When I told my friend where my D was planning to go, she asked if D would be commuting. I explained that it would be a 10 hour drive each way. As you can see, this friend totally removes herself from college discussions despite having a kid currently in college.
@leftrightleft I found it hard to believe as well. Heartbreaking too. She cried for days to have respected teachers accuse her of throwing away her life and ruining her future by going to this school. I told my daughter to chalk it up to a bad day. These 2 teachers could have done Googling instead of having Ivy and Top Ten envy. Then they would have seen her choice for what it was, a perfect match for her. You just canât please everyone and you shouldnât try to. Some people just forget to engage their brains before their mouths.
So yes, hard to believe but true story.
In the case of Santa Clara University â which is a fine Catholic school â itâs not exactly an insult if people think itâs part of the University of California or CSU systems. When I lived on the Peninsula, it took me a little while to figure out the difference between SCU and UCSC (and Iâm sure at any meaningful distance the same problem exists for University of San Diego vs. UCSD). But itâs not as if the public side of that comparison is chopped liver.
Relatives told me I was making a mistake and throwing my life away, in more or less those exact words, for choosing to go to Yale instead of Harvard. An uncle on his deathbed, whom I was visiting during the only brief window of consciousness and ability to communicate he had the last week of his life, told me âYou canât let yourself make a mistake this big while you are this young.â Both he and I knew that was the last conversation we would ever have. He wasnât kidding. People have strong feelings about these things.
@JHS âYou canât let yourself make a mistake this big while you are this young.â
And yet, even with the catastrophic disadvantages of Yale, it appears that you persevered and still learned how to both read and write. lol
Weâre in Illinois, most of the time when I tell people my daughter goes to University of Rochester, I get, âOh, itâs cold in Minnesota!â When she was choosing her college, the fact that it wasnât a household name in our area was a plus rather than a minus for her.
But even top-20 schools have a presence in their home region that may not be matched elsewhere. Dâs high-school boyfriend was from the deep south. When his mom told her friends that he was going to Northwestern, she had to explain, âItâs like Vanderbilt, but coldâ because lot of people werenât really familiar with it. (Which was heresy to my Chicago-area sensibilities. 
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Thereâs just too many schools and so many regions of the country that we canât all pay attention to. I would be embarrassed and perhaps unintentionally insulting to many on here to name the colleges discussed often in these threads that are located on the east coast that I either, a) never heard of until mentioned on here, or, b) still have no idea where they are or what they are. (Ok Iâll come cleanâŠhere goesâŠBrandies, Lafayette, Hamilton, Colgate, Wellesley, Amherst, Swarthmore and many more I donât know except from a thread mention.)
If I am being honest, about every 6 months I have to google SUNY to remind myself what it stands for. CUNY, uh well, no idea. Guess I could google it.
But I also have one at Santa Clara University and I donât mind if you donât know it either. 
Sooo many schools! Just find the one that works for your student and donât worry about itâs popularity or perceived prestige. And certainly donât worry about what random people think or know/not know of it.
We got use to this, sending my son to Caltech from FL. Neither his principal nor his MD had ever heard of the school. The principal wondered why he would go to a CA state school over UF. Frankly, I didnât know of the U until a friend mentioned it to me. Then we got a postcard saying a rep would be in Miami, so we went. That was the only âtourâ my son had of colleges, but he fell in like.
Son was the first from his HS to apply to this U, but ever since, others have.
Frankly, anyone who doesnât know of Wellesley or Oberlin or RIT tells me instantly how little they know of colleges.
I couldnât tell you the difference between Wesleyan College and Wellesley College, and Iâve never had a discussion, with anyone, that mentioned Oberlin or RIT. :-??
GAtor, Iâm sure you know the FL Us, even New College. And you probably know people who attended Tulane, Emory, Duke, UNC-CH. so much is regional.
@CADREAMIN - CUNY stands for City University of NY, the local system of colleges in NYC, of which I am a graduate. The branches include Hunter and Baruch Colleges (referred to above by the poster whose interviewer had never heard of Barnard). I would not be surprised if OOS people were unfamiliar with it.
I am only familiar with the California system because my cousins live there but I really couldnât tell you the difference between most of them, although I know that Berkeley is one of the best. I have heard of Santa Clara, the place, but was not aware of a Catholic private college there. That could in part be that, as a Jew, Catholic colleges are not high on my radar so I am really only familiar with the more famous ones, like Notre Dame, Boston College and Fordham.
I confess that I had never heard of the SUNY (State University of NY) school my D attended until her GC mentioned it and that I was, likewise, unfamiliar with the SUNY S17 will be attending in the fall. There are over 60 SUNY schools.
There are schools I had never heard of before reading about them on CC - St. Olafâs is one that comes to mind. I canât imagine that anyone has heard of every college, even a GC. The question is whether or not people can react in an appropriate way when hearing about a school they are not familiar with.
Yes, I get that a lot for my daughterâs school, Susquehanna. I tell people that the college consultant we hired for our oldest child liked the school so much he sent his own son there, and that after visiting the campus I could see why. Oldest didnât go there, and I was thrilled when youngest chose it. Itâs the perfect place for her, and thatâs what matters.
I think the only ones at my high-school that had ever heard of the school I will be attending this coming fall are my principal and Calculus-1 teacher. Unlike perhaps many, I actually prefer that they donât think much of my school because inversely it removes the need to respond to over enthusiastic praise of which I donât know how to react to. Iâm glad I got turned down early decision to Cornell because just the pressure I was getting from everyone congratulating me for the decision and desperate to hear from admission was pretty uncomfortable. I just wanted a good school, not the praise.
In the end, I got accepted to a great school that most people I know have never heard of. I donât tell them that itâs rated higher in engineering than 3 of the 8 ivy leagues, muhuhhahaa.
D will attend Macalester, and we live in a suburb of NYC. This situation happens so much that it stuns me when someone actually says, âOh, great school!â This is usually followed by, âI grew up in/lived for some time in the Twin Cities.â So when I get a blank look I just introduce the school: âItâs a small liberal arts school in St. Paul, Minnesota.â If Iâm feeling defensive (lol) Iâll add: âItâs one of the top LACs in the midwest.â Then people always tell me itâs cold there. Sigh.
I donât care if people are impressed, I just tire of this. Kind of like spelling my unconventionally spelled first name to people my entire life. Plus for a lot of people, ânever heard of itâ seems to equate with âit must not be any good.â Oy.
I suspect a lot of peopleâs responses stem from not knowing many schools outside their region and they just donât know what to say. I donât think their internal dialogue is, âwell, that school stinks.â The same goes for the comment about the weather. That may be the sum total of what they know about the area.
If Iâm familiar with the name of the school (which is unlikely because there are ~3,000 colleges in the US), I generally say Iâve heard itâs a great school and ask if they know what theyâll be majoring in. If they do, we have something to talk about. If they donât, we still have something to talk about because Iâve known people who started college without a major in mind.
If I havenât heard of the school, Iâll ask where it is and encourage them to tell me more about it, then I tell them it sounds like a great school and to have fun. Sometimes we do talk about the weather. I donât know everything about all 50 states either, so itâs nice to hear about different regions of the US and what the children like about them. One school is in a place with wicked winters, but the skiing is great. Another is in a much warmer climate but itâs a dry heat, so biking and other outdoor activities can continue year round. For many, itâs just exciting to be someplace different.
If the kiddo will be attending a cc or trade school, or plans to go directly to the workforce I do the same thing. I try to engage them in a conversation about their life and show a personal interest in it. I want them all to walk away feeling good about the opportunities that are open to them.
I actually tell everyone about College Confidential and DSâs school, since I easily talk to strangers. I last told a lady in line behind me at Baskin Robbins when she mentioned her young grandsonâs interests in science and math. I believe in sharing knowledge and information. People can do better when they know better. It is terrible that the teachers and counselors made OPâs daughter sad over her choice. They are supposed to build up children, not break them,.
Now, as an avid Golden Girlâs TV show fan, I had no idea St. Olaf was a real place, much less the name of a university until I saw it here on CC and looked it up.
I was going to suggest the âsmile and nodâ thread. Honestly, if someone said they hadnât heard of the college, I would just casually ask âReally? Why not?â and go on with life.
This is embarrassing, but Iâd never heard of Harvey Mudd until I joined CC.
Iâm more surprised when someone has heard of D1âs university than when they havenât.
There was a guy from Harvey Mudd who won College Jeopardy! some years back. Thatâs when I first heard of it.
People learn of different schools in different ways. My mother worked in Accounts Payable at an international engineering firm, she learned of many schools, mostly engineering schools, because sheâd pay the tuition reimbursement for employees at RIT, RPI, Colo School of Mines, MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd. She thinks sheâs quite the authority now and canât believe how much they cost. One day I asked her how much she thought my daughterâs school cost. OMG, she had no idea it was that much! (sheâs used to seeing the tuition for one course at a time).
Iâm learning about a lot of schools as my daughterâs team plays them (and we Google the schools). Tusculum? Who ever heard of that? Itâs only been around since the 1790s.
@twoinanddone, I grew up close enough to Tusculum to have heard of it. My college played them in most sports.