How to Help Daughter Figure Out Best Fit for College

Parents Forum
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<p>How do you all recommend helping your son/daughter figure out the best fit for them with a college?</p>

<p>My daughter has narrowed down her choices to 6 LACs--Carleton, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Vassar and Smith. </p>

<p>We know that she will likely only get accepted to perhaps 3 of these schools, but since she'll begin hearing next week, I wanted to start thinking about how to best help her assess her options & help her make a decision.</p>

<p>She's interested in math, science & studio art. She's an introverted, creative, intellectually-curious, bright student who loves stimulating classroom discussions (vs lectures) & tends more toward the quiet side with friends. Strong thinker. Gets lost in books. Not proactive or an outgoing "mover & shaker". Top of her class, brilliant, humble, unassuming, cheerful person. Very quiet outside the classroom.</p>

<p>I'm needing help in how to best guide her in figuring out where she would best fit academically & socially.</p>

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<p>From experience, I would suggest waiting until you know exactly what your options are. Sometimes fate has a way of leading us in the right direction.</p>

<p>After you definitely know what your choices are, you can do a more thorough evaluation of those schools.</p>

<p>Did you visit the schools she applied to? It almost sounds as if the applications were submitted without doing a lot of research. Hopefully not.</p>

<p>I found it extremely helpful to visit the specific forums for the schools my children were accepted. It can take hours to peruse all the information, but it’s a labor of love.</p>

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<p>Academically, she may want to go through the course catalogs and schedules to see if each school has enough offerings in the subjects that she is interested in.</p>

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<p>Wait till you know where she is accepted and then think about it. Has she visited all schools? Re visiting might be nice, sitting in the classes etc. Just one more week and we will all know where the pieces have fallen…</p>

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<p>How did she feel after visiting the campuses? Many universities have a stay the night program where they can go to a class and stay in a dorm. That could be a big help to her. </p>

<p>Look at catalogs and see what the required classes are for her major. I remember my D crossing 2 schools off the list because of repeating classes she had in high school…</p>

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<p>Course catalogs sometimes give the impression that a course is regularly offered, when it is not.</p>

<p>If money is not a criteria, she might think about non academic criteria that might matter, like size of school, size of town, distance to city etc & weight the criteria depending on how important it is to her, then compare the criteria to the schools. Although they are all LACs, they are in quite different settings.</p>

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<p>I agree with those who say to wait until you know her options. My Dd loved all of her schools and thought she’d have a hard time deciding, but once decisions came back and acceptances were real, she allowed herself to favor her first choice without reservation. Until decision day, I had no idea what she would choose, even if she had been accepted to all of them.
You’ll have plenty of time to weigh the pros and cons, if it even comes to that. You could make another visit during admitted students day if she still has questions- or even if she doesn’t.
At this point, try to relax and think about something else besides this decision.</p>

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<p>With all due respect, why are you only asking these questions now? Certainly she had reasons for choosing these schools in the first place. And does she also have some decent safeties that she likes? If I were to talk to my child about ANYTHING right now it would be getting comfortable with a worst-case scenario.</p>

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<p>Thank you all very much. Your advice is sound and wise, and waiting until she knows her options might make some of the decisions much easier to make for her. </p>

<p>I like FlyMeToTheMoon’s comment that sometimes fate has a way of leading us in the right direction. Thanks, also, for the suggestion to read through the information on the forums, and we’ll do that.</p>

<p>We put a lot of research into which schools were strong in her academic interests (math, science and studio art) and visited these schools—as well as quite a few other schools, which my daughter eliminated for various reasons. These were the schools that she felt could be viable options, but we felt stuck about how to proceed with her final choices.</p>

<p>UCBAlumnus, we’ll look through the course offerings—she did that in narrowing down her choices, but once we hear, that’ll give her more clarity about what the schools have to offer in her specific interests. Thanks.</p>

<p>Kelowna, thanks for the suggestion to revisit. It could be that now that she’s almost ready to graduate, when she revisits the schools, she’ll have a much stronger sense of what she really likes.</p>

<p>And, RushedMom, thanks for the reminder about how doing the overnight visit and being in the dorms might help her “know” where she would feel most comfortable.</p>

<p>If she gets to have several choices, I think she might need to spend April revisiting those schools, spending the night in the dorm, going to classes, and sensing where she feels the best fit.</p>

<p>Emeraldkity4, I think she would find it helpful to think about whether she wants rural, mountains, plains, small city, cool college town or if she’s okay with isolated, not-much-happening college town. </p>

<p>okay, MoonChild, good point, maybe I’ll try to relax & do some reading about the schools but wait until my daughter actually knows what her options are. She may surprise me and know her preference when she is presented with her acceptances, and I think that’s quite possible. And, you are all basically saying that we’ll have enough time, she can revisit and it will likely all come together. </p>

<p>And, Sally, I’m not wanting to talk with my daughter before she finds out her actual options, but I’m rather trying to think ahead about the variables and factors that parents think are important to consider that we might not have thought about. And, I’m also thinking ahead about how to help my daughter weigh various factors, in case she gets accepted into several of her top choice schools. </p>

<p>Based on all of your helpful comments, I think this might flow more easily than I am anticipating, and perhaps I am over-thinking the quandry of how to help my daughter decide between several of her top choices, if she gets into several schools.</p>

<p>Thank you all very much. Extremely helpful comments.</p>

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<p>Lucia7, looks like you are just going through what the rest of us parents are experiencing at this time of the year. In a little more than a week, all of us will have more answers that will help direct the college choice for our kids. You should join us on the parents of HS class of 2013 thread.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/754591-parents-hs-class-2013-college-class-2017-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/754591-parents-hs-class-2013-college-class-2017-a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It’s like “Parents of High School Seniors Anonymous” only better!</p>

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<p>FWIW, I have a virtual niece (daughter of best friends, known her since conception) who could be described in almost exactly the same terms as your daughter, except for being more interested in film than studio art, and leaning more to mathy computer science than pure math. She is about to graduate from Carleton, which she has absolutely adored. She has gotten out of it everything she hoped, and more, including the tech job she dreamed she might get someday, and a great quarter abroad in India. </p>

<p>She chose it over Bowdoin and Middlebury (and Chicago and Carnegie-Mellon SCS, which were harder for her to turn down). She might well have gone to Williams if she had been accepted there, but in retrospect she’s glad that didn’t happen. I don’t know exactly how she made her decision. Frankly, there was a lot of agonizing going on, and I got really bored with it. I was pretty surprised by her final choice, but it worked out just perfectly for her. </p>

<p>I suspect several of the other choices would also have worked out perfectly for her, too.</p>

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<p>Way back when I had similar interests and ended up going to grad school in architecture. </p>

<p>I don’t think there’s any one right way too consider schools, both my boys got down to a final two and then just had a really, really hard time deciding. For older son who was sure of his major it was the one with more offerings and higher ranking in his major. For the younger son I think it was a combination of things. The school he chose is a little closer to us and a lot closer to relatives, the location was more suburban than urban in feel, the campus is a little smaller, though the number of undergrads is similar, there was one professor whose class had really impressed him at Accepted Students weekend, he felt the students seemed a little more relaxed at the school he chose, and there’s more emphasis on learning in a global context at the second one, and more emphasis on active citizenship as opposed to scholarship.</p>

<p>Your daughter should have great choices, I wouldn’t worry about it too much!</p>

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<p>We’re in the same situation. D applied to 7 schools, mostly LACs. We’ve only heard from one (a “likely” notification from Wellesley) but are waiting until she hears back from all of them to know what her real choices are. </p>

<p>If she gets into more than one, she will probably make some sort of chart, listing her priorities and determining how each school measures up. She also plans to contact the heads of the student organizations that interest her, just to see how active they are. Then, if it’s still unclear, we’ll try to send her to whatever accepted student days each school offers to help her get a feel for what living there would be like. Her schools are very spread out, from MA to CA to PA to SC, so doing a repeat visit may not be possible.</p>

<p>I want her to choose a school that’s a good fit, but as in choosing a partner, I don’t believe there’s any such thing as a soul mate. You just have to make the best choice based on the available evidence, and then do your best to make it work.</p>

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<p>Thanks! That is very good advice that I will use with our D. I also think we may have her make a chart such as you suggested.</p>