have an initial list of potential colleges which D24 could possibly get admitted to that we’ve been touring. Right now, D24 has said that her #1 so far is an in-state school (Univ of Arizona) and that a big reason why she wants to go there is so she will have at least 1 HS friend attending there as well. As she put it, “I want to have at least ONE person I know to hang out with so I don’t have to be by myself all the time.”

So in a sense, she’s afraid that she won’t be able to make friends. Her BFFs (3 girls) all have a way better GPA than her…her friends will pretty much get into U of A’s honors college, but D24 will likely not because her GPA is not high enough (college counselor at our HS said that last year, nobody at our HS got into the honors college if their GPA was below a 3.7 unweighted and D24’s is 3.33 unweighted right now).

2 of the 3 BFFs have also recently said that they want to go to college out of state. D24 was hoping to convince some of them to attend U of A with the hopes that she could be roommates w/1 of them. I suspect that might not occur.

D24’s HS class is small…about 28 students in the entire grade. And she’s been buddies with this group of kids since we transferred to this school when she was in 6th grade.

I suspect that there’s a couple of things going on:

  • She’s excited about going to college. She has said so, commented on how she’s looking forward to not having Mom & Dad to tell her what to do all the time…I remember feeling the same way at that stage of the game in HS.
  • She’s also nervous/a little scared. Afraid that it’ll be hard to make friends.
  • Probably also a little scared that she’ll get lost in the crowd.
  • She’s also said that she’s afraid of being roommates with somebody she doesn’t know. Probably is nervous that the roommate will be a bit difficult to live with. Side note: she and her younger sister share a bedroom at home, so D24 has plenty of practice having a roommate since she’s had one since she was 4.

I met earlier this week w/our HS’s college counselor. Our HS has a lot of kids also attend ASU…the counselor said that she’s been to ASU many times, often will run into our HS’s alumni. The counselor remarked that when she does run into HS alumni, they’re in small groups together.

What I’m a little nervous about is that she’ll end up ONLY hanging out with former HS classmates while in college. She needs to spread her wings a bit. I fear a little of it becoming high school 2.0.

The HS counselor said that in senior year, a lot of this ends up sort of getting resolved based on where everybody gets accepted to and ultimately decides to attend.

So after much rambling, here’s my question: Did your kid have any nervousness about this sort of thing when deciding where to go to college? And how did it turn out when they finally did attend during freshman year?

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Kids make a lot of new friends their first few weeks. And the kids from their HS that matriculated to the same college are less like my kid than the new people they made friends with. So they hardly hang out with their HS classmates, and more with their new friends in college

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Most people here will tell you not to worry about it and she will be fine anywhere once she is acclimated. You know your kid best, but given that so many kids these days are in or near mental health crisis, I would listen carefully to what she is saying and make a really thoughtful decision about how hard outside of her comfort zone you can push her.

My high achieving, gregarious older daughter chose a large OOS state school (Michigan) where she knew no one. It was extremely challenging for her socially. She was a 2020, so pandemic restrictions absolutely made the process harder but the feeling of isolation and having no friendly face around was damaging to her mental health. It took her almost 1.5 years to finally start getting her footing and now, as a junior, she couldn’t be happier. It was a long road, even for a confident and extroverted kid. That adjustment likely would have been much shorter without Covid, but I think a lot of the same feelings of insecurity would have happened even in a more condensed timeline.

My younger daughter is quieter and less confident. She saw her sister’s struggles struggles and 100% knew that she wanted to be with at least a few kids she knew. It was the right decision for her. She makes friends slowly and would have been very alone without some familiar faces. She doesn’t live with any of them, but she knows they are there.

Choosing a school where she would know someone was the right decisions for my younger daughter. Her sister was able to stretch and make it through the hard part (barely) and be better for it. My younger daughter would have crumbled.

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Let it play out. Apply to several schools and go from there. These things tend to work out in the end.

Lots of schools have mixers the first week for all kinds of things. She’ll meet plenty of people.

I can think of several instances where high school friends lived together and it didn’t end well. But I’ve also known some that have worked. No guarantees.

Maybe take a summer class to get acclimated early. Is a sorority an option?

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I would encourage/require my kid not to room with a high school friend, but beyond that I don’t have an issue with it. *Except I wouldn’t want my kids basing their decision entirely because of friends. But as long as I’m fine with the school, the presence or lack of friends wouldn’t be the deciding factor.

I went a few states away. One or two kids from my high school were there (not close friends). We did touch base occasionally and it was nice to have them there, but we didn’t hang out.

DH, on the other hand, went to his state flagship with a bunch of kids from his high school. They stayed friends and are still friends to this day. But he also met a lot of other people in his major or through other activities. I know he really enjoyed being with his friends and doesn’t see any negatives.

I like my kids’ friends and would honestly like it if they had at least a couple familiar faces at their college.

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I agree completely with all of your points.

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She will spread her wings on her timeline. If being with some people she knows works for her, that is all that matters. Remember, happy kids do better in college than unhappy kids.

My older kid went to college where a couple of HS alums went. He never…repeat…NEVER saw them. He could have if he had wanted to, but the college was sufficiently large that there were plenty of new students to meet. Arizona is not a teeny school. There will be plenty of students not from your high school who attend there. Your child will find her tribe…be it with HS friends or new friends she meets. Either really is fine.

My younger kid went to a college 3000 miles from home where no one for her high school had ever attended. Actually, they never heard of the school. She was very excited about meeting new people…and I think this is key. It sounds like your daughter is on the fence about that. Anyway…my second kid said the first couple of weeks she was very homesick, and it did take time to establish her excellent circle of friends.

I guess what I’m saying is…if your daughter loves Arizona, she will have the option of meeting new people as close friends…or not…and it will be her choice. Also, even IF her friends attend with her, she may find that many of them branch out, whether it is because of their majors, activities, etc. And she probably will branch out too.

Does your daughter do any activities that are NOT part of her high school…where she gets to interact with others from different places?

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I think it’s great to go to college where you know someone. My D22 ended up transferring after her first semester to a school where a good friend a year ahead goes. She is much happier (it also has a stronger program in her major).

I sense from your post that you are worried her higher achieving friends are going to go off and leave her at U of Arizona and they are going to go off elsewhere. Well, that could happen. It’s true. If it does and she ends up at U of AZ while her friends are elsewhere then she will just have to make the best of it. You can’t make the friends go where they don’t want to go. There will be lots of other people at her college to meet.

My D22 was good friends with her roommate at the first college she went to and I think she still talks to her some, but she is happier at the second school and found a girlfriend right away. She gets together to cook meals with her friend from home, too, but she just met the girlfriend on her hall. Not anybody she knew from before.

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DD’19 originally was adamant she wanted to go where NO ONE from HS went, but then ended up where several go every year. As senior year went on and it became more real and she got a little nostalgic, she was comforted to know that there would be someone she knew on campus.

I told her not to room with a friend, that way they would each maybe expand their circle with their different roommates if the roommates became friends, and have a different room to hang out in if they wanted to be away from roommate sometimes. Yes she was nervous about living with a stranger, but she hit the jackpot with a new best friend and they stayed roommates the whole time. I know it doesn’t always work out that way!

Of the girls in her grade that also went, 1 she never saw, 1 was around and they talked a little now and then, 1 was in theatre with her first semester then left, and 1 became one of her best friends by their 3rd year. DD built her circle mainly from doing theatre and from her freshman floor.

So in sum, yes it was nice to have a couple people from home to fall back on, but she built her own group pretty quick that ended up including just one from home. Being in theatre helped, so I would recommend joining in some club or group right away.

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I think you’ve gotten some good advice here. Another possibility is whether or not your daughter could do a week at an college camp this summer during a week when she won’t know anybody attending. Perhaps she’ll realize that she can make friends and be okay even if she doesn’t know anybody. Or perhaps she’ll realize how important it is to have at least one person she knows. But either way, it might be good information to know before she decides where to attend college.

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Put me firmly in the ‘let it play out’ camp. It’s impossible for them to grasp how much they are going to change between now and next April, much less the April after that!

a couple of suggestions:

  1. Remind her that all she is doing by applying more widely is giving her future self more choices. At some point she will have offers and can choose whether she accepts them or not.

  2. Encourage her to investigate housing options at the various school: many schools have singles even for first years; even more have suites (where you have your own bedroom & sometimes own bathroom, but share a kitchen/living area), or themed housing options.

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Touching upon a couple of things that some of you brought up:

  • ultimately, it is definitely her decision. I do think that making the decision solely based on where your friends are attending might not be the wisest choice.
  • At the same time, D24 is probably not being very reasonable because 2 of her friends’ parents will not allow their daughters to live on campus wherever they attend…the parents plan on moving to wherever the kid attends college and will have the kid live at home. So even if the gang of 4 all end up at U of A, they’re not going to be roommates.
  • doing a week away at a college-based camp of some sort will probably not be in the cards this summer. But D24 is going on a HS-sponsored trip to France w/some classmates & 2 teachers at the end of this school year. So there will be some growing there at the end of May. :slight_smile:
  • I like the suggestion to investigate housing options at different schools. We’ve already been looking into this. D24 is interested in pre-health, so if a college has a pre-health LLC, I think that would be great, but ultimately it’ll be her choice.
  • Also re: housing - DH & I decided previously that we are not willing to pay for a single room. D24 needs to live in a double.
  • For freshman year, I would prefer D24 to live in a dorm that has the traditional bathroom down the hall. When I was in college, there was a lot of socializing that happened in the bathroom. 1 of the colleges we’re considering is small and the college mentioned in a Youtube video that their research has shown that students who live their freshman year in non-suite dorm rooms (i.e., communal bathroom down the hall) tend to develop a friend network & a sense of community faster than students in suite-style rooms (2 rooms sharing 1 bathroom). But ultimately, she’ll be the one to decide. :slight_smile:
  • we have 2 tours coming up next month at LACs (happy meal sized schools w/each around 1500 undergrads). So far, our other tours have been at big public universities…ASU (~63k students, which is like the super-sized meal), U of A (normal extra value meal at ~33-34k undergrads), UNM (~16k undergrads…Big Mac & small fries), and NMSU (~11k undergrads…quarter pounder & small fries).
  • re: sorority - D24 is, right now, really not interested in joining a sorority. That decision is up to her. DH & I are not willing to fund joining Greek life, so if she decides to do that, she’ll have to figure out a way to pay for it. Because of D24’s current disdain for Greek life, a college like Ole Miss has been ruled out since such a high % of the student body joins a sorority/fraternity. She’s very much into marching to the beat of your own drum, accepting people for who they are, regardless of what they look like, etc. and the pressure to dress and look a certain way in a sorority is a total turn off for her. At the same time, she’s seen groups of sorority girls walking around U of A together and has scoffed, “Psh, I think they look stupid all dressed the same. What the heck.” D24 has some friends who identify as bisexual, homosexual, pansexual, transgender, etc. and has said that she doesn’t want to join an organization that isn’t openly accepting of people in those categories (i.e., and by ‘openly accepting,’ she means more than lip service like the org. has a statement about it but in practice, org. members joke about and mock people who are not heterosexual).
  • D24 does participate in an extracurricular that’s outside of school. She’s in a choir with kids from all different HSs. Has talked about maybe joining a choir at college, too, just for the fun of it. I’ve encouraged her to consider this. She thinks it would be a good way to let off steam each week. I mentioned it would also be an easy way to meet people quickly.

UNM and NMSU both got thumbs up because she likes the food in New Mexico. At UNM, the tour guide mentioned a light saber club that practices on campus at night (my kid is a Star Wars nerd) and the Frontier Restaurant has green chile stew that she likes (it’s totally random sometimes the sorts of things that sway kids to like/not like 1 college over another). We used to live in Tucson, so she likes U of A because it’s familiar…U of A is a great school.

I really really appreciate everybody’s replies so far. It’s been very helpful! My gut says to stay quiet and let it ride for now because a lot can and will happen over the next year and you guys so far have collectively said to do that.

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I’m a parent, but I went to high school the size of your daughter’s. The dorm I lived it had a larger population than the town I was from. It was the best thing I ever could have done. That said it’s nice to have someone you know attending your college just for a friendly face. I feel like kids who room with their friends have a harder time meeting new people. If you are a student on your own it’s much easier to approach and include another student on their own, rather than one already paired up. Hope that makes sense.

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Another let it play out vote.

And a hearty endorsement of looking at LACs. Many schools have pretty intentional orientation programs because they know that it’s easier to hit the ground running when you’re not worried about whether you’ll see familiar faces in the dining hall, etc

A,lot changes in a year. If she has friends who are graduating this year, visiting some of them next year could help too.

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I also wouldn’t worry too much in advance but I think it’s good to keep an eye on things. I had a family member who choose their school because of where friends were going and they ended up rooming without her and ditched her. It was awful and heartbreaking.

I also agree with the posters who say to make sure you send your D to orientation, even if it’s extra money. It’s totally worth it to expand the social circle and get more comfortable with campus before classes start.

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Agree with everyone to let it play out.

BUT-- I think it’s important for all of us to communicate to our kids that we know they are resilient, that they can handle challenging situations, that they can get thrown in the deep end of the pool and come back to the surface.

One of my kids was not as adaptable? Maybe that’s the best way to describe it. Harder time with transitions, harder time “not knowing anyone”. Did NOT take the safe choice for college (where the besties were going, and where if you count “friends of friends” there was already a village in place. ) Definitely picked the right academic fit— but was a little wobbly on the social fit.

It took time- but it was fabulous once it all came together. I made a lot of mistakes with this kid- I admit it- but the one thing I think we got right was a quiet “you can do this” which never wavered. There was one tearful phone call right before classes started freshman year and even though my heart was breaking, I stuck to the script. “You can do this. It’s ok not to have friends immediately. You are homesick right now but it will pass. You picked this college for so many fantastic reasons-- once classes start you will remember those reasons. We are so proud of you and confident you can figure this out”.

And it worked… So yes, your D needs to decide. But make sure you are regularly telling her that you know she can tough it out even if things are rocky.

Trip to Europe sounds like a great experience!!!

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definitely going to do this! I went to orientation before starting college and it made everything a lot less nerve-wracking. U of A’s orientation is still entirely online (boo!) but the other 2 colleges have it available in person. I think in person would be preferable.

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I would also say, follow your kid’s lead. I live in a part of the country with very low mobility, people are born here and they stay here. Since we live in commuting distance to the state flagship and a state directional, that is where most kids in D22’s class ended up, incl. the valedictorian and many of the top 10%. All of my D’s friends that went to the local schools are rooming with somebody they knew from high school. One of them would have commuted if she had not found a roommate she knew from HS. They all come home very frequently on the weekend. They don’t have the classic college experience, but they seem to be happy. This works well for them (and is the norm around here).
My D wanted out and went to a school where she knew nobody. But most kids there are from far away and also knew nobody, so everybody was very eager to meet new people in the first few weeks. She is not far but rarely comes home on the weekends, fully immersed in her college. That is the experience she wanted and that works for her.
So, what I want to say, two very different experiences, but each group got what they wanted and were comfortable with. My D’s friends were not ready yet to leave their comfort zone and that is fine. So, I would follow your D’s lead. Mental health issues are real and while my D has a great experience, there were times of high roommate and friend drama that took its toll on her.

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How common is that in your area?

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It’s not common at all. Rare, in fact. The families of the 2 BFFs mentioned above are really conservative Muslim and are apparently not comfortable with their DDs living on their own or in a dorm on or off campus. The parents grew up overseas and their culture is one in which females live at home until they get married. 1 of the girls told D24 that when she gets older, she’s going to have an arranged marriage.

Honestly, it’s been an amazing friendship for my kid. :slight_smile:

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