My son will graduate from Union College in Schenectady this June. He has loved it. My only complaint is they only release a small number of students to live off campus senior year. They expect students to live on campus all four years. The money we could have saved having him live off campus would have been huge.
The cost. And he’s too far away. I miss him.
If he’s in a BS-MD program & is still certain of his intended career paths, he may very well have made the best decision. I mean – if he had gone with the elite options and then run into problems getting the GPA he would need for med school admissions… he might be kicking himself from the other direction.
He made a decision and there is no way to know whether the other options would have been better or worse. Even hindsight doesn’t provide the answers, because no one ever knows where the other life paths might have led.
A lot of kids who go off to elite schools or “dream schools” with the greatest of expectations find themselves disappointed as well. Real life just isn’t the same as the shiny pictures on the websites and college brochures. And even when things are going well, real life can throw curves in unexpected ways.
So I hope you can encourage your son to take a longer perspective and look beyond the flaws or downsides in his environment. Few things in life live up to our most hopeful expectations, but having a positive outlook can be a big help. There will be opportunities for him if he looks for them.
One of my kid’s mind sized University has NO loaner laptops AND requires laptop for certain labs.
I was shocked that there are no loaners available at any of the libraries or from the department.
And, their housing process is overly complex and overcrowded with far too many in forced triples.
Distance from home. 
The food has been disappointing. And they denied tenure to D’s very favorite professor, a woman who went out of her way to help students. I imagine she didn’t do enough research/publishing, but it still stung.
My kid loved some of his professors at Tufts, but he didn’t love Tufts. He got aggravated by much of the social justice warrior aspects of many in the student body and equally aggravated by the administration. He ended up happily spending his entire junior year abroad. The only complaint I ever heard from my older son about Carnegie Mellon was that in one course he never did figure out why his TA’s didn’t like his lab reports. I’m laughing at the post from @blossom . MIT was my son’s first choice, but he would have been annoyed by most of what she describes. He did have to take a writing course, and another history course because he’d only done APUSH, but he certainly didn’t take biology again.
D at a very highly ranked LAC known for quality of teaching and it seems she has gotten more than her fair share of just ok professors. Super disappointed, given what we are paying for tuition, that this semester, she couldn’t get into the class of the amazing professor she had last semester for O-chem because she got a later registration number so feels as if she is not learning anything at all in O-chem 2. Guess I was expecting amazing professors to be more the norm at the school here which was probably unrealistic.
What I hate about my alma mater-they seem to ask for donations but never ask for me to volunteer at any college fairs. The last 2 college fairs at local high schools I volunteered at did not have my alma mater. Santa Clara had better step up its game before it has pretensions of becoming a national university. You can’t even have a table at a local high school? You have enough kids in Silicon Valley to attract a class
And you can’t even send me a snail mail thank you letter even after I donate?
What I like about son’s current school. It’s expensive, but they try to involve parents. And they send me letters after I make my annual donation. I have volunteered for WashU events more than Santa Clara events.
Another plus for WashU-the cafeterias seem to be open all times of the day. Santa Clara cafeterias shut down really early. Took the kid to a visit and couldn’t get anything to eat even though it was 20 minutes before 2:00.
On the subject of donations, really annoying that we are full pay at a meets full needs school and still getting donation letters. We are already paying $75k/year and you want more? Can’t you at least wait until our D graduates? Said tongue in cheek, if course ?
I wish my university was a little more diverse and a little less pre-professional (though things have quickly changed now.)
It was stressful for the pre-profs to not know what the future holds, but wish we could have enjoyed thing in the meantime.
@ordinarylives:
“I feel bad for you son if he’s not happy, but I am a little skeptical that a university with a med school, and a direct entry program at that, has low academic standards and attracts “poor quality” peers.”
- Many big publics have med schools and not all of them are terribly difficult to get in to for undergrad.
- Some schools with fairly low entry hurdles in general have BS-MD programs (that are much tougher to get in to).
I agree with @calmom that there may be a “grass is greener” aspect at work there.
At a more challenging school, good grades would be tougher and everyone would have to work hard to keep up. Some people love that. However, there is a lot more stress too.
I feel that (so long as you are at a big research U), you can make your academic career as challenging as want it to be. If the regular work is too simple, go try to do research and work with faculty. I would rather have more free time to spend on pursuits that I am interested in than being forced to work at a fast pace on stuff that is dictated by others.
There is not a single thing about my DD school that we would change. Upthread someone mentioned study abroad. My DD is adamant that she is not leaving campus for a semester even though her scholarship fully covers study abroad and she will not incur any expense. She says that she has her entire life to travel but only 4 years at school.
The distance from home is tough on me but with direct flights the travel day is no longer than driving to much “closer” schools. Skype, FaceTime, snap chat, vemno, online banking, etc make the distance a non issue these days.
My son has hated just about every minute of his time at Oberlin. He clearly picked the wrong school for him, but didn’t want to go through the process of transferring after sophomore year. Oh well, he will graduate in May.
Both of my kids attended colleges that do not guarantee housing for all four years. So did I. It did not turn out to be a major issue for any of us, but it could have. I think this is something that applicants and their families should think about when making choices. If you object to off-campus living, a school that doesn’t guarantee on-campus housing for all four years may not be the right place for you.
Our son is at a service academy. Don’t even get me started… His college required him to draft a will and name his next of kin and insurance beneficiaries prior to starting freshman year. And it has trained him to kill. Top that for cons!
@CupCakeMuffins Or maybe the reality is that most colleges are actually OK and meet the basic needs of the majority of their students, whether we’re talking about the State U or the Ivy League college.
Kiddo #1’s university just had a huge issue with flu this winter because there’s no policy excusing absences for the flu. If you were burning up with a fever of 103F and missed a test, you got a 0. That’s a major fail IMO as it drags out the sickness (by not resting up) and just spreads it even more. We don’t know how DD didn’t get it when her roommate and several friends did.
The other thing I don’t like (And really didn’t think through) is that cute, smaller college towns may lack medical specialists. Or they only have one in town who may not take your insurance.
Crappy freshmen dorms and dining halls that close on the weekends.